It's Monday! What are you reading? 12/3

Every week I participate in this meme hosted by the lovely ladies over at Teach Mentor Texts.  Jen and Kellee had the brilliant idea to adapt this meme to talk about the great young adult and children's literature that we are reading.  Head over to their blog for more great reads and a plethora of recommendations of great kidlit.

This was a REALLY slow reading week for me.  Report cards were due Friday and I was behind in my grading so that is what I spent all of my extra time doing.  Oh, and it was the last week for NaNoWriMo.  I was nowhere near winning this year, but I did get some ideas started.  I was busy reading through the drafts of many of my students this week also.

Books I Finished This Week:

I am feeling a bit sheepish to admit that I only finished two books this week...and one was the audiobook that I had already heard 3/4 through before this week.

I read A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz this week.  This was one of the books I got in my Scholastic box and I was really excited to read it.  It started really strong...I love the narrator warning at the beginning about how fairy tales are actually really bloody and grim.  I am sure that students will enjoy this.  Part of what made it a slow reading week this week was how little this book grabbed me.  The story was interesting but for me it was nothing special.  I think it has to do with the way the narrator interrupts the story throughout the book.  I don't like that.  It reminded me of A Series of Unfortunate Events and that is another series that I have never really gotten into.  I will definitely recommend this book to my students and I know that some of them will love it, but I just wasn't feeling it.

I finished listening to the audiobook of A Mutiny in Time (Infinity Ring #1) this week.  This is a fun adventure and I know that some of my students will enjoy it.  I will definitely recommend this series for fans of 39 clues.



Books I am Currently Reading:

The first chapter of Better Learning Through Structured Teaching: A Framework for the Gradual Release of Responsibility by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey really grabbed my attention.  I am reading it so that I can help my husband with an assignment in his Reading in the Content Areas class.  This model is one that I have read about in multiple sources and I use it in my instruction all the time.  However, I am guilty of not really putting in the collaborative learning stage.  Reading the beginning of this book helped me understand better the research base for the current mandated model in reading instruction in my district.  I do not know if the powers that be were thinking about this model, but this book has given me the way to bridge the gap between the workshop approach that I want to use and the structure that I am supposed to be using.  I am excited to read more in the coming week.

I am loving Reached by Ally Condie so far.  I really liked Matched and was interested in the story of Crossed and I am excited to see how things work out for Ky, Xander, and Cassia.  The world of these novels is so intriguing!

The Joy of Planning by Franki Sibberson is written for teachers of grades 3-6.  I teach 8th grade, but her simple words about what teachers need to do to plan for cycles in reading workshop are really speaking to me.  I love being able to get into her head to see how she thinks about putting together units of reading.  It is giving me a lot of ideas about how I can go about being more intentional in my planning.




What I will read next:

I still have Where She Went and The Sky is Everywhere from the library so I will try to get to those books this week.  I also will probably read Bobby Vs Girls because I have a student who was raving about it and is eager for me to read it.