It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 3/9

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? --From Picture Books to YA is a weekly meme started by Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee at Unleashing Readers. This is a chance for bloggers to recap their week of reading and share their plans for the next reading adventures they will take. Visit the host blogs for a list of great blogs participating in this meme and a whole bunch of titles to add to your to-read lists.

Books I Finished This Week:

Patient Zero: Solving the Mysteries of Deadly Epidemics by Marilee Peters was a fascinating read about how epidemiologists solve the mysteries behind how epidemics started. I highly recommend this very intriguing nonfiction title.

The Forgotten Sisters (Princess Academy, #3) by Shannon Hale is another great read. I really enjoyed going back to Miri's world for another adventure. I recommend this one for fans of the other Princess Academy books. And if you haven't read this series, you should!

Duke by Kirby Larson is a good historical fiction novel. I did not know anything about the movement during World War II of donating family pets for service with the military. I enjoyed the story and was able to identify with the protagonist, as I think all kids who own dogs would. I can't wait to share this title with my fourth graders.

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge was an interesting book. It is a fractured retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I thought it was an interesting premise, but not really my cup of tea. If you like science fiction, you will probably like this book. I might have enjoyed the book more in print. I may have lost some of the details while listening to the audio.


Books I am Currently Reading:

I started All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr and La mirada de los angeles by Camilla Lackberg. I also am reading a Netgalley of Chocolate: Sweet Science and Dark Secrets of the World's Favorite Treat. This will be another good nonfiction book to add to my classroom library. I am learning a lot about history as well as about cacao trees and cocoa. I also picked up The Right to Write last week.

What's Next?

I probably won't have much time to read anything besides the books I have already started. If I do get finished or decide to pick up another book, I will be choosing from my TBR pile.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 3/2

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? --From Picture Books to YA is a weekly meme started by Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee at Unleashing Readers. This is a chance for bloggers to recap their week of reading and share their plans for the next reading adventures they will take. Visit the host blogs for a list of great blogs participating in this meme and a whole bunch of titles to add to your to-read lists.

I have had a few weeks of not finishing many books. I was so busy and I also made the mistake of starting to read a bunch of books at once. This week, I have been sick and unable to get into work. This means, of course, that I have had more reading time. I do not at all relish the fact that I am sick, but I do appreciate the fact that I am not too sick to read and can at least accomplish something while I am home or at the doctor's office waiting for my appointments.

Books I Finished This Week:

I just have to say that I have been reading some amazing things! I would highly recommend them all.

Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor is the conclusion to the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy. I cannot say enough about these hauntingly beautiful books. I would highly recommend listening to the audiobooks of this series. I listened to the first two books and really missed the audiobook narrator when reading the third book. Her voices really brought the characters alive for me. This story is so full of interesting characters who break your heart and give you joy. And the language that this author uses. I couldn't help but grab a couple quotes to demonstrate the beauty of the language in this book. Highly, highly recommended for high school and adult readers.

"He was angles and darkness, her opposite--a moon-creature to her sun, a slicing shadow to her glow. But that was all silhouette. It was in his smile, and in his eyes, and in his waiting--he was still waiting--that she saw him, and knew him. Strength and grace and loneliness and longing.
     And Hope.
     And Hesitation.
    He was standing still to let himself be judged, and it shamed her. She saw it in his stillness. He was afraid that she would think him a beast, and how could she assure him of what she herself, five seconds before, had been uncertain? How could she tell him that he was magnificent, and she was humbled--speechless not with distaste but with awe."

"The smile that she had never seen yet with these eyes....Warm with wonderment, a smile so beautiful it ached. It crinkled his eyes, and shaped his beauty into another kind of astonishing, a better kind, because it was the astonishment of happiness, and that reshapes everything. It makes hearts whole and lives worth living."

I got Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman from NetGalley. I was super excited to be able to read this one and get the word out that everyone should order it.  The book release date is March 10th so it is perfect timing to preorder the book and have it waiting on your doorstep next Tuesday. I loved this story every bit as much as I loved Seraphina. It is such an interesting story world and I really loved the adventures in this book. Highly recommended for teens and adults.

 When I picked up The Crossover by Kwame Alexander, I knew I would have a quick read and I knew it would be one that I liked. I loved how the rhythms of the poems sang to me and I could imagine how reading this one aloud could be so much fun! What I didn't know is that there would be a very raw personal connection that I would make to the main character. My father had heart issues when I was younger and I found that I could relate to some of the more worried tones in some of the poems.

I loved Mortal Heart by Robin LaFevers, just as I loved Grave Mercy and Dark Triumph. Fantasy, romance, political intrigue, and assassins fill the pages of this book and the others in the series. What more could you ask for? I liked the way this book wrapped up the story from the trilogy and brought the stories of all three assassins to satisfying conclusions.



Books I am Currently Reading:

I started reading another book from NetGalley entitled Patient Zero: Solving the Mysteries of Deadly Epidemics. I am really learning a lot from this nonfiction book. It would be a great mentor text for middle school. I also started reading the most recent Camilla Lackberg mystery. I really enjoy her mysteries and I always read the Spanish versions because they are released first in Spain.


What's Next?

I will be starting All the Light You Cannot See for my staff book club. I also have The Marshmallow Test on my shelf and would like to get to the most recent Princess Academy book as well. The formatting was off in my NetGalley copy of Read Between the Lines but if I can figure that out, I would love to be able to read that one too. Jo Knowles rocks!


What are you reading this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 2/23

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? --From Picture Books to YA is a weekly meme started by Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee at Unleashing Readers. This is a chance for bloggers to recap their week of reading and share their plans for the next reading adventures they will take. Visit the host blogs for a list of great blogs participating in this meme and a whole bunch of titles to add to your to-read lists.

Books I Finished This Week:

I did not finish any books because I am reading too many at once. 

Books I am Currently Reading:

I am listening to Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge. I really like the story and I am curious about how it will turn out in the end. I love how imaginative this retelling of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast is.  I am also reading Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman, which is every bit as fascinating and intriguing as Seraphina. Another amazing story world that I am visiting is Laini Taylor's world from the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy. I am reading Dreams of Gods and Monsters and as much as I love this book, I am missing the audiobook narration. I listened to the first two books and loved the narrator. I also have a couple of professional books that I have been reading. 

What's Next?

I have The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up on my shelf and it is due back to the library soon so I will probably pick that one up in the next day or so. I also just got The Marshmallow Test from the library and it sounds really interesting. Other than that, I don't know. It will depend on whether I make it through the books I have already started. 

What are you reading this week? Do you have any suggestions or recommendations for me? I would love to hear from you in the comments!

Celebrate 2/21

It's Saturday morning and that means it is time to reflect on the week and celebrate things both big and small. Join our community and celebrate this week by linking up or just stopping by the host Ruth Ayres' blog to read others' celebrations.

This week I have a lot of small celebrations to share.

• Monday was a day off for us for President's Day. I enjoyed having the extra day off because that meant that I could actually have a weekend without having to worry about working on Saturday and Sunday to be ready for my week. 
• I changed up how I am doing my math lessons so that I work with half the class (or fewer) at a time. My students are just so chatty that we can't get through what needs to be done when I have all of them in the gathering space. I am lucky enough to have a Chromebook cart at my disposal so they get a good mix of teacher-led instruction and practice on the computer using Khan Academy or Compass learning Odyssey. I feel like so many more students learned so much more this week. 
• We started a new routine of making a weekly goal for reading, math, and behavior.  I remembered to have them make the goal and I remembered to have them rate themselves on how they did toward achieving their goal. 
• On Thursday, it was frigid outside. We should have had a Cold Day off from school. With temperatures on the thermometer of -11 and wind chills of -29, our school district got a lot of complaints for not calling it. About half of my class made it to school that day. It was a nice relaxing day for all of us. We did a lot of learning, but were able to have some fun as well. 
• Friday, everyone was in class and everyone had a lot to say to one another. I ended up sending a few kids out for time-outs in other classrooms in the afternoon. One student, who I thought really did not care for my class, wrote me the sweetest apology note. It really made me step back and reframe some of what I have been letting myself think lately. These opportunities to adjust your perspective do not always come up and I am thankful for this one. 
• The staff book club is up and running. We have our first title selected and will meet at the end of March to discuss it. I am so glad I put the idea out there. 
• Last, but certainly not least, the middle school dance last Friday went well and the kids had fun. My student council did their part to make the night fun for everyone as well as a great fundraiser for us. 

What do you have to celebrate?  I would love to hear from you in the comments!

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 2/16

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? --From Picture Books to YA is a weekly meme started by Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee at Unleashing Readers. This is a chance for bloggers to recap their week of reading and share their plans for the next reading adventures they will take. Visit the host blogs for a list of great blogs participating in this meme and a whole bunch of titles to add to your to-read lists.

Books I Finished This Week:

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel is a really engaging book. I read it almost in one sitting and had a hard time putting it down. A post-apocalyptic world that sounded scary realistic to me. What would happen if there were a deadly flu that acted so quickly? What I loved about this book was an inherent message that performance and music and art matter and can be very important for people. I love that the author shows us a bleak world but gives us hope at the same time. I highly recommend this book.

Nnewts is the first book in a new middle grade graphic novel series by Doug TenNapel. I thought the story was intriguing (and somewhat weird) and I am sure my students will like it. The use of color in this graphic novel is especially striking.  I would recommend this one for grades 4 and up.

The Magicians by Lev Grossman is a very interesting book. I found it to be sort of a mix between Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia, but definitely for adults with the situations and language for mature audiences. I found myself really disliking the main character by the end of this book.  I was a little surprised at how dark everything got toward the end as well. I know that this is the first in a trilogy and I am interested in reading the rest of the series. I only hope I will be able to start liking this character again.

Books I am Currently Reading:

I am still reading Dreams of Gods and Monsters and Shadow Scale. I started listening to Cruel Beauty and so far it is intriguing. I also dipped into Mortal Heart.

What's Next?

I have some professional reading to do this week so I am not sure I will get to much more than what I already started. We shall see what the week holds.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 2/9

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? --From Picture Books to YA is a weekly meme started by Jen at Teach Mentor Texts and Kellee at Unleashing Readers. This is a chance for bloggers to recap their week of reading and share their plans for the next reading adventures they will take. Visit the host blogs for a list of great blogs participating in this meme and a whole bunch of titles to add to your to-read lists.

Books I Finished This Week:

I finished listening to Death Cloud (Young Sherlock Holmes #1) by Andrew Lane. This was a fun mystery.  I will definitely look for the other Young Sherlock Holmes books after reading this one. What a nice, light read!

That is all. The problem with reading multiple books is that you make progress in all of them but don't finish very quickly. 

Books I am Currently Reading:

I am almost finished with The Magicians by Lev Grossman. I am also reading Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor and Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman.  Both are really amazing story worlds that I am glad to visit again. 

What's Next?

I have a pile of books from the library and will probably have to return some before getting to them. Too many ambitious hold requests. I also have a few titles from NetGalley that I want to get to soon. I would like to improve my percentages there for giving title feedback. I am really looking forward to Read Between the Lines by Jo Knowles.  

I am very much suffering from the too many books, too little time syndrome. I really want to be able to stop time whenever I want so that I could have some guilt-free reading time. 

What are you reading this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments! Have a great reading week. 

Celebrate This Week! 2/6

It's Saturday morning and that means it is time to reflect on the week and celebrate things both big and small. Join our community and celebrate this week by linking up or just stopping by to read others' celebrations.


I am not always consistent with writing these blog posts, but I am so grateful for this community because I do always think of reasons to celebrate. Having the habit of writing this type of blog post has transformed my thinking and I am able to be more mindful and step back to appreciate it when things worth celebrating pop up. Last week, I did not blog about it because I was at a conference, but I did make a nice list of celebrations in my planner. I will share a couple of those celebrations here along with this week's list.

First and foremost, I celebrate the fact that I feel healthy and have been feeling healthy for the last couple days. It has been a while since the last time I could say that. Now, fingers crossed that I will be able to stay away from all the nasty bugs that are still circulating out there.

Second, I celebrate my wonderful husband who has been doing extra shares of all the work around the house as I have been feeling sick. This was especially apparent on Sunday when he had to go out to shovel 12" of snow by himself since I was coughing up a lung. He does this extra work with only an occasional complaint. I am so lucky!

Last Friday, I was given a free Chocolate Croissant at Starbucks for National Croissant Day. Who doesn't love free pastry???

A former student has been regularly volunteering at school and I have really enjoyed some conversations with him. I loved talking about his decision of which college to go to. It is awesome that he had multiple acceptances and could choose among the great universities he had applied to. We also talked about his ambitions for medical school and I was able to give him a little bit of insight because my sister is a doctor. I just really enjoyed that conversation.

My classroom is a chaotic, loud, and fun-filled space. I am frequently at the point of pulling out my hair with frustration at never getting through what I need to get through because of talkative and energy-filled kids. One of my favorite times in the week, however, is our board game time on Friday afternoons. In my classroom, this time is our community-building time. No one is excluded from this time. Every one of my students is allowed to participate and play in order to help them all be able to get along. This is one of the noisiest times of the week, but I can just stand there for a moment and observe groups of kids cackling and giggling and getting along. They play with other students they might not normally play with, they talk, they teach each other the game rules, and they have fun together.

I switched my schedule around and I am so happy I did. We are able to do so much more with our longer literacy times and math works so much better in the morning for me. One of the best things about the switch is the way I was able to work a few new routines into our day.

• We have started to read the Wonder of the Day on Wonderopolis each day. My students have fun making predictions based on the teaser about what the next Wonder will be. I love that they are getting a solid example of informational writing every day. 
• I also started doing Sacred Writing Time every day. I bought the slides from Corbett Harrison to make my life easier and we jumped into this routine. I am so excited about how this has started. I explained it to them the first day and started my timer and it was silent and they were writing. (My jaw hitting the floor didn't make a sound) I couldn't believe how easy it was to get them to just write. Every day for two weeks now it has been completely silent in my classroom for that 10 minutes of quiet writing. Every day there is an audible groan when the time is up. Every day there is a clamoring to be one of the lucky ones to share. Every. Single. Day. I am celebrating this excitement about writing. I am reenergized by their excitement. I am loving my chance to write for 10 minutes with them and to share my playful entries. 
• We worked again on building stamina for independent reading. Some of my students had fallen out of good habits and into bad habits. This week we got back on track. 

The excitement for the book box to arrive this week was amazing! I am so happy that my students have that book love that makes us ecstatic at the sight of new books. 

I sent out an e-mail to see if I could drum up interest in a Staff book club this week. I was really amazed at the amount of interest from my colleagues. We really need to build up the reading culture at my school and I am so excited to take this step to helping that happen. 

Last, but not least, I celebrate co-pay assistance. My district decided this year to switch our prescription drug coverage to a new provider. In the past, this would barely have been a blip on my horizon because it really didn't change the price for the medications we get at Target pharmacy. However, my specialty MS medicine went from a $50 a month co-pay to over $500 a month because of the change. Luckily, the pharmaceutical company that makes the medicine has an assistance program to help people afford it. With co-pay assistance, I only have a minimal payment to make. I am thankful for this program so that I can continue to take this medicine that seems to be working well for me. 

What do you have to celebrate this week? I would love to hear from you in the comments! Have a wonderful week.