Chalking With Betsy-Goodbye June!

      Come join Betsy at Teaching Young Writers for her end-of-the-month Chalkabration!  Just chalk a poem, outside, inside, or use a chalkboard app as I have to share your poem.  Hope to see many of you visit Betsy!


Here's mine, via the app, Chalkboard!

                                                                                              ©Linda Baie, all rights reserved

Blog Launch-Celebrate Unleashing Readers!

        It’s Launch Week!  I’m here to celebrate a new blog, Unleashing Readers, created by Kellee Moye and Ricki Ginsberg.  They have such great plans for us readers:  to have a varied literature focus, helping teachers find books for specific purposes in the classroom.  As the blog adds information, it will be easy to search for exact needs, to find helpful ideas for a variety of goals.  Today, I’m going to add my thoughts in the categories Unleashing Readers will share with their readers in the future.  One thing you need to know is that I taught gifted middle school students in a mixed classroom of 11 to 14 year olds.  I now am the literacy coach in the school, but today will focus only on my experience with the middle-schoolers.

          Since we’re doing favorites today, I’ll also share a favorite reading quote:

        I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

                                                                          ~ Anna Quindlen

Poetry Discovery With Children

            We’ve been invited to ThePoem Farm for Poetry Friday, hosted by Amy Ludwig Vanderwater, author of the recently published gorgeous poetry book, Forest Has A Song!  Thank you, Amy!

            I had another post nearly ready and then my four-year-old granddaughter spent time with me this week, and I heard her create beautifully musical songs when we drove to different places.  Although often her words are nonsensical, her parents have sung and played enough music for her that she seems to know innately that poem-songs have rhythm and rhyme.  The happy tone I heard certainly was a bit magical. 

       Later, in another magical moment, we walked around my new garden/back yard and picked flowers she chose to take home.  She said, “these colors just fill my heart, Grandma.”   Now, I tell lots of grandchildren stories, and like all grandmothers, I think mine are good, and I hope they bring cheer to those who don’t have the chance to spend time with young children.  And this was just a lovely thing that happened.  I shared with her parents and thought no more about it.

        But then, Thursday morning, I received the online articles from Orion magazine, and one is worth reading for those of us who work and write for and with children.  

Finding The Right Word for All Write!

          The Slice of Life on Tuesday is hosted by Ruth Ayres and Stacey Shubitz at their blog, Two Writing Teachers!  Thanks to these creative women, there is a community of writers who write so we may read and savor.  Join us!
      And tweet at #slice2013

          I flew to Indiana last week to attend the All-Write conference.  People who asked where I was from were surprised that I had come all the way from Colorado.  How could I not do this?  And I was excited to go.  It was, it was (I have to find the right word!) comfortable.  Have you bought a chair or sofa lately?  How many pairs of shoes do you try on before selecting the one pair that feels like it’s already been a favorite for a while? Have you gone to dinner with friends, and begun the talking before you’ve even been seated?  Have you created an old and favorite recipe?  Do you ever re-read favorite books, or keep poems that feel so right?   A few weeks ago, I spent a day with a long-time friend who lives far away.  We are fortunate if we get to see one another once a year, and sometimes it’s more like five years.  Yet when we are together, we fall into our own old friend language, that one that takes years to understand, the perfect ‘ear’ for each other. 

         I hope now you realize what I feel about the All-Write Conference where everyone was simply—and wonderfully—comfortable.  I was welcomed with hugs from the minute I pulled my luggage up to the check-in counter at the Wyndham Hotel.  Here they all were:  Ruth, Mary Helen, Betsy, Christy, Ramona, Elsie, Deb Gaby, Robin, Nancy, Bonnie.  How can those I’ve known for such a short while feel comfortable?  Because of our words over these past years, the words we’ve shared through our blog posts and through twitter (although I don’t do as much tweeting as I’d like).  And later, at dinner, there were more I knew (see Ruth Ayres’ post about the dinner here.)  Also, in the sessions, it seemed like old friends, again from posts and books and articles-words I valued, words I believed in.  Will you imagine what sharing words within a classroom can mean to that community?  

Good Books Even at Home!

It's Monday! What are you Reading? is hosted by Jen and Kellee at TEACH.MENTOR.TEXTS.  Head over for terrific book reviews!  And, also visit Sheila at BOOK JOURNEYS that offers more reviews of all kinds of books, adult and children. 

  

              Tweet at #IMWAYR

The Center of Everything – by Linda Urban

              Ruby Pepperdine, the “center” of this story, is a quiet young woman who has a strong desire to do the right thing.  She does what her mother wants, helps her aunt, and always does what her best friend Lucy wants.  But then she won the “Bunning Day Essay Contest” and that was not expected, by anyone.  Ruby begins to think that what she is “supposed to do” might be questioned.  The book is intriguing and sweet, about relationships and questioning what people say are the “rules” of behavior.  I can’t say more, but the book weaves in and out of real time, which is THE Bunning day when Ruby is to give her speech, and she is standing in a taped square on Cornelius Circle, waiting.  As Ruby waits, she thinks of past events, thus the whole story is told, in and out of the past.  I enjoyed the book, and the other characters, Ruby’s friends.  It is complex enough that it may make a good read aloud.