Reading Reality Check: What I (Re)-Learned During Maternity Leave

My last post was on February 22.  Six days later, I had my sweet baby boy, and over the last ten weeks, I've been fortunate to have time off from school to bond with him and to help his big sister adjust to her busier, louder, stinkier, and -- hopefully -- even more fun life.

The little man is most relaxed when he's snuggling on me.  This was especially true his first few weeks of life outside the belly; he's very much what I call a "fourth trimester baby."  He really craves the warmth and coziness he had the three trimesters in my belly, and I am more than happy to provide it for him.  (This is a challenge when sister is awake -- we're working on making her feeling just as secure and loved as before!)

I am a hugely paranoid person, so unless my husband is around to make sure I don't squish the baby, I don't fall asleep with the baby on me.  Therefore, I've used a lot of this precious snuggle time to enjoy some pleasure reading. (Sometimes, though, I just hold him, kiss him, hug him, and enjoy his calm.  Parents know exactly what I mean.)  Rediscovering reading time has made me revisit my beliefs about what really makes real readers.

Readers Need Reading Communities
I have a handful of friends with similar reading taste, and I love getting recommendations from them.  For example, I have two educator friends who've read great parenting books; I know to seek them out when I'm in the mood for a parenting book and for people to talk to about it.  Two other friends share similar fiction interests; we like realistic drama, but they also know that I can't stand cheesy "chick lit." I can count on them for just the right characters and plots.  All four of these reading friends have given me high-interest non-fiction recommendations, as well, so I can count on them to help me expand my reading to topics I wouldn't necessarily choose on my own; best of all, I can follow up with them during and afterwards to talk it out.  My friends who are readers are some of the most interesting people I know; I try to tell my students that reading will, for so many reasons, make them more interesting people, too.

Readers Need Books to be Convenient
I love my Kindle Fire (my credit card does not!); what a source of instant reader gratification! As soon as I get a recommendation, I can pop open my e-reader, swipe through the Kindle store, and have my next read ready to go. Not every reader needs an e-reader, but every reader benefits from ready access to pleasure reading; how valuable to be able to go grab a book in the community library, the school library, or the classroom bookshelf while the recommendation is hot!  There's something so cool about getting that new story in my hands right when I want it; the longer it sits on my "to read" list, the more stale it becomes.

Readers Need Time to Read
I know that, when I'm reading a book, I can't hop in and out of it in five minute increments.  I think it's Kelly Gallagher who wrote or spoke about the power of getting lost in a book (I cannot remember his phrasing, but it was brilliant, of course); I know some of my students have never experienced that.  I know this about myself -- and about many other readers: if I don't devote longer chunks of time to reading, I can't get in to a book.  I can read other texts in short chunks (blog posts, magazine articles, cereal boxes -- you name it, and I'll read it), but without the satisfaction of getting lost in a book, I find myself abandoning my longer reads.

Readers Need Time to Talk
Recently, several friends and I read a popular -- and somewhat controversial -- choice that had big-time, thought-provoking implications for our career lives and our personal lives.  My reader friend Staci and I spent 45 minutes during a run pouring out our reactions and talking through the connections to our lives; we'd still have plenty of other great things to talk about even if we haven't had read this book, but the book has planted another anchor for us to come back to in our hours of conversations each week. We didn't need to do projects for each other or fill out worksheets about our book; the power of the read was in sharing a literary experience that we could talk about intelligently (I hope) and that will transfer over time.  This kind of reading satisfaction (the social piece!) makes reading so much more real and so much more rich to me.

Returning to Authenticity
The instructional implications for my reality check are pretty clear. In my away time, the majority of my email has been from vendors touting Common Core-friendly products, or about updates on testing.  It's easy to get caught up in the anxiety of doing more, more, more, and certainly, we DO have to challenge ourselves to do more and to try new things ... but when I think about the heart of independent reading, I know that I have to be authentic.

When I return to school from my maternity leave, I'll have nine days with my students. I don't have much time with them to reinforce the authentic reading habits that I know I need to stay true to. I do have the obligation to continue to do more for myself as a real reader and to think about (and write about) what it looks like with the real readers with whom I'm entrusted every day.

Top Non-Fiction Reads: Guest Post by Carl B.

Our Day at the DTC: Getting Started with Research

We had a very busy, educational, and tiring (maybe that's just me, the old, pregnant lady!) day today at the Dublin Technology Center.  Three to four students in each class are preparing to coach everyone through our research process.  The first step of their work will be to share out tomorrow some resources they are developing for the class wiki.

Here's a preview of what they've developed:

An overview of our first research steps --students will work in Study Center Tuesday to develop the two screencasts that they think will be helpful for students to get started

We did a LOT of thinking today about how to determine if a source is reliable.  Our biggest idea is that, no matter what the source looks like or where you found it, you need to THINK CRITICALLY about it.

Flexibility in Readers Notebooks... plus a Preview of Our Back-channeling

Today after a long morning of testing, Mrs. Doyle's and my Language Arts classes read together Chapters 6, 7, and part of 8 in Titanic: Voices from the Disaster.  Students had a lot of flexibility in how they recorded their thinking in their readers notebooks.

Requirements for responses: 

• When Ms. Reed and I come around to look at notebooks (we listened to the CD today, which gave us some flexibility to work beside students), we should be able to get good insights into what you're thinking and be able to respond to what you've written.
• When we review tomorrow, you should be able to look back on your notes and remember the important things that happened with today's reading.

Check out the ways our readers recorded their thinking:

 Ms. Reed's sticky notes that show a mix of pictures and interesting/important facts

Erin's list of important events and her reactions 

Troy's pictures to go with important events in the chapter

Miss Reed's KNOW/WONDER chart (her handwriting is way more legible than mine!)

Finally, Mrs. Doyle and I were excited to experiment with using Google Drive as a "back channel" tool for students to engage in interactive readers notebooks.  More to come after we get a chance to reflect with our "guinea pig" group ... but check out the collaborative work that Emily, Kurt, Cailyn, and Cameron did during read aloud:

QUESTIONS: What did your readers notebook look like today?  Which of the notebook methods above do you think might work for you?

The Children Want a Class Pet

By "children," I mean my homebase.  By "want a class pet," I mean, have escalated to pestering asking me daily if I could look into the availability of various animals they've been admiring in a class favorite book, Strange Animals.  I would link Amazon here, but Troy has my copy right now, and I can't find the correct book through my searches; however, during my fruitless search, I have accumulated a new list of "strange animal"-type books I'd like to purchase. Whoops.

The students aren't interested in the class pet logistics, mind you.  ("Who's going to clean up the poop?" "Oh, Mrs. Taylor, don't worry about that.  We can take it outside like a dog.") They're interested in 1. how cute the animal is and 2. if we can get it NOW. 

By the way, I go on maternity leave in late-February/early-March.  Responsibility for a class pet would set any reasonable substitute over the edge. 

Regardless, here's the current front runner:

This is called an Emperor tamarin

Granted, this little guy or gal is pretty darn cute.  The children aptly pointed out that the mustache makes it look thoughtful and intelligent. But here's my practical, boring grown-up question: are people are even ALLOWED to have these cuties as pets?

Here's some information I found:  from the BBC, from a university, from the San Francisco Zoo, and from a news site that reported an Emperor tamarin theft. 

QUESTIONS: Based on all of that information, is this an appropriate class pet?  Tell me what you think (based on knowledge. Ahem), including info from one or more articles to support your thinking.  Then, if you no longer think an Emperor tamarin would be an appropriate pet, tell me what pet would be more appropriate and why.

Mr. Kaiser Had a Relative on the Titanic!

Team 6-1 was treated today to a visit from the famous Mr. Kaiser.  It turns out, he had a relative on the Titanic -- what a powerful real-world connection to our whole class novel, Deborah Hopkinson's Titanic: Voices from the Disaster.

Before Mr. Kaiser spoke, we reviewed with each other and for Mr. Kaiser what we KNOW about the Titanic as well as what we wonder, based on what we've read so far.  (We just finished Chapter 5 yesterday, which is when the crew is realizing just how bad the accident was)  This whole-team review was a great opportunity for us to share and build off of each other's knowledge, since we aren't all in Language Arts class together!

Here’s my KNOW/WONDER chart from Mr. Kaiser’s presentation.  The KNOWs are all new pieces of knowledge I now have, thanks to Mr. Kaiser.

KNOW	WONDER
Titanic was trying to set a speed record, so it was going at unsafe speeds	Are speed records still kept, or is that considered too unsafe? What is the current record?
The rivets on the ship weren’t welded as well as they should be.	Who made the decision to use lower quality materials? How much money did it actually even save?
Mr. Kaiser had a great-great uncle on the Titanic.  The uncle -- Mr. William F. Hoyt -- was a first class passenger and a businessman traveling to  New York to family	How did Mr. Kaiser originally uncover this relative and find that the relative had an interesting story?
Mr. Hoyt’s brother had to travel to New York to find out if Mr. Hoyt survived; information traveled much slower back then than it does now.	How did the brother finally find out what happened to Mr. Hoyt? Did a Titanic officer tell him?
Mr. Hoyt survived the sinking, but he was so large that people couldn’t get him into Lifeboat 14, so he either died of hypothermia or internal injuries (he had blood coming out of his nose and mouth).	How cold was the water? How fast does hypothermia happen? Was his body recovered?
Mr. Hoyt’s body was recovered but it was buried at sea, so his family never got the body.	Did they still have a memorial site for Mr. Hoyt?

Linked here is interesting article I found about the faulty rivets -- Mr. Kaiser made me curious about the topic, so I just had to look it up.

Other things Mr. Kaiser made me think about:

• My comparison of the messaging service to text messaging wasn't totally correct.  The ships messengers had to have an extra step: decoding the transmissions first!
• Before the days of websites like ancestry.com, Mr. Kaiser spent months tracking down information about his family.  I think I sometimes need to be more patient with my own research process! 
• A student brought up the possibility that some workers had died during the construction of the ship, and Mr. Kaiser pointed out that accidents did happen on major building projects throughout history.  I wonder how safety requirements for construction have happened over time.
• Mr. Kaiser reminded me about the importance of primary sources.  He found a lot of his information through reports taken directly from Titanic officers!

QUESTION: One lingering question many of us have: would the Titanic have been better off hitting the iceberg head on?  Can anyone find a source addressing this question?

Thank you, Mr. Kaiser, for spending your afternoon with us!   You've really enriched our thinking!

Wonderings about The Titanic

Here's the awesome interactive diagram Mrs. Doyle gave us to build background knowledge about the Titanic.  Some of the most interesting things we learned:

The poop deck was a popular item to look at.  (Melike, Erin, Luke)
KNOW: Third class has to sleep by it; this is where third class passengers could hang out. You don't actually poop there.
WONDER: Why is it called the poop deck?
KNOW: The diagram shows us that the term comes from the Latin word "puppis," meaning "stern."

We were also interested in the hospital on board.  (Caidyn, Rowa, Emmalee)
KNOW: There were two doctors, but it was still known as a prestigious (well-known/well-respected) on-boat hospitals.  It was possible to have surgery done on board.
WONDER: If someone died in surgery, where would they put the body? In addition to the doctors, how many other people worked there? How often are there usually surgeries on transatlantic voyages?  Why didn't they have more doctors? What kind of illnesses were common on the ship?  Were there any labs for testing sample?

Here's a photo of the Grand Staircase.  We took this from the Britannica site, so we know it is a real picture -- we talked about reliable sites.

In the middle, we looked at the Grand Staircase. (Tatum)
KNOW: It was fancy.  One flight had twelve stairs (nice counting, Troy).
WONDER: What did the other staircases look like?  Why did they need a staircase like that -- a fancy staircase with a glass and iron dome?

Image from National Museums Northern Ireland - we checked the "About Us" tab for credibility 

The Turkish Baths caught our eyes. (Erin, Rowa, Melike)
KNOW: It had a sauna.  It sounds like a spa.  Only first class passengers could go there, but they still had to pay.
WONDER: Were there other spa services? Could you get your nails done there? Why is it called the Turkish Baths, as opposed to another country?  Why did it have to be just first class passengers? If second and third class passengers could pay the small fee, could they come use it? (We speculated that there seemed to be some class bias, so we are guessing maybe not)

We are also curious about the funnels. (Eric, Samia, Jacob, Cailyn)
KNOW: They were 22 feet in diameter.  Three of them were real, and one was fake -- it was added for the appearance.
WONDER: How tall are they?  Why was there a fourth- why bother with a fake one? Did the funnels also act as filters of the smoke, so it didn't pollute as much.  How much dirt, smoke, and dust did the funnels blow out each day?
KNOW: Some people thought that the more funnels you have, the safer the ship.

The boilers are obviously important, too. (Ed)
KNOW: They keep the ship running.  They used 600 tons of coal each day. There were 29 boilers with three or more furnaces each.
WONDER: Where do the workers keep the extra coal?
KNOW: It was kept in bunkers.

Here's a diagram with the crow's nest.  We found it at awesomestories.com ... which does not sound reliable, but when we looked at the "About Us" tab, it actually really is.

The crow's nest has an interesting name. (Brigid)
KNOW: It had a telephone and a bell.  The lookout rang the bell three times when he saw the iceberg.
WONDER: Was the only time that they used the phone and the bell when they saw the iceberg? Would they use it for other obstacles or purposes?

We also looked at the mail room.
KNOW: The Titanic was built to be a mail ship -- the RMS Titanic.  There were five mail carriers, and none of them survived; they had been trying to save the mail. There were 3,400 sacks of mail; Joe calculated that there were about 2,000 pieces of mail in each sack.
WONDER: Why did the people care about saving the mail? How had they planned to distribute the mail after landing?  Did they ever recover any of the lost mail?