The Lightning Thief

     We were just a few days into the school year, and I was meeting with our assistant principal.  In walks a first year teacher, who had done a few maternity leaves for us the year before, and he says, "Leah, I really want to read The Lightening Thief aloud to my class.  Do you think that would be ok?"

     I had never read The Lightning Thief before, but of course I knew about it.  I knew it was on the longer side, and I almost hesitated, but I also knew this teacher.  If it mattered to him, it would matter to his students.  So, I said "Of course!  When are you starting?"  I figured I would find the book, read it, and give him tips before he began.

     "In 15 minutes, if that's ok."

     "Sure.  I'll be up there in a little bit."

     Slight Panic.

     I ran to another classroom, borrowed a copy, and joined him.  I listened to him read that first chapter to his kids, and I heard his voice become Mrs. Dodds.  Then I went home and read the book so that I could offer coaching support along the way.

     A year later, this showed up in my TimeHop.  It turns out, we both now see that as the day he really became a teacher.  Now, I'm not Mr. Harvey, so I can't speak for him.  But, I'll tell you why I think he became a teacher that day.  He took his own passion, and began to use it as fuel for learning in his classroom.  Teachers who know who they are, and what they believe in, and use that to focus the learning in their class, are often very successful in transferring that passion to their kids.  Here is my view of how that happened with Mr. Harvey.

     It started as a read aloud of a book that he really loved.  It turned into an anchor for the literacy environment of his classroom. 

     After the first few chapters, we decided to use The Lightning Thief to introduce the students to sketchnoting.  We taught them one sentence summarizing and gave them a sketchnote toolbox of strategies, and they were off.  

The sketchnote I modeled to introduce the quest, and digital sketchnoting.

     Once they got that down, we further focused the learning on character development, rather than summarizing, and focused on his quest.  Now, if you teach 4th grade, you probably already realize that the Common Core Standards for 4th ask us to analyze character development and compare and contrast events, like the quest, in RL3 and RL9.  So, that's what he did.  

     When the book was getting a little too long to read, we found a copy of the graphic novel, and started using excerpts of that novel.  What we discovered is that is not only help students visualize the myth based setting of The Lightning Thief, but is also introduced them to the genre of graphic novels, and supported their ability to read them with more rigor.  It also helped his focus on the Greek Gods, and they started close reading passages about those figures that are so pivotal to the novel (more secret Common Core lessons embedded there).

     Then, as the year went on, some of his students started independently reading the other books in the series!  Others were reading more nonfiction about Greek myths.  Some had found a love for fantasy.  Others moved on entirely to different genres, and that's ok, too.  He was still able to refer back to those key lessons on characters, and text comparisons, and how to sketchnote, with The Lightning Thief in mind.  

     To end the year, he actually bought 28 copies of The Lightning Thief, and gave a copy to each of his students with a note.  This year, one of his students actually returned to 5th grade and had that book as her Me Bag item.  It had defined her as a reader, and so many others as well.

     One of my goals as a teacher, literacy coach, and Literacy Coordinator, is to grow READERS.  My goal is not to achieve mastery on the Common Core Standards, though doing so will help them as readers, but we cannot have them as our only target, and forget to inspire our students to actually become a reader themselves.  How can we get our students to see the value of reading?  One of the easiest ways, in my humble opinion, in modeling our lives as readers, too.  

     Do you love reading the sports page?  Show that side of yourself to your kids.

     Do you love comics or graphic novels?  Pass that genre on to your students.

     Do you love nonfiction texts?  Show your students why.

     What is your favorite novel?  If it is grade level appropriate, can you use it to leverage a reading environment in your class?

     Thank you, Mr. Harvey, for sharing a piece of your heart with your students, and in the end creating a room full of readers.  

Readers Read

     There are so many, many things I took away from my conference with Donalyn Miller on Monday.  The 6 sketch notes below (made with the Paper 53 app) show her wisdom, and some of my reflections on it.

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    When you walk away with a lot of new and inspiring things, sometimes you have to stop and ask yourself what the BIGGEST take away was.  So, I spent the drive home thinking about it, and then the drive to work today thinking about it, and then it hit me.  

Readers read.
Teachers are readers.
We need to read, too.

     OK, I already knew that.  But, did I LIVE it?

     It sounds simple.  Read.  But, it isn't that easy in the day to day world of the classroom.   It is so easy for the Lead Reader (aka the Teacher) to not read, but rather to support readers.  But, it's those read alouds, and those conversations with students in groups around a book that we have *actually* read, that makes us readers too.  It's the books we read personally for fun, and the books we read to learn, that remind us what real readers actually do.  And, it's the love of reading that we bring to the classrooms where we teach.

     Teachers need to read, and love reading.

     They need to see us as readers, blessing titles for the class.

     They need us to really KNOW books, so that we can match books to OUR readers.

     We need to read.

     I came to this realization, of course, watching Donalyn talk about all the books that mentioned yesterday.  For every lesson she could possibly teach, she can name a book to teach it with.  Honestly, that is a strength of mine as well.  But, when Donalyn starting talking about sets of texts, with true knowledge of the craft and author's purpose of each, I knew that I needed to get better.  And I now have an Amazon cart FULL of books waiting for me to explore.

     So, here's the challenge.  In my pursuit of elaborating upon my list of great texts, let's build it together.  Hiawatha, let's unite in the sharing of books and text that we love!!!  If you read a book to your class, or if you as a reader finish a book, or if a student recommends a book to you, tweet about it using #HiawathaReads.  You can include the focus strategy you used, or just simply share a great title worth sharing.  Either way, let's use Twitter for the targeted purpose of growing our list of books we love.

     Here's an example!

      The best part?  You could see that tweet and walk down the hall and ask Lori Horne to borrow the book!  Or, if someone reads a book and tweets about it, you could invite them to your class to do a quick book talk!  Or, you could invite them in to be a guest reader!   Can you just imagine the possibilities that #HiawathaReads could bring?

     My goal, this year and last, has been to read the books our Hiawatha students read.  Perhaps I need to expand that goal to finding new books to share as well.  Let's read books that we love, and model for our students the joy that literacy can bring!

#HiawathaReads    #HiawathaPride

 ***If you are not from Hiawatha, please share titles with us too!!!

If you are interested in reading more about Donalyn Miller and her book Reading in the Wild, check out this post here.  It will take you to our district blog book study.