Month: June 2020

Our collaborative team of thirty-one educators will take July off and will be back blogging about connecting books and kids in August. We will even have a few new contributors joining the @tbrblog31 team. Join us in August as we: Share our commitment to “own voice" authorsBlog about books we’ve read and shared with childrenLearn about… Continue reading Summer Break – See you in August

What we, as educators, have lived in the last three months has been something we never could have imagined. I, a kindergarten teacher in a highly diverse school in Maine, was shaken to my core and pushed in all new ways. I was teaching in a way I would never have signed up for. Honestly,… Continue reading A Stack That Brings Me Back

Oh, Student - Your bravery wows me. Your calm eyes meet mine through a screen. Housebound, masked-up, yet your heart is free. Months have passed, our classroom unseen. You truly inspire We all await our Monday meet, When we hear friends’ voices abound, The shares, stories, songs, all a treat; Your smile, warm like fire,… Continue reading Ode to My Student, by Rose Vignola

On April 7, only a couple of weeks since we all started emergency online learning, I wrote a post on my person blog entitled Humanity First: Teaching in Times of COVID-19. I've just finished giving a professional development session via Google Hangouts to a group of dedicated teachers that came to listen to what I… Continue reading Teaching In Times of Pandemic: Lessons From Covid-19

Each week on Sharing Our Stories: Magic in a Blog, Ruth Ayres gives participants an open invitation to try a new writing technique. Last week, she blogged about how writers can weave bits of research into all forms of writing. So, I let her writing lesson marinate for a few days, and then I tried… Continue reading Lessons from My Strawberry Lawn

I’m sure that many of you felt that this summer’s vacation would never arrive. Parents and teachers alike have just completed the complicated dance of balancing teaching and parenting their children and sustaining work from home. Now that summer is here, it’s important to step back, slow down, and unplug. There is one type of… Continue reading Unpacking Identity

It's been about a month since I closed my distance learning space here at my house and I've been wanting to write down a list of things I learned and just haven't really wanted to revisit those moments.  They were hard moments.  Reflecting and finding those learning moments helps me find growth and positives in… Continue reading Ten Things I Learned During Distance Learning

2019 - Summer Stack Shelfies Around this time last year, we created a productive mess all over Room 104. Our summer reading anchor charts were pinned to the naked bulletin board, a sea of monthly "Shelfies" stretched across the floor, and readers were buzzing about books. Fourth graders were hard at work crafting Best Books… Continue reading Then & Now: Crafting Summer Reading Plans

"Let's make a tool to help you remember your short vowel sounds," I say to a five-year-old through a computer screen. “Okay, I know how to make a chart.” Before I got another word out of my mouth, this kindergartener turned his paper over and constructed this chart. I’m at that familiar teaching moment when… Continue reading Lessons Learned from COVID-19

2020.  Like many of you, 2020 has been for me, a time to survive. Teaching remotely, and trying to do it well, living in quarantine and pretending that all is normal, grocery shopping (!), posting monthly on this blog;  it has been quite a year.  This month, I was so excited to share my summer… Continue reading Summer 2020: My Rebuilt Stack

Mayhem, pandemonium, madness are all words that at times described our remote learning process this spring. Our last week, I wanted to end with something fun, something that might supersede the memory of the dreaded daily color grid. So, for our last small group Google Meet, each student had to prepare a book basket. In… Continue reading MIDSUMMER’S MAYHEM by Rajani LaRocca

I knew Rivet was a hit when I opened the website to show a kindergartener, and he cheered during our digital chat. "Wow! Are these books? Can we read these?" The next day, his enthusiasm continued, "Wait. Is that a book about gummy alligators?" The following day he asked, "Do you think they have books… Continue reading Rivet – Free Online Books for Emergent Readers

This spring, when it became clear that our schools would be closed for the remainder of the school year, I set about with my fellow coaches trying to envision ways to engage our students in authentic reading and writing that could be done at home.  After exploring some great resources, I decided on recording minilessons… Continue reading Nature Journals and Remote Lessons

One thing that I have missed so much during COVID-19 closures is being a part of a community of readers. As a teacher, I typically talk with others about the books I'm reading multiple times a day. Whether it's a student who catches me adding a new book cover to my "Miss Magee is Reading"… Continue reading Finding Community in Reading

As I am sure most teachers discovered, it was a challenge to keep students engaged with remote learning as we entered May and June.  To combat the remote learning blues, I decided to focus on graphic novels with my fifth graders.  I was able to find Nathan Hale’s graphic novels on Epic, so students could… Continue reading The Power of Graphic Novels

I've always been a planner. As soon in my family is up on Saturday morning, I ask, "let's plan out the day. During this pandemic, I have asked my family to "plan out the day" for the last 87 days. Yup - They are a bit sick of hearing that out of my mouth. But… Continue reading Lessons Learned from COVID-19

Confession: I do pretty much all my professional reading in the summer. During the school year, after working long days and doing more work most nights after dinner, I prefer to pick a book that's really just for fun, and that helps me relax my brain. So in the summer, when the pace of work… Continue reading Summer Reading Stack

My Summer Reading List My summer reading list was disrupted at the beginning of this month. Along with my usual search for student book selections and my focus in the last years of  'own voice' text,  I had learning to do.  I have to learn to be an antiracist, not just a non-racist.  I have… Continue reading My Summer Reading List

In Jennifer Serravallo's recent post, she shared resources and asked, "Please do not thank me or give me compliments for this post. Instead, please respond with what your goal will be and what your specific actions will be." You won't read many words from me in this post. Right now, I need to read, listen,… Continue reading Dear Fellow White Educators,

Every June, I have the luxury to recharge my life: personal life,  my professional life, and reading life. I look forward to creating memories with my husband and three sons. I get to take time for myself doing the things I love.  I reflect on how well I supported teachers and students this  school year… Continue reading Summer Reading Recharge!

Whether it is math facts or letter sounds, engaging students to learn rote skills is difficult in the classroom, which means it ten times harder when teaching online.  As I teach phonics to a young reader through a screen, his eyes wander.  Then he begins to tap his pencil and squirm in his seat - … Continue reading Kids Teaching Kids (SOS: Magic in a Blog)

Olaf, from the movie Frozen, can’t imagine anything more wonderful than summer. Having never experienced the buzzing of bees, kids blowing dandelion fuzz, summer breezes, and his “skin” against the sand, Olaf’s imaginings and anticipation of the season runs wild. Like Olaf, I love summer! There’s nothing better, in my opinion, than toes on sun-soaked… Continue reading Happy Summer!

This is the time of year that I find myself reading through stacks of books, books that I have picked up over the year that I haven't gotten a chance to read. I am always on the look out for books that I can share with classroom teachers, books that may be incorporated into professional… Continue reading Summer Reading Stacks