Petey- Ben Mikaelsen

The first book I read by this author was Touching Spirit Bear, and as I continue to read more of his offerings, I am always impressed by the variety of his themes and the true readability of his story-line. Petey was no exception. It caught my interest immediately as it chronicles the life of a little boy with Cerebral Palsy who in that era was simply diagnosed as an idiot, and at a young age was put away in a mental institution. As he grows up in that foul environment, several people recognize the intelligence housed in a twisted body and provide some relief. As well, he becomes great friends with another boy who has “mild retardation.” Ultimately Petey is moved to a nursing home, more suited to his care, and is separated from his friend without any idea of where the other has been taken. Petey, although an amazingly positive person, decides he will no longer get involved emotionally with another person, and withdraws. Then Trevor comes into his life, a lonely school boy, who initially protects Petey from bullies and gradually comes to see him as the real person he is. The message is unmistakable and the ending very poignant. What an exceptional author!

Other books I read and loved are Tree Girl and Red Midnight.

Book a Month

For those of you who read my occasional postings, I’ll be doing something a little different over the next while. I’m participating in a Book a Month challenge. Check it out if you might be interested. My initial thoughts were that I read anyway, so may as well do some postings. I like the way it’s set up- a different theme or genre each month. At first I thought I would continue to stick to children’s or young adult literature; but it’s the holidays and right now I want to do a little reading just for me. At the airport in Toronto, I picked up Dust, Martha Grimes newest Richard Jury mystery. Because this month’s challenge is a time-related book, I immediately thought of some of my all-time favourites. Walking through the furs in the closet into Narnia is still one of my best experiences. A Wrinkle in Time by the late Madeline LEngle still lures me. I love the Pendragon series and the time-travel mechanism utilized there. But for this month, I have chosen The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. At the top of many best books lists, it’s one I have wanted to read for some time now. So what better way to use my book gift certificate than the purchase of this novel. I expected it to be somewhat like Diana Gabaldon’s books, but the sales lady assured me it was even better. Now I love time travel that takes us back into a former time period, thus combining my two favourite genres; fantasy and historical fiction. So 230 pages into this book, I was surprised at first that the time travel is only within Henry’s lifetime. I have to admit that at this time, I still love Gabaldon’s books more. That doesn’t mean that I am not intrigued with this one; only after all the hype, I expected something even more. I think that it is very easy for me as a rule to suspend my disbelief. Some people who know me well might actually say that my disbelief is on permanent suspension. That simply means that I have not totally lost the child in me. With The Time Traveller’s Wife, though, it is more difficult for me to suspend that disbelief. I find his own meetings with himself a little awkward or contrived and some of his behaviours erratic enough that they do not fit into what we come to believe of his character. But is it worth a read? Absolutely, and I will post some final comments when I’m finished the book.

Breaking News!!

Keturah and Lord Death is a National Book Award finalist- didn’t I make an excellent choice? Actually, I love all the Snow books, but I thought this was kind of neat. As an aside, kids at my school dressed up for Halloween. One of my favourite Grade 6 boys was dressed in a long, flowing black cape. When I asked him what he was, he said”Lord Death,of course!” He was the first to read this book and absolutely loved it. It is now making the rounds in that grade 6/7 classroom as are many of the others. Hats off to the Willows!

Last Post??

No, probably not, I just thought it sounded good. Actually, my hope is that people will continue to contribute their great ideas about how they are incorporating Web 2.0 into their teaching. I’m also hoping people might have time for reviews of some great books.

Even though the formal part of this course is over, and sometimes it felt like climbing a steep hill, I am very thankful for all the possibilities that have come about as a result of it. Thanks, Carleen and Donna. I am amazed at my own enthusiasm. I am also pleased with my teachers, who although I am often speaking a foreign language to them, are willing to take risks with me.

My last assignment is indeed taking a fairly easy route. Several teachers have agreed that incorporating the Snow Willows into an independent reading assignment for Language Arts will work. So I have created a link to the Willows web-site for each of the nominated books; in particular, to the activities which a committee has come up with. Therefore, I’m not doing any re-inventing. Their assignment is to read one book, create a blog response on our library blog, and choose one of the activities to complete. That assignment will then be added to the blog for others to see. If they choose to create a visual, we will add a picture of it, and so on. I’m just in the process of putting together an evaluation sheet, so they will know what the expectations are.

So that’s easy. But next year, I’m already prepared to take a page from Chris’s and Diane’s ideas. I think we’ll have a wiki for the Snow books next year- I like the ease of creating discussion. I also work with older students and Literature Circles a lot, so a wiki will be a great way to go- in fact, probably later this year.

Assignment aside, some other practical applications of my learning are coming about. At one of my schools, the teachers would love to have a list of books to support their teaching in Mathematics. One of our teacher-librarians recently set up a wiki to share great new titles of books that we are reading. So I thought- why not for Math. So instead of working on my looming book order, I set up a Wiki with categories and listed some of the books I knew. Then I showed it to one of the teachers who wished to have this and suggested that this format would allow any and all of them to add to the list as they became aware of, or used titles. She was impressed with the ease of it, and I’ll be showing it at a staff meeting soon. I think it’s also a great way of dividing up the workload.

So hats off to all of you and our fearless leaders who have shown us the way.

By the way, if you subscribe to LibrarianInBlack, you will have received this. A great place to check out many image generators.  http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/     I added it to my del.icio.us account- something else I wouldn’t have bothered with 6 months ago. So we’ve come a long ways and I know there are more challenges ahead but they seem just a little less scary than they used to!!

Ideas

So my mind is working on this next project and I am a bit befuddled. I think my main goal at this point is to bring some of my technology learning into one of the units I’m doing with teachers. The possibility that comes to mind is a class of grade seven students, with whom we are practicing some of the reading stategies. Working under the umbrella of inferencing, we have been modelling and using the Probable Passage strategy. After trying several sessions together and sharing our gist satements with the larger group, we read the story and see how close we have come. We have been using Patricia Polacco’s books as a basis for this work. So my question is- how do I incorporate technology into this unit? I thought about a Wiki, where students will add in their gist statements for other passages we encounter. We hope to have them all create a Probable Passage with key words from a picture book of their choosing, which they would then exchange with a buddy. It might be of value to add these into the Wiki so others could read and comment. Or am I better off to just add a section to my library blog for this? Mayhap I’m still a little confused as to when to use a blog or wiki for a classroom.

Then my other thought was in regards to the Snow Willow nominees. Several teachers have agreed that part of their Language Arts assignment will be to read one novel and respond on the blog. In re-visiting the Willows site, I remembered that they have already come up with activities for each of the selections. So why re-invent the wheel? Perhaps I could create a link for each book to the activity page and they could choose to complete one. Then we could post their written or visual activities on a wiki. Does anyone have any feedback for me or am I simply blithering in a daze? This particular teacher is not familiar with a Wiki so do I want to take that on as well as my blog?

Help- I need somebody!!

Just kidding- you’re all too busy to think about my problems. Now I must work on my order!!

Back to Books

So here I am- getting back to what for me is still the best- books. I just finished reading John Wilson’s Where Soldiers Lie. Not normally a fan of war stories myself, I have come to appreciate this excellent Canadian author. This book looks at the Indian mutiny in the mid 1800’s. In no way does this glorify war, but is a compelling look at the issues and horrors involved through the eyes of sixteen year old Jack. Allow your mind to be enveloped with the smells, sounds and sights of this old civilization and put it out for your boys to read. Last year I read Four Steps to Death by this same author and was stunned at his ability to provide 3 separate viewpoints on the Battle of Stalingrad. This book has made its way from hand to hand in one of my schools. Historical fiction- what an amazing way to bring our past to life! I know he has written a number of other books as well. I think these would compare well to Arthur Slade’s Meggido’s Shadow, a riveting tale of desert warfare and one of Saskatchewan’s Snow Willow nominees for this year. I also think of Charlie Wilcox by Sharon McKay. I believe these are the books our students need to read- to maybe take away any of the glory of war and bring home the grim realities.

Another paper-bag book talk

Download

I also took some stills with the digital camera of the scenes we used for the movie and after some serious fiddling around, was able to produce them as a movie using Movie HD on my Mac at home. So if students (or we) don’t have access to a video camera, this would be another and perhaps simpler possibility. I think I’ll put this on my library blog as well for the students to view and see what kind of feedback I get.

D0 I seem a little hooked on all this? Maybe just a little!!

Citation Generators

Oh, am I loving this!

I used the one that Ruth recommended some time ago, “Bib Me” and found it amazingly easy to use.

But the question still remains- when do we want students to use this? There are still certain skills and understandings about a bibliography creation (or Reference List as we call it in Saskatoon Public) that we would wish students to have. i think of the obvious ones:

• alphabetical order
• locating publisher, place of publication, copyright date
• practicing a prescribed format
• recognizing copyright demands

I believe that I would still teach the grade 3’s and 4’s to learn how to make a basic list with author and title. In the higher grades, when they have successfully shown that they are able to follow correct bibliographic format, I would be inclined to introduce them to an online Citation Generator.

But for me- yes, I’ll be using it. I’ve already practiced it enough.

Okay- how do I link my bib to this? I’ve tried a few things and they don’t work. I can save it to my own drive at work but this blogger does not support uploading it. Any ideas?

• 

  “Gliffy.com – Create and share diagrams online..” Gliffy.com – Create and share diagrams online.. 26 Oct 2007 <http://www.gliffy.com>.

• 

  “ImageChef – Customize Photos, Clip Art.” ImageChef – Customize Photos, Clip Art. 26 Oct 2007 <http://www.imagechef.com>.

• 

  Leavitt, Martine. Keturah And Lord Death. Asheville: Front Street, 2006.

• 

  “searchCrystal.” searchCrystal. 26 Oct 2007 <http://www.searchcrystal.com>.

• 

  Copyright Matters!. Canada: Canadian Teachers Federation, 2005.

Copied and pasted it in- that works- couldn’t see where to save it any other way onto my drive.

To widget or not to widget?

On Searching

2,138,000 hits on the Grim Reaper on a straight Google search.
1,340,00 on “Grim Reaper other names”
Looking for the plague- asked the question on kartoo.com about the causes of the plague in medieval times- this is amazing- brings up a great map with many links to key topics. What I see here is an enormous time-saver for kids- the main problem with Google is that nothing is vetted and kids just don’t have the skills or don’t care to properly assess the information. This site allows them to immediately go to key and authentic resources. I’m impressed- didn’t know they were out there.