The best book I ever read....

We all have books that we absolutely love, right?  A book that we could read over and over again and not get sick of.  What book was the best you ever read?  Include the Title, Author, a brief summary that includes why you love the book so much.  No Spoilers!

Is it ever ok to drop a book?

Recently, I got some advice from one of my fellow teachers.  She said, "Life is too short to read a bad book.  I've got way too many good books to read in my lifetime and I won't waste any time on a bad book."  This got me thinking.  I really don't like the book I'm reading.  I love to read, but I just can't force myself to read this one.  What do you think?  Is it ever ok to drop a book?

Want help picking a new book?

The first place to look might be the first blog post on this page.  You friends are writing down the books they are reading now.  Browse through what they have to say about their books.  There are also lots of really good websites that you can use to help you find a book.

One good website to use is Good Reads  it will give you lots of useful information about the novels you are curious about.  People also post their comments/opinions about the novel there as well.  The editors are really good about including the words "Spoiler Alert"  so that the book is never ruined for you. 

Another good place to look is Novelist. Remember, this is the place we looked at with Mrs. Werner in the LC?  You can search for books, but you can also start with a book that you like and click on "Title Read-Alikes" or "Author Read-Alikes" for books that are similar.  How cool is that?  I hope that the link works, but Novelist is a website that we pay for, so I don't know if you can get there with just a link.  If not, just go to the virtual library, click on quick links, and go to the Novelist area in the middle of the page.

This post is for teachers who are taking the class with me!

My students have great plans for our classroom blog.  In fact, they have 29 different ideas of what they would like to see me do on this blog.  I'm not 100% positive if this particular blog will be able to handle all of their requests or not. They did have some pretty interesting ideas that I wouldn't have ever come up with on my own.  They range from "The Best Book I Ever Read" to "At home Science Experiment of the Week"  to about a million different versions of "Student of the Week". 

The article I read, "Blogging as a Means of Crafting Writing," by Lacina and Griffith,  had some very practical tips for teachers just getting started with their classroom blogs.  The very first one was BABY STEPS.  I will need to keep remembering that.  Hopefully, by the end of the year we will be at a place where we have several of their ideas up and running.  The rest of the article really talked about how to model effective writing using blogs.  That's one of the biggest frustrations I have had with blogs.  Sometimes the posts students make aren't exactly what we as teachers want to see.  The article goes through step by step how to teach students to be effective digital citizens. I plan on using it's advice as we work on this blog.   (If you are one of my 6th graders reading this - that means that we're going to be working on how to write a good blog post.)

Here is a link to the article:  http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.www.remote.uwosh.edu/doi/10.1002/TRTR.01128/pdf

Lacina, J., & Griffith, R. (2012). Blogging as a Means of Crafting Writing. Reading Teacher, 66(4), 316-320. doi:10.1002/TRTR.01128

What are you reading?

In your response, share the author, title and a little bit about it.  The idea here is we want to make a list where others can go to for ideas.

****When you comment, don't worry if it doesn't show up right away.  It goes to my e-mail first and I have to approve it before it publishes!  I didn't know that before, so I didn't tell you.  Sorry!