Join the Creech-a-Thon!

You guys. I am doing my best not to completely geek out over this one, but trust me – it’s awesome!

First, if you haven’t read Love That Dog (with your class or for yourself!), you’re missing out. It’s short, sweet, sad, empowering, and just lovely for teaching figurative language, inferring & predicting, poetry, and more.

Second, kids LOVE her stuff. Seriously, it’s a little crazy. Put a copy of Granny Torrelli Makes Soup in their hands.

Last, did I tell you last year she actually commented on one of my student’s blog posts? All I did was tweet that I had a student writing poetry inspired by Love That Dog… she saw the tweet, went to the post, and commented to the girl, “Love that poem!”

Talk about igniting a love for reading and writing!

Anyway, if kids sign up for her reading pledge in September, they could win all 16 of her books, including a signed hardcover of her newest, The Boy on the Porch!

You can follow this link to see the pledge page – hope you will consider sharing this with your readers! For more stellar Creech stuff, be sure to follow her on Twitter @ciaobellacreech.

National Day on Writing 2012

Today was a day for celebrating what we write. Seems to me that this is also a pretty good day to start off our shared ninja-teaching blog! But more on that later. For now, let me regal you with moments of writing wootfulness. And yes, that is definitely a word.

On the way in to work today, I caught of glimpse of this video by superstar twitter-pal Kevin Hodgson:



Beyond asking my students to blog about their writing today, I wasn't sure how I wanted to celebrate. It's just been that kind of week, y'all. Kevin, who you should definitely be following on Twitter (@dogtrax) gave me the little boost of inspiration I needed. Also, I really like stealing ideas.

Last night, I wrote a blog post to my students, which you can read here. Basically, I got all teary-eyed and told them that they matter. And then I wrote them a poem. The fun part about writing the poem is this: one of my students recently wrote a poem inspired by Sharon Creech's Love That Dog but based on Katherine Applegate's The One and Only Ivan. Creech took the time to comment on my student's poem and that became an avalanche of poetic inspiration in the classroom. I thought I should get in on the action. And yeah, it was pretty fun to watch my student's eyes light up when she read the dedication at the bottom of my poem today.

They read my post and responded with posts of their own, writing things like "I couldn't shine without the rapid sound of graphite on paper," and there's even another poem inspired by Love That Dog about a sister and pancakes. What amazes me so much about all their posts (37, to be exact), is that the only "prompt" they were given was to write about what they write. And they did. Each in their own way. Some long, others short, all creative and each unique.

All in all, a very good day. To close out this fabulous day on writing, here's my freebie-Animoto video I made from some of their work this year. And by the way, welcome to our blog. Jenny and I are excited to share a little of the reading and writing love happening in our rooms every day.

Try our slideshow creator at Animoto.