For the Love of Books

Several weeks ago one of my teammates told me about a new book she had just read to her class, Three Hens and a Peacock.  (This friend could open her own library with her extensive book collection!)  Anyway, she said her class loved the book and offered it to me to read to my class.  They loved it!  We had such a good time reading and just enjoying the story, and then, just like my friend's class, they wanted to know more about peacocks so we found a YouTube video to watch.

 This got me thinking about how we need to read more just for the joy of sharing a good book.  So many times I end up just reading books based on a theme or ones I have chosen to make a teaching point.  But there are many wonderful books available!  We read for many different purposes, and one of those is to read just for the love of reading!
With that in mind, I've set out to find new (to me) books that are just fun to read.  Here is one I read this week:

Even though I didn't intend to follow up with any sort of lesson, my class  wanted to "give back" to the teacher that shared Three Hens and a Peacock, so we wrote book review letters to her class during writing workshop.  (Unfortunately she was absent with a sick child and hasn't received them yet!)  By the way, I saved this letter to the student's notebook in Evernote and used Skitch to do the markups.  Skitch is great for making notes on the writing photo to highlight the features I want to focus on.

Not clear but she says, "We read the book Creepy Carrots!  I think it was funny.  In the story Jasper Rabbit loves carrots entil (until) one day after a baseball game the carrots start following him. Read to find out what's next."

I am now on a hunt for more new books to read "just for fun."  Please share your favorites!

Carol

Tried It Tuesday

I'm linking up with Holly at the Fourth Grade Flipper and her new linky, Tried It Tuesday.

I'm going to piggyback onto my post from yesterday about Evernote to share how I used it to make an audio  recording note.

One of my students is who has been identified as dyslexic is really struggling with writing.  He fills up his paper with a lot of writing but then is unable to read it if he comes back to it later (and I usually can't either.)  I hate always marking up his paper, but if I don't, I can't make any sense of it.  I have put sticky notes on his work with the "translation" but they fall off.

So today I recorded him reading his writing to me and then took a picture of his work.  Now both are filed in his notebook in Evernote so when it is time to assess his writing portfolio, I can look beyond the spelling and remember his message.  The kids thought this was pretty cool, so I recorded a couple of others just for fun!
I used my phone (Samsung Galaxy S3) to record.  I selected new note and then choose "record audio."  Then I snapped a picture, added a comment and there it was!

This is what it looks like on my phone.

I can't tell you how excited I am about using Evernote this way (and how convinced everyone I know is that I am truly a geek!)  Seriously, it has inspired me to "beef up" my entire writer's workshop.  It hasn't been my favorite thing to teach this year and that has translated into less than stellar work from some of  my students. Maybe this is just the spark I needed to help them become strong writers!

Carol

Evernote: My New Love Affair?

Evernote and I have been hanging around each other for awhile now.  Occasionally I would find a teaching idea online and save it, but Pinterest took over and I rarely looked at Evernote anymore. Every now and then I would read an article about how wonderful Evernote is and take another look, but it just never clicked between us. I really thought I didn't need another place to store pictures of cute bulletin boards.  But after reading Alyce's blog post, which led me to Alison at Eberopolis, I was suddenly looking at Evernote in a whole new way and found myself very attracted!  (This sort of sounds like how I started dating my husband.  We worked together for about a year, talked occasionally, and one day I suddenly I started thinking "Wow, he's kind of cute. We were married a year and half later!")
Anyway, I spent a couple hours yesterday reading about Evernote and decided to try using it to collect data on my students during Writer's Workshop.  I installed the app on both my smartphone and Kindle Fire. I followed Alison's great tutorial and set up notebooks for each of my students.
Then I read Alison's post about emailing notes to Evernote.  If you put the right information in the subject line, the note will even be sent to the right notebook.  By this time, my family had decided I was nuts because I was just so darned excited when I tried emailing a practice note and it went right to the correct notebook!
So today I tried it out.  I conferenced with several students while they were writing.  Instead of taking notes in the 3-ring binder I set up for this purpose or on the sticky notes that I end up using because they are easier to carry, I just pulled out my phone and took my notes there.  (I think using an Ipad or tablet with a stylus  would be even better!)  I even took a picture of one boy's writing and emailed it to his notebook so I could look at it more later.
My mind is racing with other ideas for using Evernote- recording a student reading his writing, reading conferences, anecdotal records during math and so much more.  I think I am falling in love with this tool!
Have you used Evernote in your classroom?  Please share your ideas and link up with Alison for her Paperless Challenge.

Maybe soon my desk and teaching table won't look like this:

Carol