NCTE Announces 2015 Award Winners

Each year, NCTE announces the winner of the Orbis Pictus Award for excellence in writing of nonfiction for children.  This year a new award, Charlotte Huck Award, for outstanding fiction for children was also announced.  Below are the winners and honorees for both awards. 

Congratulations to NCTE's Orbis Pictus Award Winner for 2015:

Click on book covers for more information.

Orbis Pictus 2015 Honor Books:

To see all the recommended books check here.

Congratulations to NCTE's Charlotte Huck Award for 2015:

Charlotte Huck 2015 Honor Books:

To see all the recommended books check here. 

Perfect Pairs in Action Part II

In November, I posted about our very first Perfect Pairs Lessons with 1st and 2nd graders.  We just recently completed the 3rd lesson with 2nd graders and completed all 3 lessons with 1st graders just prior to winter break.  Perfect Pairs comes from a book by Melissa Stewart and Nancy Chesley called Perfect Pairs: Using Fiction and Nonfiction Picture Books to Teach Life Science in K-2 (Stenhouse, 2014).  An elementary librarian and I have been collaborating on using Perfect Pairs with the classrooms at her school. One of our goals was to model for teachers a way to blend together literacy and science.  Additionally, we wanted to model for teachers how science can be a means for providing rich language and critical thinking opportunities for students.

The challenge that we face is that the book is created to use each lesson over a period of time in the same classroom. We work with each class once a week (if we don't get pre-empted) and only for about 75 minutes per class. This has required Mavonwe (School Librarian) and I (Literacy Specialist) to be creative and determine the central idea and what we must focus on. They rest can be given to the teachers as follow up lessons or tie-in lessons. I mention this since I wanted to respect the work that Stewart and Chesley did but also show that there is a way to do it if you only have a smaller amount of time. Maybe not ideal but it still can provide some benefit to students.

Since we have a large number of students who are English Language Learners and many who need to work on oral and written language, we adapted lessons to expand on what students needed. We have been extremely intentional to include a writing activity and then another activity that will encourage oral language and critical thinking. 

The bulletin board above is in the library and shows all the fiction and nonfiction pairing that we have used. 

The selection of stories for Perfect Pairs has been great and the students have loved them. 

When we used Steve Jenkins' What Do You Do When Something Wants to Eat You?, we made cards using actual photographs of the various animals mentioned to make sure that the students had a clear reference for what we were talking about.

Every time, we have included a writing activity. Sometimes the activity was a bit shorter or simpler and other times longer.

With the Hermit Crab story, we worked to identify what kind of habitat would a hermit crab need and created an advertisement for that kind of "house".

Since the school has a Dual Language Immersion Program, we allow the children to write in English or Spanish. 

Though we want kids to think of writing as fun, we also want children developing other skills too.

After watching a brief video on hermit crabs lining up to swap homes, we did a bit of our own moving and swapping spaces.

Students love opportunities to look through the books and make their own discoveries.

We also find that hands on activities including ones that incorporate art help develop skills in collaboration and keep everyone engaged.

Turning some activities into games also help in building understanding and focus.

Now that we have completed what we hoped to do with the 1st and 2nd graders, our next plans are to work with kindergarten classes and I hope to be able to introduce Perfect Pairs to other schools.

Here is a short video, I created with pictures from the program....

Thank you Melissa Stewart, Nancy Chesley, and Stenhouse Publishers for your support as we explored the lessons in the book.

A New Year, One Little Word, and No Resolutions

Happy New Year! This post has not been easy to write. I started it just prior to New Year's Day. It should have taken me a couple of hours to write. However, I went back to my last year's New Year's post and oh no. I realized that there was so much there that I did not accomplish and so much that I did not even remember that I had written.

So, I have been thinking....I am not making any resolutions this year. Well, maybe one thing.

One Little Word
Last year, I read One Word That Will Change Your Life by Jon Gordon, Dan Britton, and Jimmy Page (Wiley, 2013).

I had seen a lot of people talking about their One Little Word, and I was wondering what it was all about. I decided to pick a word.  I, then, shared the book with a close friend and we picked words, and on & off we checked in with each other.  My one little word last year was MEANINGFUL. Though I wasn't certain that it was the right word, it was the one that seemed to strike me emotionally.

As I looked back over the year, I am not certain how much I saw change as a result of my one little word, but I did put in motion a few things. I started making some changes to my living space to make it more a place that I felt good about and to reflect the me I wanted to be.

I, also, decided to adopt two little fur babies. 

Watson and Holmes at 6 months

I named them Holmes and Watson and they have been a source of a lot of fun and entertainment the last five months and in their own way they have brought a new and different kind of meaning to my life.

Oh course, there are days like today when they managed to find and open up a bag of dried lentils all over the bedroom and hallway. Fortunately, they are so cute that I will keep them.

This year, as I have seem everyone's posts about their One Little Words, I wondered if I would do it again. This time, a word kept coming to me.

Mindful image made with the notegraphy app.

Mindful. Mindful of the choices I make or choose not to make. Mindful of how I interact with others. Mindful of how I speak. Mindful of special, small moments in the day. So, let's see how it goes.

As I was talking about my one little word with my friend who did it with me last year, she mentioned a TED TALK that she had just watched.

TED TALK: Phil Hansen: Embrace the Shake

There are so many powerful ideas in this presentation by Phil Hansen, but maybe the end is what I really needed to hear.

"Limitations may be the most unlikely of places to harness creativity, but perhaps one of the best ways to get ourselves out of ruts, rethink categories and challenge accepted norms. And instead of telling each other to seize the day, maybe we can remind ourselves every day to seize the limitation."

Sometimes, I believe I have fallen into a rut and I need to rethink some things. Sometimes, I look at limitations and feel defeated rather than how a limitation can open the door for a new opportunity. I need to think more about this one, but I sense there is something here for me to learn.

Finally, I am not certain about what I would like to see happen on my blog. However, I know that I will be thinking about what I am doing and whether I should continue it or do something different. I want my blog to have meaning and to be fun.

As for my reading, I am not setting any reading goals this year. I will continue to use GoodReads to track what I read because it is a great way to share book lists with teachers and parents and to remember what I read. I love reading and I know I will read, and isn't that the important thing in the end?!

Wishing you a Happy New Year and may the year bring wonderful surprises and journeys and may will all embrace our limitations in order to discover new things.