Saturday, March 9, 2013

A reminder from Tock

Don't forget to set those clocks forward tonight!

It's always so much fun to "fall back an hour," but not so much to "spring ahead." Losing an hour of my day (even if it is when I'm asleep) just doesn't appeal to me considering all the things that I have on my plate!

This weekend has been really productive though! I got my blog started, posted my 25th item to my Teacherspayteachers store, and finished all my prep work for teaching next week before Sunday! I even got to enjoy the nice change in weather by going with my wife to help her while she trained our dog in tracking, and we went for a nice little Vespa ride around town!

I am so excited to have two followers already! I thought for sure I'd spend months "talking" to myself on here before anyone noticed! And it's always great when people have their own blogs that I can follow and add to my growing list of RSS feeds!

For the curious, my 25th item was also my biggest one yet. I've been working on a Novel Unit for the book Wonder by RJ Palacio. It's 170 pages long! I was really excited to finally finish the unit.

If you haven't read this book yet...finish reading this entry then shut down your computer, drive to the store and buy yourself a copy. Be ready to devote the rest of the night to reading and have a box of tissues handy.

Hands down, this is one of the best books to come out in the last few years. I am so excited to read it with my class for years to come. Not only is the story a masterpiece of realistic fiction, it has great tier two words for vocabulary, shows different perspectives, excellent examples of figurative language, easy to pick out themes and tons of opportunities for kids to infer and predict. What more can a teacher ask for in a book?!

While making the novel unit I read through the book several times and I think I probably teared up about 10 times each time I read it. It was just as good the fourth time as it was the first.

Check out my novel unit here:
Wonder Novel Unit

Here's hoping the nice weather holds out or even improves even more! I'm a dedicated environmentalist and as a part of that I drive my Vespa (74 mpg!) whenever possible...but when the temps dip below freezing, even I have to store the ol' girl til Spring. Today's ride around town really reminded me what I have been missing. I guess if Spring will get here it's worth losing that hour tonight!

More to come from me soon! I've set a goal to blog at least three times a week! I feel an addiction blooming here...


5 comments:

  1. I keep hearing about that book...Guess I should be a good children's librarian and check it out!

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    1. You won't regret it! It's a pretty easy read too!

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  2. We read Wonder at the beginning of the year. My students LOVED it! It had so many great lessons for building our classroom community at the start of the year.

    Jen
    Runde's Room

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    Replies
    1. Next year it will definitely be my first read-aloud of the year! I wish I had taken the time to read it last summer! I still think my kids can learn a lot from it now though, and maybe since it'll be fresh they'll send me some precepts over the summer!

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  3. You've convinced me! Amazon, here I come. ~Stacy @ http://new-in-room-202.blogspot.com

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