Let's Celebrate Piggyback Rides and Melting Ice Cream!

It's time to CELEBRATE This Week with Ruth Ayres from Discover. Play. Build.  Every week Ruth invites us to share our celebrations from the week and link up at her blog. What a fun way to reflect on everything there is to be thankful for. 

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This week I'm celebrating piggyback rides and melting ice cream!

*throws confetti*

There's something about four- and seven-year-olds being just-right for piggyback rides! Lately, it feels like I've been giving a lot of these but thank goodness for them. As soon as a hint of crankiness seems like it's about to overcome either Peanut or Little Bean, I recommend a piggyback ride and it completely turns their mood around. (On a side not, I'm so in love with that little face peaking over my shoulder! Gosh, I love that kid.)

My nephews were in town last weekend and while we were at the park, an ice cream truck came around. My younger nephew turned to me and said, "Is that an ice cream truck?" When I confirmed that it was he said, "I thought those were only real on TV." Well, you know that meant we had to buy an ice cream from an ice cream truck after that.  

My sweet Little Bean loves the ice cream/popsicles with the gumball eyes - whether it's Sponge Bob, Spiderman or a Ninja Turtle, that's the kind he always wants. He's still figuring out how to eat it fast enough so that it doesn't melt down his arm but I'm happy to cherish these days of being messy and sticky and loving a treat so much that it doesn't matter if it ends up all over the place.

What summer fun are you celebrating this week?

Poetry Friday

 Today Poetry Friday is with Tabatha Yeatts and The Opposite of Indifference! Be sure to visit and check out all the great poetry posts!

My friend, Lauren who did paddleboard yoga with me, is working on her yoga instructor certification so I attended two of her yoga classes this week (on dry land). She is a Spanish teacher and it was neat to see how many of her colleagues from her school supported her by attending her classes as well. One woman had a special request for her current favorite song, On Top of the World, by Imagine Dragons. I happen to be a huge Imagine Dragons fan and I really love this new song. I've been listening to it since: had it on repeat all day, danced in my car, in Starbucks and in my living room (where my kids might have thought I was out of my mind...). 

What I really love about this song as it starts is the reminder that life is precious and that we need to remember to tell people how important they are to us. Last night, we (finally) went to see The Fault in Our Stars and I watched, I was also thinking about how lucky we are for the time we have and that it needs to be cherished. 

My favorite line is this one, though: "I take it in but don’t look down". I'm happy to consider myself an optimist. I try to look at the good in the world, in people, in any situation. There definitely times when I'm enjoying an event, a day, a trip and I think of how sad I'll feel when it's all over. I'm not sure why I do this. I try not to linger on it, but at some point it crosses my mind that I'll be sad when it's over. I like the reminder to not look down because it seems like a great way to soak up and live in the moment. Keep moving forward, keep looking up, keep living in the moment.

On Top Of The World

If you love somebody
Better tell them while they’re here ’cause
They just may run away from you

You’ll never know quite when, well
Then again it just depends on
How long of time is left for you

I’ve had the highest mountains
I’ve had the deepest rivers
You can have it all but life keeps moving

I take it in but don’t look down

‘Cause I’m on top of the world, ‘ay
I’m on top of the world, ‘ay
Waiting on this for a while now
Paying my dues to the dirt
I’ve been waiting to smile, ‘ay
Been holding it in for a while, ‘ay
Take you with me if I can
Been dreaming of this since a child
I’m on top of the world.

I’ve tried to cut these corners
Try to take the easy way out
I kept on falling short of something

I coulda gave up then but
Then again I couldn’t have ’cause
I’ve traveled all this way for something

I take it in but don’t look down

‘Cause I’m on top of the world, ‘ay
I’m on top of the world, ‘ay
Waiting on this for a while now
Paying my dues to the dirt
I’ve been waiting to smile, ‘ay
Been holding it in for a while, ‘ay
Take you with me if I can
Been dreaming of this since a child
I’m on top of the world.

‘Cause I’m on top of the world, ‘ay
I’m on top of the world, ‘ay
Waiting on this for a while now
Paying my dues to the dirt
I’ve been waiting to smile, ‘ay
Been holding it in for a while, ‘ay
Take you with me if I can
Been dreaming of this since a child

And I know it’s hard when you’re falling down
And it’s a long way up when you hit the ground
Get up now, get up, get up now.

And I know it’s hard when you’re falling down
And it’s a long way up when you hit the ground
Get up now, get up, get up now.

‘Cause I’m on top of the world, ‘ay
I’m on top of the world, ‘ay
Waiting on this for a while now
Paying my dues to the dirt
I’ve been waiting to smile, ‘ay
Been holding it in for a while, ‘ay
Take you with me if I can
Been dreaming of this since a child
I’m on top of the world.

I hope you enjoy this song as much as I do! 

Do you have a favorite song you are listening to and loving this summer?

The One With SUP PaddleBoard Yoga!

Every Tuesday, I participate in the Slice of Life challenge at Two Writing Teachers. If you want to participate, you can link up at their Slice of Life Story Post on Tuesdays or you can just head on over there to check out other people's stories. For more information on what a Slice of Life post is about, you can go here. 

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I'm always up for a challenge but the thought of falling into Lake Michigan in June when it's still a chilly sixty-some degrees did sound a little nerve-wracking. The instructor assured me that only 30% of people fall in during stand-up paddleboard yoga and I was hoping I wouldn't be part of that 30%. Lucky for me, I wasn't and I had an amazing time during both paddleboard yoga classes I took with Royal Pigeon Yoga at 31st Street Harbor in Chicago. 

The first two pictures below are from my first class. It was a beautiful Sunday morning and the weather was completely perfect. We had a small class, there were only three of us. I was nervous but amazed by how in tune with the board I felt by the end. At the end of the class, it was so relaxing to close my eyes and listen to the water as I floated there on my back. It made me think of all the visits to the beach when I was growing up and how I much I love the water.

I wasn't sure how it would feel to try wheel pose on the board but I tried and I didn't fall in!

These next set of pictures is from the second class I took. It was a foggy Sunday morning and we had a much larger group. My friend, Lauren, went with me to both of the classes but this time, I convinced my husband and my mom to come down to the beach with my kids. I'm such a fan of 31st Street Harbor. Early in the morning, it's a really easy drive for us, the parking is like street parking, where you just pay the meter, and the beach and the clubhouse is beautiful. There is a great park where they kids can play and the Lake Shore Drive bike path goes right past it. 

I'm on the right...I wanted to get a feel for the handstand on the paddleboard but I need more practice!

Paddleboard yoga is a completely different kind of experience compared to yoga on land. I feel like my core is engaged the whole time I'm on the board so it challenged my muscles in such a unique way. There were times when I felt like I could move more fluidly because the board moved with me instead of being stagnant underneath me. I love the serenity and peacefulness that comes with yoga practice but I've found it to be even more calming to be on the water while doing yoga. I'm sure I'll be headed out onto the water again...if you're ever in town and are up for a SUP class, please let me know!

What have you done recently that challenged you in a new way? 

I would love to hear about it!

It's Monday What Are You Reading? (7/14/14)

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? From Picture Books to YA! 

It's Monday! What are you Reading? is a meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journeys. It is a great way to recap what you read and/or reviewed the previous week and to plan out your reading and reviews for the upcoming week. It's also a great chance to see what others are reading right now...you just might discover your next “must-read” book!

Kellee Moye, of Unleashing Readers, and I decided to give It's Monday! What Are You Reading? a kidlit focus. If you read and review books in children's literature - picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels, young adult novels, anything in the world of kidlit - join us! We love this meme and think you will, too. We encourage everyone who participates to visit at least three of the other kidlit book bloggers that link up and leave comments for them. 

Last Week's Book Adventures:

Jen Says: Last week was such a great week spent at nErDcamp and then back at home with family. My nephews were in town to visit and we celebrated my aunt's 70th birthday party. I did listen to Kelly DiPucchio read Gilbert Goldfish Wants a Pet and Aaron Zenz read Hiccupotamus at Nerdcamp Jr. I also started reading Comic Squad: Recess! with Peanut and Little Bean. We've read the first story twice and the second story once so far. I'm completely in love with it!

Just a quick reminder that you can visit all the blog on the Schneider Family Book Award 10th anniversary blog tour and be sure to enter the giveaway! Also be sure to check out all the Teachers Write fun at Kate Messner's blog, Jo Knowles' blog, and Gae Polisner's blog! 

Reviewed Last Week:

Click on any picture above to go read my review/post.

Upcoming Book Adventures: 

Jen Says: I'm sure we'll finish Comic Squad: Recess! this week and I'm planning to get back to The Right to Write which I checked out of the library forever ago. It was mentioned in Teachers Write comments so I'm excited to check it out. I'm also very eager to read El Deafo by CeCe Bell and to finally dive into the final League of Princes book I've been meaning to read, too!

This Week's Reviews:

Check back throughout the week to read these reviews/posts. 

So, what are you reading this week? 

Link up below and don't forget to check out other blogs to see what they are reading!

To help build our community and support other bloggers, 

we ask that you comment on at least three other blogs before you. 

Also, if you tweet about your Monday post, don't forget to use #IMWAYR!

Teachers Write - Weekly Reflection #2

Welcome back! I hope you had a great first week with Teachers Write! It feels awesome to be part of Teachers Write conversations again and to see all the posts and comments about writing. I love this fabulous community. Last week I had so many comments on my first Sunday Check-In post and I wasn't able to respond to everyone. I tried to respond to many of the comments but it was hard to keep up! Please know that if I didn't respond to you, I am still so honored that you are visiting my blog and sharing and that I love that you are participating in Teachers Write. Thank you all for joining on the conversation and supporting each other! Hugs to all!

Now on to week 2! Let's think about how we might track our progress towards our goals. This implies, first of all, that we have goals but also that we have a way to celebrate them and recognize once we've met them...er, and how to assess and adjust our goals if we don't meet them. 

I have little tiny ways to celebrate and some big ways to celebrate. Last August, I wrote a post about a writing habit I developed. I put myself in a writing frame of mind, tell myself I can do it - that I can tackle the blank page in front of me - and then when I'm done, I do a word count and celebrate and tell myself I proved that I am a writer. The inspiration for this came from two inspirational cards I picked out at the Choice Literacy retreat last year with Brenda Power. 

I've modified this habit recently by adding in a time element. When I work on revisions, it helps me to think about my goal in terms of minutes per day. If I commit to 25 minutes everyday, then I know I'll get something done and I stay close to the writing I'm doing. AND, it forces me to write through tough spots I might otherwise avoid. I know if I sit down and set my phone timer for 25 minutes, I'll get something accomplished and that feels awesome. On super great writing days, I take a 5 minute break and then set my timer for another 25 minutes. By repeating this process, I've gotten in hours of writing in one day even but minimally, I get those 25 minutes in and that counts.

The two ways I have found to measure writing progress is either by looking at words written or time written. I would love to hear if you have other ways that you use to measure your progress - maybe by pages written, blog posts written? Please share! I also keep little tallies for myself on a Google Spreadsheet or a sticky note so I have a visual image of what I've accomplished.

For me, when I draft, I know that I need to add to the words to the page so focusing in on word count is the best way to set goals and work towards them. When I revise, it was hard to look at and measure word count as progress because sometimes I would get through a lot of words and other times I would cut words and have a negative number. In revision mode, I like to focus on a minutes per day goal, usually with 25 minutes as my minimum. 

I celebrate by mentally telling myself I did a good job but when I feel like I hit a major accomplishment like finishing a first draft or making it all the way through a round of revision, I have to tell everyone I know. 

One more thing about tracking progress towards goals...it does help if you make the time to write so you can meet those goals. Cynthia Lord shared a guest post about making time to write on Kate's blog and Kate has blogged about making time to write herself as well. Notice that's it's about making the time and not finding the time.

So think about what works for you, how do you track your progress? Are you in a word count mode or a time/minutes logged mode this summer...or some other kind of progress tracking mode?

My Teachers Write Weekly Recap:

Last week was crazy with nErDcamp in Michigan and then entertaining my two nephews who were in town from Wisconsin. We spent all day Friday traveling to local 7-Elevens for free Slurpie day...and that was just one adventure!

In terms of writing, I did get a few quick writes in and then I officially started in on my first draft. As of today, I have 2,000 words done! I didn't meet my goal of getting 25 minutes in a day but I think it was the travel and busy-ness of being away from a routine that made it difficult. Because I've been in revision-mode for so long, I'm sticking to my 25 minutes a day but I'm also hoping to get about 1,000 words in everyday. That would put me at 9,000 words by next Sunday. We'll see!

A reminder of my rules for Teachers Write Sunday Check-Ins:

1. We respect each other and the type of writing we do.

2. We only offer constructive criticism.

3. We are positive and encourage each other at all times.

4. We recognize and maintain this as a safe environment.

Today, in the comments section:

How do you track your progress? What kind of goal works for you?

How do you celebrate your progress?

How did you do this week? Did you meet your weekly goal(s)?
What was the pit of your week? (The hardest part, the non-fun part?)
What was the peak of your week? (The best part, the most-fun part?)
What are you looking forward to and planning for the week ahead?

Let's Celebrate nErDcamp and Teachers As Writers!

It's time to CELEBRATE This Week with Ruth Ayres from Discover. Play. Build.  Every week Ruth invites us to share our celebrations from the week and link up at her blog. What a fun way to reflect on everything there is to be thankful for. 

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This week I'm celebrating teachers as writers!

*throws confetti*

On Monday and Tuesday, I spent time with awesome educators at nErDcamp! It was so fun to be part of this awesome literacy-focused, unconference again. Last year, nErDcamp was awesome but this year it was even better. This year, we had sessions on Monday afternoon and the Nerdy 5k and then Tuesday was similar to last year with session planning in the morning and afternoon and four sessions spread throughout the day. 

Here are pictures with the awesome Nerdy crew! I'm still amazed by how fantastic this event was. I wish I had been more help but the credit really goes to Colby, Alaina, Suzanne, Donalyn, Niki, Brian and Kristin in pulling it all together. (I just realized I don't have a picture with Donalyn! Boo. But hooray for Donalyn, too!) What a wonderful group to be part of. I still shake my head at how lucky I am to have such fun friends who are willing to spend the time and energy to make nErDcamp happen all for the love of learning. 

  

What I love about unconferences like nErDcamp and Edcamp, is that it's not about the presenters or the vendors, it's about bringing people together to share and to be part of the discussion. I hope all the sessions captured the essence of this. I know the sessions I ran on Monday and the ones I attended on Tuesday did and by the end, when everyone gathered in the auditorium for the final smackdown, it seemed like the energy and love was really there. 

 

I'm going a bit backwards here, but Monday afternoon, my sessions were called Nerd Up! and the focus was on bringing the same passion and love of being part of Nerdy Book Club and modeling that for students to working with student writers. After being part of Teachers Write the last two summers, I've really embraced writing. I loved using writers notebooks with students and looking at mentor texts and going through the writing process with kids. My belief is that reading and writing are interconnected and that we should help kids build a love of reading as much as writing. What I've noticed through Teachers Write is that while there are lots of people who have a passion for reading and are sharing that with students, there are lots of people who don't feel as confident in their own writing. I totally understand this but I also believe that they only way to be more in touch with student writers is to actually write and experience the messiness of the writing process and all the feelings that come with going through it. 

I tried something completely new and scary but I think it was successful. As much as I can stand up there and tell people they are writers and try to convince them to write with students, I know people have to see why and decide for themselves that it's something they want to do. So...instead, I put a statement up on the screen and asked people to question storm - to come up with 5-6 questions about the statement. I explained that I didn't have answers and didn't expect them to have answers, but that by asking questions we might get our brains thinking of possible answers. Here's the statement:

Only writers 
have any business 
teaching writing.

Can you see why I was scared? I knew some people might be mad at me for this...and I told them it was okay to be mad. You know what? I didn't have to be scared because the awesome people in my sessions had goosebump-worthy discussions and came up with super thoughtful questions. As I walked around and listened in on conversations, I could tell they were stretching their brains and thinking about what it means to be a writer and how to support students as writers as much as they support them as readers.

After small group discussion and question-storming (you can read the notes here: https://docs.google.com/a/u-46.org/document/d/1AdY747WtoGjjX1wvSuyxjXbTjvF487BysjI0aS7yYNM/mobilebasic?pli=1) we talked as a whole group and then I asked each person to think of a question they wanted to take with them to continue to think about writing with students. Here are some of the thoughtful questions people came up with:

How can I model the connections we make 
from reading a book to our own writing?  
What does that look like?

How will I share my writing to show my students that I am a writer?

How do I learn to read with a writer's lens?

How do teachers of writing get to a place 
where they can comfortably claim the title of writer?

How might I help my students to see themselves 
as writers and to think like writers?

How might I live my life as much as a writer as I am reader?

How might I change my perception of myself from non-writer to writer? 
How might I lead my students to change their perceptions?

The last two questions came from Amanda Davies (below left) who asked me to lead a session on mentor texts on Tuesday afternoon. I loved her enthusiasm for embracing writing. At lunch on Tuesday, I talked with Crystal Brunelle (below right) who has done NaNoWriMo three times now and Teachers Write since we started. She shared with me that she only now kind of, sort of feels like a writer - but she is a writer! Both of these ladies really pushed me to think about myself and how I see myself and others as writers.

I believe in the statement above...BUT only because I define the word "writer" as anyone who writes. You don't have to be published and it doesn't matter what you write. Don't we all write e-mails and Twitter posts and notes to friends or parents? Maybe we write poems or short stories, fiction or non-fiction. But as much as all reading counts, all writing counts. I believe we are all writers, I'm just not sure everyone identifies themselves as a writer. I also believe that if you see yourself as a writer and think more like a writer and recognize how the writing process fits into your life, then you see yourself more as a writer and are more likely to get better as a writer.

Overall, my whole nErDcamp experience was completely fulfilling and inspiring! Thanks to everyone who made it and if you haven't been, mark your calendar for next July 6th and 7th! 

What are you celebrating this week?