Celebrating our new book

The book is here, the book is here! I finally got my hands on a hard copy of our new book, Reading the Whole Page: Teaching and Assessing Text Features to Meet K-5 Common Core Standards, (Maupin House, 2012). Of course, nothing compares to the feeling of holding your child for the first time, but thumbing through a finished copy of something you worked so hard on is one of life’s great joys. The best part is that all those lessons and thinksheets I have used to teach text features are now in one place, professionally designed, and ready to be used. I can’t wait to pop the CD in and begin using it with this year’s group of kids! My husband Jeff, a fifth-grade teacher, is trying to negotiate shared custody of the book so he can take it to his school on Monday. I’ll have to get him his own copy.

Dive into some great new nonfiction

 My friend Daryl just sent me a big box of books for my classroom. It's so exciting to see the kids’ reaction as they sort through the box! I looked through and found some really great titles for teaching nonfiction text features. My very favorite is from the Scholastic Discover More series. It's called Penguins and it's by Penelope Arlen and Tory Gordon-Harris. Even on the first two-page spread, it has maybe ten different text features. As you go through, there are examples of pretty much every text feature I've ever seen, plus a few extras. What makes it so incredible is that it uses a lot of photographs in the text features. This book could be used to show examples of different text features and would really tie in well to a unit on habitats or species. There are also some great documentaries about penguins. I'm very excited to introduce this to my kids. Apparently there's a free digital companion e-book that goes with it, so I can use it on my whiteboard to show text feature examples. Very cool! 

I might even be more excited about another book that was in the box. It's called Biggest Bugs (Life-Size!), and it's by George Beccaloni. For years I've used an excerpt from The Big Bug Book for fluency practice. I have kids read the part about the tarantula hawk wasp, and it's really morbidly fascinating. But what I love about this book is it not only describes all those just gross, weird, and cool bugs, but it also shows them in life-size photographs, so the ick factor is really ramped up. Plus there is a map on each two-page spread showing where the bug is found, a photograph of the habitat, and grossly engaging photos of things like the insect devouring another animal, laying eggs, or carrying babies on its back. Yeah, my kids are going to really love this one. Thanks, Daryl!