Maria's Mélange

I'm so thrilled to be part of the Reading Without Walls Blog Tour ! I firmly believe in the idea of reading outside of your comfort zone - whether that means a new topic, format, genre, or characters that are not like you. Expanding our horizons, and those of the readers under our care, is the best way to make positive change in the world. Let's start with format, shall we? One of the goals of this blog tour is to introduce our readers to the cool new graphic novel series Secret Coders , by Gene Luen Yang and Mike Holmes. If you aren't yet sold on graphic novels being a fabulous way to spark interest, learn new things, and build critical thinking skills - it's time to take the plunge! (You can learn about some of the reasons I love them in a post I wrote a few years ago ....)  Secret Coders is an introduction to some of the basic concepts of computer programming, tied up in a fun story about a trio of kids at Stately Academy. The first one introduces simple...

(Karen Romano Young in conversation with Susannah Richards) I am continuing to share my experiences from Confratute! The first paragraph is the blurb I wrote for the newsletter. Below that is more detail from the amazing evening at the UConn bookstore.. Huge thanks also to Susannah Richards (@sussingoutbooks on Twitter and Instagram) for organizing this event.  Karen Romano Young visited Confratute on Monday to share some thoughts on writing for children and young adults. Her career began in teaching, but she realized that it wasn’t right for her very quickly when a few students played a prank in the school bathroom. Instead of being upset by this, Karen was amused by their creative genius. Her next stop was writing nonfiction for Scholastic News. This was perfect, because it allowed her to explore and write about the enormous variety of topics that interested her. Soon, she wanted to write longer work and began to write nonfiction books that mostly focused on science...

(Karen Romano Young in conversation with Susannah Richards) I am continuing to share my experiences from Confratute! The first paragraph is the blurb I wrote for the newsletter. Below that is more detail from the amazing evening at the UConn bookstore.. Huge thanks also to Susannah Richards (@sussingoutbooks on Twitter and Instagram) for organizing this event.  Karen Romano Young visited Confratute on Monday to share some thoughts on writing for children and young adults. Her career began in teaching, but she realized that it wasn’t right for her very quickly when a few students played a prank in the school bathroom. Instead of being upset by this, Karen was amused by their creative genius. Her next stop was writing nonfiction for Scholastic News. This was perfect, because it allowed her to explore and write about the enormous variety of topics that interested her. Soon, she wanted to write longer work and began to write nonfiction books that mostly focused on science...

(I wrote up summaries of the keynotes at Confratute 2016 for the daily newsletter. I'll be posting those summaries with more information about each presenter here on my blog. Confratute is a yearly, week long conference for educators interested in enrichment learning. Want more information? Visit http://confratute.uconn.edu/ ) Photo by Maria Selke - 2016 “I Won’t Mess With Your Comma If You Don’t Mess With My Decimal Point” Rachel McAnallen’s passion for math has been a lifelong endeavor. When she decided to pursue a graduate degree in math education, she didn’t let anything stop her. She went back to grad school at 70! Rachel works with students and teachers all over the world as she seeks to improve mathematical understanding and teaching practices. Rachel’s goal tonight was to help us understand how current instructional practices have caused many of the problems students have today. Most of these problems are tied into the fact that we don’t respect place va...

Ms. Bixby's Last Day is about an unforgettable teacher. The kind of teacher who inspires, excites, and enthralls. So when the publisher asked me to join the blog tour and said that our focus will be on celebrating OUR "Ms. Bixby", I knew I had to join in. More information about the book and author are below! (I also love this author, and participated in the blog tour for The Dungeoneers , did a quick Q&A with questions from my son when he used Anderson as his author study author, participated in the blog tour and reviewed Sidekicked , and joined the Minion blog tour .)  My school career was filled with enough loving, memorable, inspiring teachers that I had trouble choosing just one. Even this set of names doesn't include the many, many teachers who kept me learning and helped me mature and grow. Younger Years : Mr. Bateman - Fifth Grade My reading choices in elementary school were a bit less than traditional. We had to read and do book reports on...

Illustrations by Ben Whitehouse. Welcome, my bookish friends! Today I have a real treat for you. This title looks like so much fun - and I'll be diving into it myself shortly. It disappeared from my stack and I just rediscovered it in my son's pile. Read on for a description of the book and then a fabulous Q&A with the title character - written by Elinor Teele. For even more excitement - head to the bottom of the post to learn how you could win a signed copy (generously sent to you by the publisher). The Mechanical Mind of John Coggin by Elinor Teele Hardcover, 352 pages Pub Date: April 12th 2016 by Walden Pond Press ISBN 0062345109 (ISBN13: 9780062345103) Book Description: Roald Dahl meets The Penderwicks in this quirky, humorous, whimsical, and heartwarming middle grade debut about two siblings who run away from home to escape working in the family coffin business. John Coggin is no ordinary boy. He is devising an invention that nobody has ever seen bef...

The third annual Battle of the Books has begun! I forgot to put up the full list of 32 books earlier this year. (I know, I've been an awful blogger). Here is the entire list, split into four divisions. Just after winter break, we had our students nominate up to 5 favorite books. I took that list and whittled it down to what you see below. Any surprises? The students have already voted in the first set of brackets, and we are down to 16 books. More on that in the next post.