Showing posts with label blog birthday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog birthday. Show all posts

Saturday, January 02, 2016

Celebrating 10 Years of A Year of Reading: Happy 10th Birthday to Us!


Wikimedia

Happy 10th Birthday to A Year of Reading! 

Our blog began as a place to have conversations about books and make predictions about the Newbery winners. Here are all of the winners for the lifetime of our blog:

2006 Criss Cross by Lynne Rae Perkins

2007 The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron

2008 Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz

2009 The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

2010 When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

2011 Moon over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool

2012 Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos

2013 The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

2014 Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures by Kate DiCamillo

2015 The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

Our blog has been a place to share book reviews of children’s and profession books, classroom stories, Poetry Friday and Poetry Month, It’s Monday What Are You Reading, Math Monday, #Nerdlutions, One Little Words, #GNCelebration, #PB10for10, #cyberPD…and more in more than 3000 posts, which means we’ve averaged about 300 posts per year! WHEW!

The blog isn’t the only place we’ve shared our reading – we’re both on Goodreads, and have listed over 3000 books there. Between the two of us, we’ve tweeted over 30,000 tweets (probably not all about books and reading)!

The blog isn’t the only place we’ve been writing these past 10 years. Both of us write for Choice Literacy. Franki has published and/or co-published four books, and Mary Lee has poems in six anthologies.

It’s been a fun and productive 10 years both on and off the blog. We’re delighted that we share the Kidlitosphere with you, and look forward to what the next 10 years will bring!





Friday, January 01, 2016

Celebrating 10 Years of A Year of Reading: Our 9th Birthday


It seems hard to believe, but we are coming to the end of our 10th year of blogging! To celebrate, we will look back on our blog birthday posts through the years.  Join us as we revisit our birthday posts. Today is Day 9 of our 10 Day Birthday Celebration!

Wikimedia



Thursday, December 31, 2015

Celebrating 10 Years of A Year of Reading: Our 8th Birthday

It seems hard to believe, but we are coming to the end of our 10th year of blogging! To celebrate, we will look back on our blog birthday posts through the years.  Join us as we revisit our birthday posts. Today is Day 8 of our 10 Day Birthday Celebration!


Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Celebrating 10 Years of A Year of Reading: Our 7th Birthday

It seems hard to believe, but we are coming to the end of our 10th year of blogging! To celebrate, we will look back on our blog birthday posts through the years.  Join us as we revisit our birthday posts. Today is Day 7 of our 10 Day Birthday Celebration!




Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Celebrating 10 Years of A Year of Reading: Our 6th Birthday

It seems hard to believe, but we are coming to the end of our 10th year of blogging! To celebrate, we will look back on our blog birthday posts through the years.  Join us as we revisit our birthday posts. Today is Day 6 of our 10 Day Birthday Celebration!

Photo:Ardfern [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Monday, December 28, 2015

Celebrating 10 Years of A Year of Reading: Our 5th Birthday

It seems hard to believe, but we are coming to the end of our 10th year of blogging! To celebrate, we will look back on our blog birthday posts through the years.  Join us as we revisit our birthday posts. Today is Day 5 of our 10 Day Birthday Celebration!



Sunday, December 27, 2015

Celebrating 10 Years of A Year of Reading: Our 4th Birthday


It seems hard to believe, but we are coming to the end of our 10th year of blogging! To celebrate, we will look back on our blog birthday posts through the years.  Join us as we revisit our birthday posts. Today is Day 4 of our 10 Day Birthday Celebration!


Saturday, December 26, 2015

Celebrating 10 Years of A Year of Reading: Our 3rd Birthday

It seems hard to believe, but we are coming to the end of our 10th year of blogging! To celebrate, we will look back on our blog birthday posts through the years.  Join us as we revisit our birthday posts. Today is Day 3 of our 10 Day Birthday Celebration!

Photo Credit: Puschinka 
(https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schokoladentorte_Buttercreme_Tulpen_dritter_Geburtstag_001.JPG)

For our 3rd birthday:
THREE: The First Three
THREE: The Second of Three
THREE: The Third of Three

Friday, December 25, 2015

Celebrating 10 Years of A Year of Reading: Our 2nd Birthday

It seems hard to believe, but we are coming to the end of our 10th year of blogging! To celebrate, we will look back on our blog birthday posts through the years.   Join us as we revisit our birthday posts. Today is Day 2 of our 10 Day Birthday Celebration!

Photo by S. Briggs (https://www.flickr.com/photos/mozillanigeria/8288440865/sizes/m/)
For our 2nd birthday we had a 4 day Blog Birthday Gala!




Thursday, December 24, 2015

Celebrating 10 Years of A Year of Reading: Our 1st Birthday


It seems hard to believe, but we are coming to the end of our 10th year of blogging! To celebrate, we will look back on our blog birthday posts through the years.  Join us as we revisit our birthday posts over the next 10 Days of our Birthday Celebration!

Our very first blog post went live on January 2, 2006: Why We Are Doing This

In January 2007, we looked back on our first year and proclaimed:  What a Great Year to be a Blogger!

Photo from Theresa Thompson (https://www.flickr.com/photos/theresasthompson/2311764508/in/dateposted/)

Thursday, January 01, 2015

A Year of Reading Turns NINE!


Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Will Clayton

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO A YEAR OF READING! Our blog is NINE years old!

The thing we are most proud of in this nine-year run of blogging is that our blog has been a useful resource to teachers, media specialists, librarians, home-schoolers, readers, and writers around the world.

We each have lists of our own personal favorite posts -- both our own and each other's.

In honor of our blog birthday, here are our blog readers' NINE most popular posts of "all time:"

9. From 2011, Mary Lee's Home "Work" post, in which she shared a shift in her thinking about which kinds of work students do outside of school is most valuable and celebrated the most in our classrooms.

8. From last fall (2014), Franki's post New Baskets for our Third Grade Classroom. This just goes to show that our blog readers are always on the look-out for new books and new ways to think about organizing classroom libraries.

7. From 2012, Mary Lee's First Read Aloud of the Year post describes not just what she'll read aloud, but her criteria for choosing a first read aloud.

6. From 2010, Franki's 100 Things About Me As a Reader. Something as simple as creating such a list reveals much about you as a reader. Be inspired -- give this a try!

5. From 2006, the post that really launched our blog into the Kidlitosphere, our 100 Cool Teachers in Children's Literature post. We are up to 145 Cool Teachers (in order by author's last name).

4. From last July (2014), Franki's post about a new series of informational books, the Did You Know? series. Is this post popular because of the series of books, or because it is a common way to start a search? Who cares?!? Lots of people have seen this post!

3. From April 2011, Franki's Poetry Picnic post describing a week of poetry activities in the school library back when she was a media specialist.

2. From 2010, Franki's Pebble Go post. Pebble Go is a subscription-based online nonfiction tool for students in grades K-3.

AND OUR TOP POST FOR THE ENTIRE NINE-YEAR HISTORY OF THE BLOG IS...

1. From 2008, with over 100,000 hits, Mary Lee's Simile and Metaphor Poems post! Not surprisingly,  this post gets a lot of attention in the spring during Poetry Month, and when teachers across the country are reviewing figurative language before state testing.



THANK YOU, BLOG READERS, FOR BEING A PART OF THIS AMAZING CONVERSATION ABOUT BOOKS AND TEACHING, POETRY AND LIFE.

Sunday, August 31, 2014

Celebrating Amy Ludwig VanDerwater!

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Will Clayton

Even though our blog birthday was on January 1, we are celebrating it all year! On our 8th Birthday, we decided to celebrate 2014 by celebrating others who inspire us every day. Each month, on the 1st (or so) of the month, we will celebrate a fellow blogger whose work has inspired us. We feel so lucky to be part of the blog world that we want to celebrate all that everyone gives us each day.

This month, we are celebrating teacher and poet, Amy Ludwig VanDerwater! Her blog, The Poem Farm, is an amazing poetry and writing instruction resource for teachers. On the "Find a Poem" page, Amy has all the poems on her blog indexed by topic and technique. There is also a link to her amazing A-Z Poem Dictionary Hike, her 2012 National Poetry Month poem-a-day project.

Amy shines a spotlight on teachers and students and the poetry work they are doing in the classroom. On her "Poetry Peek" page, you can visit the classrooms she has featured.

If you and/or your students keep writer's notebooks, you will want to check out Amy's other blog, Sharing Our Notebooks. In the introduction, Amy writes,
"Hello, nosy friends! This blog is written by many different notebook-keepers, highlighting pages from a variety of notebooks: paper, digital, napkin, any kind! Read here, and learn how students, authors, artists, teachers, and people of all types use notebooks to strengthen their thinking. After reading, you might wish to try something new in your own writing, drawing, thinking..."
Amy is the co-author of one of Lucy Calkins' Units of Study writing guides, and is in the midst of a beautiful swan dive into the crystal blue water of children's book authoring, with one published (Forest Has a Song) and FIVE more forthcoming.

If you read Amy's blog or follow her on FaceBook, you know that besides being a poet, writer, and teacher, she is mother of three, wife of a science teacher, and very much the farm girl of her blog's Poem FARM name. And you know that one of her (and her family's) passions is rescuing and placing orphaned cats and kittens. Although it veers a bit from our typical donation to a literacy or child-based organization, it just feels right to donate this month, in Amy's honor, to Colony Cats, a local organization that rescues cats as well as practicing TNR (trap, neuter, release) to support the feral cat colonies in the Columbus area. The cat who generously lets AJ and me share his house is a former Colony Cats rescue cat. He gave a twitch of his tail as the sign of his approval of this donation.


Thursday, May 01, 2014

Celebrating Jen Robinson with a donation to RIF!

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Will Clayton

Even though our blog birthday was on January 1, we are celebrating it all year! On our 8th Birthday, we decided to celebrate 2014 by celebrating others who inspire us every day. Each month, on the 1st (or so) of the month, we will celebrate a fellow blogger whose work has inspired us. We feel so lucky to be part of the blog world that we want to celebrate all that everyone gives us each day.

Our year-long blog birthday celebration continues as we honor blogger and reading champion, Jen Robinson, of Jen Robinson's Book Page.

We have known Jen since we began blogging in 2006. Jen's blog was one of the first we read and one that became a kind of mentor blog for us.  In July of 2006, Franki noticed her "Cool Girls in Children's Literature" and "Cool Boys in Children's Literature" lists and decided to start a similar "100 Cool Teachers in Children's Literature" list. Jen and other bloggers in the newly named (as of June 5, 2006, with thanks to Melissa Wiley) Kidlitosphere linked to our blog and our list. We think it's fair to say that this blog is what it is today because of that launch by Jen.

Although not a librarian or teacher herself, Jen is one of the most active proponents of reading, not just in the Kidlitosphere, but the big wide Blogosphere. She reads avidly, review thoughtfully, all while raising her very own bookworm.  She is a resource for both parents and teachers and works tirelessly to support readers everywhere.

To honor Jen's passion for putting books in the hands of children we will be making a donation in her honor to Reading is Fundamental (RIF) this month.



Thank you Jen for for sharing generously and for all you do for readers and reading!


Wednesday, January 01, 2014

Happy Birthday to Us!

Flickr Creative Commons Photo by Will Clayton

On January 1 of every year, we celebrate our Blog Birthday! As you can tell from our blog's name, we never really expected to blog for so long--we were planning on blogging "A YEAR OF READING." But today, we celebrate A Year of Reading's 8th Birthday and we love our blog more and more each day!

Birthday Celebrations are an opportunity to give back, we think.

This year, we are celebrating in a different way. Last year, we committed to paying things forward because we so love being part of this blogging community. This year, we are going to pay it forward in a different way.

Franki received a gift from Tammy and Clare for Christmas. The gift was a donation to Birthday Wishes, a nonprofit that we didn't really know much about. But the more we read about the nonprofit, the more we loved the cause. We loved the fact that a gift of a donation, in Franki's name was given. So we thought about how we could embrace that feeling on our blog in 2014. Here is what we decided:

Every month, on (or close to) the first of the month, we'll be be donating $25 to a nonprofit that benefits children or literacy or something we care about. We'll donate the $25 as a way to pay things forward. We'll tell you a little about the charity and why we chose it.  But this donation will also be a way to honor those people we feel privileged to know in the blogging community--some who has really made a difference for one of us in the past month.  The donation will be made in that person's honor.

So, to kick things off, we are going to donate $25 to Birthday Wishes in honor of Kevin Hodgson. Kevin has always inspired us with his blog. His energy is contagious and his teaching and writing inspire us every day. But we picked him this month, because he's been such a tireless #nerdlution cheerleader for all of us trying out this 50 day challenge. He's written songs, poems and more to support others as they meet their goals. If you don't know Kevin's blog, you'll want to!

Monday, January 07, 2013

Blog Birthday: Giveback-Giveaway #7


Hard to believe that we've been blogging for SEVEN years!

This year we'd like to celebrate by giving back to our readers with a Giveback-Giveaway every day for seven days.

We'll choose a random winner from the comments each day and send them the featured book of the day. The books we've chosen are all new(ish) books that celebrate books and reading. (As we were choosing books, we realize that we need to update our Books About Books and Reading list in the sidebar. Are any of your favorites missing from our list?)

Thanks for stopping by to help us celebrate 7 years!

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Blog Birthday Giveback-Giveaway #7 -- HOW READING CHANGED MY LIFE


We decided to end our series with one of our favorite adult books about reading-How Reading Changed My Life by Anna Quindlen.  Anna Quindlen is a reader and she writes about how reading changed her life in this little book written for adults.  Anna Quindlen shares stories from her life as a reader and how important books have been throughout her life. I have read the book cover to cover many times and have used many excerpts with my students. We thought that Quindlen's celebration of reading was one of the best ways to give back to our readers. If you don't have a copy of this book, we highly recommend it. Comment below and you have a chance to win a copy! (But if you don't win, we still HIGHLY recommend this book to all readers out there!)

Sunday, January 06, 2013

Blog Birthday: Giveback-Giveaway #6


Hard to believe that we've been blogging for SEVEN years!

This year we'd like to celebrate by giving back to our readers with a Giveback-Giveaway every day for seven days.

We'll choose a random winner from the comments each day and send them the featured book of the day. The books we've chosen are all new(ish) books that celebrate books and reading. (As we were choosing books, we realized that we need to update our Books About Books and Reading list in the sidebar. Are any of your favorites missing from our list?)

Thanks for stopping by to help us celebrate 7 years!

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Blog Birthday Giveback-Giveaway #6 -- BOOKSPEAK by Laura Purdie Salas




A 2012 NCTE Notable Books in the Language Arts title

A 2012 CYBILS Poetry Finalist

AND

A must-have for every classroom library



As we wind down our 7 days of Blog Birthday Giveback-Giveaways, it is with great delight that we will give this fabulous book of poems about books to one lucky commenter today!!


Saturday, January 05, 2013

Blog Birthday: Giveback-Giveaway #5


Hard to believe that we've been blogging for SEVEN years!

This year we'd like to celebrate by giving back to our readers with a Giveback-Giveaway every day for seven days.

We'll choose a random winner from the comments each day and send them the featured book of the day. The books we've chosen are all new(ish) books that celebrate books and reading. (As we were choosing books, we realize that we need to update our Books About Books and Reading list in the sidebar. Are any of your favorites missing from our list?)

Thanks for stopping by to help us celebrate 7 years!

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Blog Birthday Giveback-Giveaway #5 -- THE BOOK WHISPERER

Although this is not a brand new book, how could we not include it in our celebration of books and reading? The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller is a book that for so many of us, helped us remember the important work we do with children. Awakening kids to reading is the work we do and Donalyn shares her own story here. Donalyn Miller is a master at matching kids with books and creating a reading community in her classroom.  Donalyn shares her vision as well as the nuts and bolts of how she accomplishes this each and every year. We know that many of our readers already own this book, but we feel like this is a good one to put in the hands of a colleague.  We are all about paying it forward this year, so if you already own this book (or a few copies of it as I do:-), please comment so that you have a chance to win and pass it along to a new teacher or someone you know who will love it too!

Friday, January 04, 2013

Poetry Friday and Blog Birthday: Giveback-Giveaway #4

Hard to believe that we've been blogging for SEVEN years!

This year we'd like to celebrate by giving back to our readers with a Giveback-Giveaway every day for seven days.

We'll choose a random winner from the comments each day and send them the featured book of the day. The books we've chosen are all new(ish) books that celebrate books and reading. (As we were choosing books, we realized that we need to update our Books About Books and Reading list in the sidebar. Are any of your favorites missing from our list?)

Thanks for stopping by to help us celebrate 7 years!

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Blog Birthday Giveback-Giveaway #4 -- FORGIVE ME, I MEANT TO DO IT




This is one of the books that suffered the fate of compromise as the first-round poetry judges for the CYBILS honed our list of finalists. I was THRILLED, then, to see that it was chosen as a Nerdy Poetry Book for 2012.

Our fifth graders ended 2012 by writing business letters. (Side note -- I'm thinking that this genre of letter-writing is headed the way of the dinosaurs. It's not that our students didn't have a lot they wanted to say to companies about their business or their product(s), but the kids really couldn't comprehend why they couldn't just email the company. And when it comes to finding mailing addresses online...it would seem that companies would rather communicate by email as well.)

So. Business letter follow-up. I'm thinking that before we fully immerse ourselves in our next writing project, it will be fun to write some false apologies...and this book will be our mentor text!

Have you seen it? The table of contents is hysterical. Every poem has the same title, after all...

The introduction is about 20 pages in -- one of the many fun surprises in this book.

There are kid-sized literary allusions in many of the poems -- Mother Goose rhymes, fairy tales, etc.

So much to love about this book. Franki reviewed it last March, and now we'd like for one lucky commenter to have a copy of this book for their home library, their classroom library, or to give to a friend who doesn't have it yet. Happy Poetry Friday!

Matt has the roundup today at Radio, Rhythm & Rhyme. The shiny new roundup calendar is posted in our sidebar and in the Kidlitosphere Yahoo group calendar. The html code for your very own sidebar calendar is located in the files of the Kidlitosphere Yahoo group. If you'd like me to send you the code by email, drop me a note at mlhahn at earthlink dot net. (Sorry I ran us so close to the wire this time. December almost got away from me. Thanks to all of the roundup volunteers!!)

Thursday, January 03, 2013

Blog Birthday: Giveback-Giveaway #3

Hard to believe that we've been blogging for SEVEN years!

This year we'd like to celebrate by giving back to our readers with a Giveback-Giveaway every day for seven days.

We'll choose a random winner from the comments each day and send them the featured book of the day. The books we've chosen are all new(ish) books that celebrate books and reading. (As we were choosing books, we realize that we need to update our Books About Books and Reading list in the sidebar. Are any of your favorites missing from our list?)

Thanks for stopping by to help us celebrate 7 years!

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Blog Birthday Giveback-Giveaway #3 -- BOOK LOVE by Penny Kittle


If you are looking for a great new professional book to ground you in good teaching that leads to helping students become lifelong readers, we highly recommend Book Love: Developing Depth, Stamina, and Passion in Adolescent Readers by Penny Kittle.  This book is an incredible celebration of books and reading and how important it is that we, as teachers, commit to helping every child become a reader.  Although this book is written with adolescent readers in mind, Penny's stories have messages for teachers at all levels.  She spends time telling us stories of reluctant readers who found the right book, she shares routines and strategies that work for her as a teacher. She shares great books. But she also shares the challenges that come with this commitment as a teacher. She knows the struggles we face when grading. She knows that it takes time and energy to build a classroom library that our kids deserve. And she knows that the work of committing to all readers is not always easy work.  The book is centered on being passionate about our readers and our classrooms. It is a powerful read and one that I believe all teachers should read.  Penny has the right message for us in these testing times and she is the perfect person to share it.  Definitely a book that must be added to your professional bookshelf.  This is a book I'll revisit over and over again and one that we are excited to give away!  Comment below for a chance to win this amazing professional read!

Wednesday, January 02, 2013

Blog Birthday: Giveback-Giveaway #2


Hard to believe that we've been blogging for SEVEN years!

This year we'd like to celebrate by giving back to our readers with a Giveback-Giveaway every day for seven days.

We'll choose a random winner from the comments each day and send them the featured book of the day. The books we've chosen are all new(ish) books that celebrate books and reading. (As we were choosing books, we realize that we need to update our Books About Books and Reading list in the sidebar. Are any of your favorites missing from our list?)

Thanks for stopping by to help us celebrate 7 years!

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Blog Birthday Giveback-Giveaway #2 


The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce. Franki first discovered the book as an amazing interactive ebook on her iPad. She reviewed it on the blog then.  Today, we will be giving away the hard copy of book.

This is an amazing story of the power of books and we are happy to share it today -- comment for a chance to win!