Follow Your Heart!

Sometime in teaching you just have to follow your heart!  I read James Preller blog all the time for many reasons.  First of all I was able to meet him a few years ago when he visited our school for an author visit.  I was lucky enough to have a few minutes to discuss the idea about starting my blog and he gave me a few words of wisdom that I never will forget.  Next I love the connection he has with his readers and how he constantly writes about his books but more important to me about his readers.  I really like fan mail Wednesday and have shared many of those posts with students in my class during reading workshop.  Finally the part that touches me most are when he shares about his own family.  We both have a passion for baseball and so many of our experiences have been very similar. This week he posted about his daughter, Maggie, Post-It Note Binder.  As a fifth grade teacher and mom it touched my heart so the next day I shared the post with my class.  We talked about how our writer's notebooks should be personal and how it is a place to hold our thinking and treasures.  I asked my students to choose their favorite quote off of Maggie's binder and write about it but then share the quote with the family.  I even suggested to have a family member write about what the quote means to them-all I have to say is WOW!  I read these posts in awe and most important I can't imagine the conversations that happened at home when my students were sharing their quote.

Love the analogy that the parent connected for the child!

I love the way this parent shared their own favorite quote.

This parent connected the quote to a saying in Chinese celebrating their culture.