Book Shopping for Students?

Check out this blog post:  Wedding Band Shopping

This is an interesting take on helping kids find the right books for them. I would defiantly go with the employee that took the time to let me find the right fit. The reality in our classrooms is different when you are being hounded by administrators to get everything in that you are suppose to, and when you want to make sure kids are reading not wasting time. I do believe their is a happy medium where you can be the employee who takes the time, but with a little help from the other students in your classroom and other staff members. Start having students and staff create book recommendation lists and book trailers and get the whole school to really invest in the idea and remember if kids find the right books they will read, at least for a while.

Most Banned Books of 2014

What books would you keep out of kids hands?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/15/most-banned-books-2013_n_5152983.html?&ir=Education&ncid=tweetlnkushpmg00000023

IPAD use

As a reading teacher pulling small groups, how could you see yourself using an iPad?

Literacy, Creativity, & Play: 12 Apps That Should Be On Elementary School iPad http://www.teachthought.com/apps-2/12-apps-every-elementary-school-ipad/ via @teachthought

32 Habits That Make Thinkers

by Terry Heick

The difference between students and learners is something we’ve discussed before. On the surface it’s a matter of tone and compliance, but it also has to do with purpose–why are they learning? How much of themselves are invested in the process? And does it lead to personal change, or mere performance?

So below are 32 habits–or strategies, actions, or behaviors–that can lead to that critical shift that moves students from mere students to learners who are able to think critically for themselves. Key themes? Patience, scale, and perspective.

32 Habits That Make Thinkers

1. Doesn’t always seek to please others

2. Are charismatic listeners

3. Can learn from anything

4. Ask “Why?”

5. Are comfortable with uncertainty

6. Write for their own understanding, not performance

7. Value questions over answers

8. Think laterally, endlessly connecting this to that, here to there

9. Use divergent thinking

10. Can move back and forth from micro to macro thinking

11. Read for pleasure

12. Look for patterns

13. Study the nuance of things

14. See every situation as something new, because it is

15. Ask what they’re missing or haven’t considered

16. Playfully reframe and/or improve questions

17. Relate humility to learning

18. Can instantly separate fact from opinion

19. Resist confirmation bias (analyze then draw conclusion)

20. Don’t follow crowds

21. Articulate their own thinking without prompting (often creatively)

22. Design learning pathways effortlessly–they just go

23. Socialize thinking for collaboration rather than approval

24. See learning as inseparable from living

25. Reflect for analysis rather than judgment

26. Use emotion to catalyze their intellect

27. See situations from multiple perspectives

28. Play with ideas–and the complexity within the mundane

29. Think with simplicity about simple ideas, and simply about complex ideas

30. Demonstrate insatiable curiosity for something

31. Seek to be both rational and ridiculous in their thinking

32. Show patience (by “dwelling with” questions, texts, or problems)

Adapted Image attribution flickr user nasagoddardspaceflightcenter; 32 Habits That Make Thinkers

http://www.teachthought.com/learning/32-habits-that-make-thinkers/