Sunday, February 26, 2012

Weekly Wrap-up for February 26, 2012: Playing Catch-up and Teaching Texts.

I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea that this month is almost gone. While I haven't been busy doing too many things, I still feel like I am far behind on getting anything accomplished. I guess I will reevaluate that when I get to March 1, right?

I ended up going to see a movie with my mom on Thursday night, which we haven't done in a long time! We went and saw One for the Money, based on the Stephanie Plum series. I read the first ten a real long time ago, and my mom, I think, it caught up on the series, so it was fun to see the movie. It was definitely a good choice-funny with cute guys-and we had a good time.

On Friday, our district had a snow day. We were supposed to get 8+ inches of snow. We got maybe 1. But, Matt had the day off, so we took advantage of it and went to see an early movie. We figured that by going early, we would miss a lot of the crowd (the movie was at 4:30), but we walked into a theater that happened to have a large group of my old students. They all said hi, stared at Matt a bit, and made it that much more fun. :) We saw Wanderlust, which was a little more...extreme than I had planned on (don't get me wrong, it was funny, but a little over the top in regards to the humor). After, we hit up a local seafood place for dinner. It was a good date night and we both needed it, since we never go out anymore.

I've also been doing a lot of reading this week. I knew I had my third Roots post to read for, but I swore not to touch the book until I finished David Copperfield. I managed to finish it Tuesday so I could read Roots all day Wednesday. I finished both books, which was exciting since it doubled my monthly book number. :)

So while I managed to read a lot this week, I didn't read as much as I wanted to. I would have liked to be done with a few more titles (maybe a challenge book or two), but I can't help it that the chunky books are calling to me. My next read is Nicholas Nickleby, so I suppose I just do these things to myself, right? I doubt I will finish Nicholas Nickleby by the end of the month like I want to, but hopefully I can hit the halfway point.

The only other exciting thing to happen this month was my meeting to learn more about my long-term placement on Thursday morning. I'm starting on the 5th, just over a week away, and I will be there until the end of the school year. I'm really excited to get back into it, especially because of all the wonderful books pictured below:


The only two books that are new to me are The Color of Water and Alas, Babylon. I don't know much about either, so if you've read them, please give me some pointers. I do think Alas, Babylon will fit into Adam's Challenge for March, so I'm glad it will serve double duty.

I've read everything else at least once. I probably won't read The Crucible again until we're reading it in class since I am fairly familiar with it (so excited to teach it again), but I want to read through everything else before we get to it in class. Two of the classes are in the middle of two books, Night and Kindred, so I have to finish up the units on each. I'm planning on reading both this week (I read Kindred when I was a high schooler and Night a few years ago).

And can I tell you how stoked I am to teach Ender's Game and The Hunger Games? Card's novel got me hooked on science-fiction, so I have a soft spot for it. And The Hunger Games is just going to be fun. :) They just bought the books and no one has used them yet, so I can't wait to develop a unit for the book. I'm going to be reading that one with the class for the non-readers, so it should be a fun time.

So, my last week before teaching is going to be full of reading, don't you think? In addition to making some good progress with the Dickens title, I need to get through those other two titles. We'll see how that goes. :)

Well, I am spending the rest of my morning and afternoon reading, writing, and doing a little lesson-planning.

Hope you all have a happy reading week!

12 comments:

  1. That's a lot of reading! You sound happy. :) Sending you good thoughts and a hug. (I've never read Ender's Game and Hunger Games. I like that they're allowing contemporary work into the classroom.)

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  2. Great books to teach! I think The Hunger Games is a fantastic book for a classroom.

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  3. My students are always shocked when they see me out with my husband. I'm sure they think I live in the stock cupboard at work and come out only to teach them! :P

    Looks like you are going to be teaching some great books, bet you can't wait to get started. I'm doing Alice in Wonderland with my ten year olds at the moment, and they are loving it.

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  4. That is a pretty great stack of books. I wish some of the books I loved had been published in time for me to have studied them in high school. Though, all 4 English teachers I had missed the mark; not one of them taught Harry Potter. ;)

    Happy reading and I'm interested to see what you do with the hunger games.

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  5. I really need to read Ender's Game. My sister and dad are big fans, and I feel a bit ashamed that I haven't got round to it yet.

    Good luck with your teaching prep this week!

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  6. Wow. Teaching Ender's Game and the Hunger Games?? Can I take that class??

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  7. Ive never read Ender's Game, but I LOVED the Hunger Games. I need to finish the second one so I can put Mockingjay on my kindle. I might suck it up and put both Catching Fire & Mockingjay onto the kindle since I've got some traveling coming up. :)

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  8. I think it's awesome that the school has a class specifically for non-readers and that you get to teach The Hunger Games to them! What a great way to get people into reading. I think we sometimes create lifelong non-readers by pushing books on them that just aren't that interesting or seem too challenging unless you already enjoy reading. I've actually never read Ender's Game, so I'll have to check that out at some point.

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  9. sounds like a cool class. I remember at school we just read Shakespeare (which I enjoyed unlike most children) and some other book about a class project where you had to care for a sack of flour...

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  10. I don't remember reading anything contemporary when I was in high school (time of the dinosaurs), so I'm glad to see Hunger Games on your list. My college freshman daughter loved it.

    I have read The Color of Water and liked it a lot. It's an autobiography of a man with a white (Jewish) mother and a black father living in NYC (Brooklyn?) and how is mother pushes her children to succeed. It's themes include being raised in a color-blind family and then confronting the segregated world.

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  11. I swear, English classes have come a long way since I was in high school...and I'm not THAT old!

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  12. It sounds like you will have a lot of fun with those books for school! I've only read Night and The Crucible, both for school, but most of the others I know by reputation. Good luck with your preparations.

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