…changing the world, one reader at a time.
Happy birthday, Ruth Bader Ginsburg! It just so happens that we’ve been reading about Ruth’s incredible life and impact this week as part of our ongoing conversations about Women’s History Month. Can your first graders spot RBG’s dissent collar in a crowd? Thanks to I Dissent, mine can! This brilliant picture book walks us through […]
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For the first time this year, I put the work into bringing Black History Month to life in my library. It was such a wonderful month of questions, discussions, explorations, and growth! It changed the way that I look at displays and celebrations in my space, and the deep thinking they can inspire. As we […]
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I love my hair! / ¡Amo mi cabello! Señora Roth (@senorarothspanish) and I teamed up last week for a special bilingual story time with Sandra Cisneros’ book, Hairs / Pelitos. We were inspired by second grade students sharing stories about their identity with kindergarten readers – books like I am Enough and I Love My Hair […]
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Second graders were so fascinated by Barack Obama’s picture book, Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to my Daughters. We started our lesson by learning a little bit more about Barack Obama’s life and career from two of our Black History Month displays, the Who Said That? game and the daily facts on the circulation desk […]
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Readers and I shared Misty Copeland’s picture book Firebird this week, illustrated by Christopher Myers. The book is beautiful and the class loved learning about Misty and her difficult path to become a principal dancer for the American Ballet Company. During one class’ readaloud, an excited kindergartener cried, “That ballerina has a ponytail and brown […]
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For readers with more context in Black history who are ready for deeper conversations, The Girl with a Mind for Math is a perfect fit. Raye Montague’s story is both amazing and frustrating – and my students were vocal about their outrage. Their cries of “How can they treat her like that?! That’s not fair!” […]
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“Everybody uses words to express themselves. Except me. And I bet most people don’t realize the real power of words. But I do. Thoughts need words. Words need a voice.” Last week, fifteen families gathered in the Learning Village Library at 6 PM Family Book Club, inspired by Sharon Draper’s novel Out of My Mind. Here […]
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The other day I was in the library with a friend and fellow teacher, cleaning up after a volunteer event. She was looking through the books on display on the top of the shelves and picked up a copy of King and King, a fractured fairy tale in which a prince, searching for his future […]
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What is your biggest dream? And how would you feel if you shared it, and someone said, “You can’t do that”? Mae Among the Stars sparked out of this world conversations with kindergarten and first grade this week. We are having so much fun learning about Mae Jemison, the first Black woman to go to […]
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We honor Black history by… This display is designed to spark conversation and get students thinking. We wanted a display that helped students to see that Black history isn’t something old and stagnant, that can be learned and forgotten, but instead something living, breathing, and still happening right now (and not confined to a single […]
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