I Call Them Author Competitions, But Really...

It's just an excuse for me to read more books to my younger students.  I started making a list of my students favorite books or ones I see them checkout often and was going to town until I started collecting photos of the authors and realized they were all White.  STOP!  Now, it's time to look up some authors from diverse backgrounds and introduce a few of those wonderful writers.  On the list: Nikki Giovanni, Grace Lin, Donald Crews, Alma Ada Flor, Mo Willems, and Peter Brown.  I feel that I was quite successful in our reading ventures, especially since students non-stop picked books to checkout from the display shelves of these authors.  

Here is how I introduced the concept which I borrowed from Pinterest (once again proving to myself that I don't just collect and store, I use pins too).  3 authors one week, then 3 different authors the next week.  I showed my students a flipchart on the Promethean Board that would allow me to graph each classes favorite author (this is where the photos came in handy).  I read aloud the stories and we discussed what we liked about each book and what we would change about each book.  Then I played videos of the authors, so that my students could see that authors are REAL people.  After that, they voted on which one they liked the best--which was tallied as a class for the graph.

Books read:
I Am Invite to a Party! by Mo Willems
You Will Be My Friend by Peter Brown
The Sun Is So Quiet by Nikki Giovanni
Fortune Cookie Fortunes by Grace Lin
Night at the Fair by Donald Crews
I Love Saturdays y domingos by Alma Ada Flor



Image courtesy of hin255 at freedigitalphotose.net

Quiet Signals

I've come to use quiet hand signals in class a lot.  It makes it easier for me to check for understanding, see what a student needs, and counting votes.  I'm not constantly being pestered with questions and students are not blurting out as much.  Last year should've clued me in to this since my 1st graders LOVED learning about Helen Keller and looking through sign language books.  They were constantly showing me what signs they learned.  

Here are some examples of when I use quiet signals:

• students signal to use the restroom, get tissue, get a pencil, and for help
• students use thumbs up or thumbs down to agree/disagree with a statement during group work
• students use thumbs up when they are finished with a task or are ready to move on to the next question
• students vote on items, such as the read aloud, indoor recess game, or movie using 1 finger, 2 fingers, or more

This just makes life a little more simple.

Image courtesy of Chaiwat/freedigitalphotos.net