It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

So many of my book recommendations have been from the weekly shares on teachmentortexts.com. Thank you to Jen and Kellee for hosting and thank you to all who contribute their reading lists! To see what others are reading, head on over to the website and link into all of the reading recommendations.

Because I have started a new position within our district as the Writing and Social Studies Coordinator, I have been doing a lot of professional reading. I do not have as much experience with younger grades so two of the books that have been especially helpful are In Pictures and In Words by Katie Wood Ray and First Grade Writers by Stephanie Parsons.

I love the strength of Katie Wood Ray's voice throughout In Pictures and In Words. She weaves in her own personal experiences as a writer while infusing practical advice for developing young story- tellers. I have marked many pages to share with kindergarten teachers and to return to in order to develop my own understanding of how to implement workshop teaching in kindergarten classrooms. After the initial section where Ray describes the basic premises of illustration study, she describes fifty illustration techniques with specific examples, understandings, and writing connections. It is definitely a helpful resource for kindergarten teachers since it offers many examples of student work and ways to inspire young writers to develop the artwork that supports their developing writing.

First Grade Writers is another book that I will revisit many times. It is full of practical teaching advice for workshop teachers of young students, offering possible teaching points, routines, predictable problems and solutions, assessment techniques, and suggested mentor texts. I love that this book captures the importance of writing workshop in developing young writers, but acknowledges the challenges and offers solutions. It is organized in terms of specific units and I will be sharing it with teachers as really helpful planning guide.

I have many more professional books on my TBR pile for the next couple of weeks. If anyone has a favorite professional book on writing, please share! Happy reading!