Summer Book Study

I'm going to go ahead and beg for forgiveness because I kind of forgot to tell you guys that I'm part of a book study.  I've been reading all along, but some how completely missed the fact that I should be blogging about all of the chapters.  Major Oops!

If you are interested, the book study I'm in is "Teaching Like a Pirate" by Dave Burgess.  I can honestly say, this is the perfect book to read before going back to school.  I truly want to teach like Dave or a Pirate.  Oh, by the way, pirate is an acronym.  P = Passion, I = Immersion... you get the point.  So far, my favorite chapter is the second one.  It really made me think.

Anyway,  if you click on the picture of the book, it will take you to Amazon.  Barnes and Noble has the book, but they don't have it for the Nook.  However, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Amazon did have it for the Kindle which is nice since we all know my iPad doesn't leave my side.

Grab the book, start reading it, and you can click on the pirate button to go read what other bloggers have written about each chapter.  Gina from Third Grade Tidbits and Jennifer from Rowdy in First Grade have done an incredible job putting this together.

Now, for my chapters.  I am posting about chapters 10 and 11 - Long Live the Arts and What's in it for Me?  Okay, so I'm aware right now that you are probably thinking, "Um... I haven't read the book yet.  How am I supposed to know what is happening?"  Well, like most teacher books, you DEFINITELY need to go back and read the whole book, but you will be fine getting an introduction to these two chapters.

Since I have the art chapters, I decided to do something a little different - I drew pictures to go with each of the main art areas.  The four areas are: The Picasso Hook, Mozart Hook, Dance and Drama Hook, and the Craft Store Hook.  I'm sure you can't guess my favorites by looking through my blog over the last few days.

I love how Dave gives ideas on how to use these areas within your teaching.  It made me think back to my best lessons and most of them include one of these areas.  I remember teaching my kids conjunctions using School House Rock videos off of YouTube.  We learned time, days of the week, months, counting, etc. using Harry Kindergarten videos.  I still think two of my favorite lessons are when we read the story "Did You See Chip?"  I let my kids (everyone that's comfortable) do a popsicle puppet play every year.  That's a week where grades are always high.  Not to mention, Fairy Tale rotations.  I think one of the biggest hits of the year was when we did the Craft Store Hook in my classroom.  I bought silver paper and cut up TONS of construction paper.  My kids got to write about if they had a robot and build a robot.  We had to miss working on them for a day or two because of a lot of stuff and I had several parents tell me their kids didn't want to miss school because they were worried about finishing their robots.  It's amazing how when we give them the materials, if we give them room to create every child can be creative whether it's through art, music, dance, or drama.

The second chapter that I'm blogging about is called What's in it for Me?.  The hooks for this chapter are: Student Hobby Hook, Real World Application Hook, The Life Changing Lesson Hook, Student Directed Hook, and Opportunistic Hook.  That sounds overwhelming when you first read the list, but we all do this stuff.  How many times have you graphed ice cream and then realized it would make a great topic to write about?  One of my favorite ones to do is read the book "Tell Me a Story".  It's about a grandmother telling of long ago.  Who is better than a grandparent telling kids of long ago, so we get my grandparents on speaker phone?  Every year, I help my class come up with a list of questions and then we call my grandparents.  There is nothing neater than hearing your grandfather explain that they had an outhouse and didn't have a phone.  I also fully believe in integrating as many holidays into my curriculum as possible.  If it's interesting, your students can learn anything regardless of how old they are.

After reading these two chapters, I think I'm going to make a list of some of these key points to keep in my lesson plan book.  That way when I'm planning I can make sure that I have at least one of these hooks included.  If we don't want to listen to a boring sermon without stories and excitement then why would our students enjoy it more than us?

Oh, and forgive me if I did my book study post wrong.  I have a habit of relating everything I read to a story, a picture, or something else.  It's part of why I don't forget anything, but not sure if I'm supposed to do a book study that way.

Now, if you are reading this at 1:20 a.m. go to bed and I'll see you guys tomorrow for "Guess What's in the Bag?"