Listen. Connect. Empower.

Community celebrations are some of my favorite units to teach in our library. There is something special about bringing people together over the common language of books/story and I am thrilled to teach in a like-minded community.  Books purchased for our Book Feast Community Read This year's community read is entitled A Book Feast: Bridging Cultures and Building Community with the Common Language of Food . This celebration is a collaboration between the town's public library and an incredibly generous group called DLIT - the Dedham Library Innovation Team, an amazing group of folks who support vibrant libraries in our town's public and school libraries.   A selection of books around the theme of food and community are being read in our town (see the list of books here ). Our school libraries received grant money to help us participate in this community celebration and with a selection of books and model magic, I prepared several weeks of reading, thinking, and creating ar...

Every year I examine books as mirrors and windows with my students.  Every year I tweak the exploration and this year was no different.  This year's additions included sticky notes and reflections.   Day 1: Mirror moments Sticky notes I created with Tony Vincent's template (link below) After modeling mirror moments (and having students make "me too" signals), students identified a mirror moment from a stack of books at their table.  "This is like my sister and I.  We fight all the time." - 3rd grader "When my mom tells me to clean my room I just sit because I don't know where to start." - 3rd grader Day 2: Window moments In the next class I modeled "window moments" and we drew windows in the air when we heard moments that were "not like us."   Students identified "window moments" at their tables with sticky notes. Students shared their "window moments" through the window we passed around our sharing circl...