What I love most about reading: It gives you the ability to reach higher ground. And keep climbing.
—Oprah Winfrey
Let’s Talk about Books
One of my favorite things to do is to select a community read. The Lead Learners community is reading Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World by Anne-Laure Le Cunff. Last summer Choice Literacy contributors bonded over The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life by Suleika Jaouad.
At a recent Think Tank meeting for The Lead Learners community, I overheard a coach say, “I love the books Ruth chooses; they are exactly what I didn’t know I needed.”
I must admit, this compliment touched my heart, and I also know that it’s more than selecting a book that makes a community connect over a shared read. It takes a little finesse to use a book to uplift conversation and help a community connect and learn together.
We want this in our classrooms, too, and fortunately we live in a time when there are amazing new books published that are abundant in representing many different life experiences. Yet, it’s sometimes hard to keep up with the growing need to make curriculum relevant to today’s students.
That’s why we’ve designed Go-To Book Guides to support teachers in refreshing their toolboxes with new books to grab off the shelf and immediately use in classroom instruction.
Each guide contains a video introducing the book, a teacher resource to support instruction with minimal planning, and student activities to download and print.
This week, head over to our Go-To Book Guide page. Watch the videos and then pick one to try out with your students. These are free to our members, so make sure you’re logged in to access the entire guide! If you’re not a member, maybe now is the time to fix that…or you can purchase a guide as a stand-alone. Enjoy!
Shine on,
Ruth Ayres
Editor in Chief
Quote It:
New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.
—Unknown
That’s all for this week!
