Monday, 25 August 2008 - 5:13 PM MDT

Thank you all for your playful participation today. Maxime took your suggestions seriously and is busy working on something very aromatic with something to do with Jagermeister on the bottle. No doubt he is experimenting with your ideas from today!

I look forward to our semester together playing, learning from each other and sharing stories together. See you on Sept. 8 at SJC Library entrance. Look over our course blog to get a sneak preview of our resources!

In one reading peace.....................................................Frances

Monday, 8 September 2008 - 1:22 PM MDT

Hello Everyone!

Wasn't it great to already have a day off so soon...I hope you all enjoyed your day off and read some great children's books.  I would just like to say how wonderful it was to see a lot of familiar faces on our first day.....  It was a nice treat to have a surprise visit from Maxime and maybe if we're lucky it will be his last...lol jk Maxime.  All the comments on Maxime are available to be read and I hope you take advantage it is great entertainment.  I was having trouble posting this message last week and I wanted to remind you all about the book sale at the public library.  I hope a few of you made out like bandits with book purchases like I was able to.  Also please reply to Flo Trujillo's request in a timely manner so she is able to get coordinated ASAP.  See you all on Monday!

Tammie

Monday, 8 September 2008 - 8:23 PM MDT

Today SJC reference librarian Danielle Johnson gave us a tour of the SJC library and children's area. Her powerpoint presentation provided an overview of children's literature book awards and valuable web resources and databases. SJC West also has a great collection of multicultural books. We will take a trip there this semester so you can see for yourself!

Your newly created webpages will be linked to our children's literature class collection webpage at https://unm443.tripod.com/443collectionf08.html.

Please read over your syllabus to be discussed in class next week, Sept. 15. We will also be going to meet 'n' greet Leah Finch's 8th graders at Tibbetts where we will be doing our practicum with her students.

If you want to volunteer at the Storytelling Festival Oct. 9-11, please review the schedule below and email Flo Trujillo directly at ftrujill@infoway.org

There are tents set up where storytellers will be performing at different times during the day as listed. You will be signing up to help out by collecting tickets in the tents below: 

THURSDAY, 10/9
Animas            Thursday for 9:30 & 11:00am session
KWYS              Thursday for 9:30 & 11:00am session      
San Juan         Thursday for 9:30 & 11:00am session
La Plata           Thursday for 9:30 & 11:00am session
 

FRIDAY, 10/10
Animas            Thursday for 9:30 & 11:00am session
KWYS              Thursday for 9:30 & 11:00am session      
San Juan         Thursday for 9:30 & 11:00am session
La Plata            Thursday for 9:30 & 11:00am session

SATURDAY, 10/11
Animas            Thursday for 9:30 & 11:00am session
KWYS               Thursday for 9:30 & 11:00am session      
San Juan          Thursday for 9:30 & 11:00am session
La Plata           Thursday for 9:30 & 11:00am session

Enjoy your reading.......................Frances

Next week's scribe is Devin

Monday, 22 September 2008 - 1:35 PM MDT

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Hello everyone,

I hope the rest of you had an enjoyable time at Kiwanis Park.  Sitting in a classroom for hours can get very tiring on everyone, so it was nice of Frances to let us have a class outside.  We got to sit on the grass and have a discussion about what we’ll be doing in Leah Finch’s 8th grade class in the upcoming weeks.  We were handed a list of the students’ names and it will be interesting to meet them and see what we’re going to do. We also got a brochure of the Four Corners Storytelling Festival that looked pretty neat, I had no idea about this event before this class and I was surprised to see how big it is.  Towards the end of our session Frances assigned us a particular literary genre to study and present to the class at a later time.  I hope everyone will experience enjoyment in what they find and read.

Devin

Sunday, 5 October 2008 - 8:17 PM MDT

Sept. 29 Session

Hello Everyone!
Well we had a very fast class on Monday.  We met at Tibbetts and introduced ourselves to Ms. Finch's class with our I Am Poems.  I found it very interesting to see another aspect into our classmates minds.  A few Tibbetts students read their poems to us, which was very cool.  We had a chance to do a book commercial, and Prince of the Pond didn't make it, how sad :(  The Tibbetts students had a chance to research their choice of books online, and then they made their choice. 

We met back at the UNM classroom to go over any questions or comments.  We took a reading survey to see where we are now with reading and then we will get a similar one at the end of the semester.  Frances gave us some story quotes which were really interesting. 

For our next meeting with the Tibbetts students, Frances wanted us to have some background info on WWII.  We can post these on our website and then have the students look it up.
 

When doing the literary elements, have them posted on your website, with a jeopardy answer.  We will meet at Tibbetts on Monday at 1:55, after Tibbetts we are meeting back at the UNM classroom to go over literary circles.  Hope you have a great weekend, see you all on Monday!!!  Amber

Monday, 6 October 2008 - 10:37 AM MDT

Wasn’t working with the kids fun?! I hope everyone had a blast meeting their reading groups and introducing their books. Boy, what a learning curve. We all learned what worked and what didn’t really quick. It was nice talking about it afterwards too. Remember that Francis is looking into using the library at Tibbitts for us to meet before the class starts. This will give us time to work on our lesson plans in our groups before presenting them. (yea!) Also don’t forget about your reading genre project she assigned in the park. We still don’t have a date they are due, but I am sure we will present them soon. Have a great day, see you in class!

Thursday, 9 October 2008 - 10:08 PM MDT

Hello Everyone,

We started off this week’s class with a brief review of the importance of saving your website information on a word document. This particular review was initiated because someone in our class just so happened to have lost quite a bit of booklist information, namely me, Valerie. Thanks everyone for the review. Just so you know, I am now typing into a word document and then cutting and pasting into my website.

After the review we were introduced to Kirstine Emerson, the librarian for Tibbetts. We really appreciate her allowing us to meet every Monday in the library. Thanks Kirstine( I hope I am spelling her name correctly). After meeting Kirstine, we were fortunate to hear a wonderful story from Ami about how her eye became injured. We are all so glad you made it out of Panama Ami, but we are sorry that your eyes got salt water in them because you had to swim across the canal. We also hope that you are never strapped to the wings of an airplane ever again! Ami, that was a great story and I admire the way you think quick on your feet. I also want to thank Ami for sharing her jolly ranchers with us. They were good. As we moved on from Ami’s story, we welcomed Glynna to the class. We are glad she has joined us.

We then watched the film, “Looking into Literature Circles”. After the film we discussed “things to remember from the film”.

After the film discussion we went to Leah’s class and worked with our lit. groups.

As we arrived back at the library, Devin shared a story with us about his trip to Willy Wonka’s Candy factory. He said that he ate gobstoppers and grape candy. The magic elevator was not working while he was there so he didn’t get to ride in it. Thanks for the fun story Devin.

After his story, Devin then went on to share his genre topic, Manga.  We learned that manga was a Japanese form of graphic novels. It was designed for everyone, not just for kids. Manga was also written in traditional Japanese form. Devin brought three different Manga books to show the class.

We ended the class by going over the plus deltas from Leah’s class.

We will be meeting in Tibbett’s library every Monday at 1:00.

I hope everyone enjoys their time at the Storytelling festival this week.

And remember that our Midterm reflections are due before we meet again this coming Monday Oct. 13th.

Thanks guys, Valerie

Sunday, 12 October 2008 - 8:19 PM MDT

Hey Everyone!

 We sure did have a great meeting last week. Much thanks to Miss Valerie for giving all the juicy details on our fabulously rich story-telling class. I hope everyone is doing well!

Kelly

Monday, 13 October 2008 - 9:59 AM MDT

Thank you, Valerie, for such a detailed highlight. We were able to relive last Monday as dejavu while reading your post.

Monday, 13 October 2008 - 5:11 PM MDT

Class Scribe

Today, October 13, 2008, was a good day for Children’s Literature.  We began the class by talking a little bit about the Storytelling Festival, which seemed to be a hit for those who were able to attend.  Hooray for stories!  Next we met with Jana Wallace for a midterm reflection on how the class is going so far.  In small groups we discussed such questions as what is helping you learn in this class, what keeps you learning as much as you could, and what can be changed to make learning more effective for you?  I found it very helpful to think about and discuss these questions, and it seemed that every one else enjoyed having a voice also.

We then separated to our respective literature circles and spent from 2pm to 3pm discussing our books.  The overall feeling about the literature circles is that they are progressing and becoming better.

We then met in the conference room at Tibbetts and listened to a guest speaker, Connie Gosch.  Connie is an announcer on San Juan College’s radio station, and she has also written several books.  She shared with us the story Belles Star, a story of a dog, which is being published and will come out in August.  She also has other Belle stories swimming around inside her mind, so there may be a series of Belle stories to come.

She also shared with us some information about publishing books.  It is a long process that takes work, but seems to be worth it.  If any of us would like to publish a book keep in mind that you want a publisher that will provide the editor and pay you to publish the books. A good place to do research about publishers is a website called Predators and Editors, it is a type of a Better Business Bureau for publishing.

Midterms are due today, good luck to you all.  Watch your email for updates about next week’s class.  Keep up the good work, and thanks for all your comments and insights.  We all benefit when we all share and listen.   

Sunday, 19 October 2008 - 9:26 PM MDT

Hey everyone!

Just a note to let you know that November 17-25 is Children's Literature week. I thought you all would be interested in that news and to keep an eye out for any activities that may be going on. I know the Library always has story telling~ Enjoy!

Monday, 20 October 2008 - 7:42 AM MDT

Kelly, thank you for reminding us about Children's Literature Week November 17. As a class, let's plan on a poetry project to share and perform in collaboration with the Farmington Public Library.  We will talk more about it together!-)............frances

Monday, 27 October 2008 - 8:43 PM MDT

10/27/08

Well today wasn't the best day for me to be the scribe.  We didnt really meet as a formal class!  Frances was absent today.  She was attending a meeting for an Educational Board in D.C. 
Some of the groups met at 1:00 to go over the idea of doing a Jeopardy game or slide show, and the rest of us showed up at 1:55 to work with our groups.  We then met in our small groups afterwards to discuss how the meeting went and what we would do next week.
Things to keep in mind: 
*  Start studying poetry for the performance coming up soon.  And don't worry, Kelly, we don't hate you:  we know that it wasnt you that thought about it since you are about as excited as I am about it all!
*  Think about possible wrap-ups for your Tibbetts group.
*  Testing coming up November 15th. 

Friday, 31 October 2008 - 8:49 PM MDT

Hello Everyone!

October 20, 2008

Here’s the scoop:

·         Frances will be in Washington DC and we will miss her!

·         Meet Oct. 27th in Leah Finch’s classroom and then meet in the library to debrief and get ready for Nov. 3rd.

·         Children’s Literature Week Nov. 17-25. Poetry Party Performance?

·         Frances says: Thank you for midterm reflections, good journaling on Tibbetts literature circles and being good scribes.

·         Post Children’s Literature Resources monthly to your webpage.  Two resources are the NY Times in the children’s section also Book Links, and Voya.com.  You can use these as future resources. 

·         Author/Illustrator Focus is due Nov. 10th; post to your webpage.

·         Work on poetry because that’s the easiest to do with students.  They are free to write and it doesn’t have to be long.  Children are natural poets.

·         Kelly was the storyteller today; she went to the Pumpkin Patch and ran into Charlie Brown; had to sit on Linus’ dirty blanket.  The Great Pumpkin did not appear! 

·         Good class and see you next week!

Sunday, 16 November 2008 - 9:43 AM MST

Monday, November 10th, 2008

Today was a busy day in Children's Lit. We started with a great presentation on the Sci-Fi Genre and Climax and Denouement literary elements from Mrs. Amber. Great job Amber! See her webpage for further details. We then discussed our upcoming poetry performance at the Farmington Public Library. We decided on Wednesday, November 19th. We broke up into groups and got the ball rolling with picking our poems and brainstorming ideas. After meeting with our students at Tibbetts, we went to the Farmington Public Library and was given a tour of the education section (which I loved because I did not know that these resources existed!), and taken to the reference desk where we were given a brief online tour of how to access the library resources from home. Fantastic! The web site is www.infoway.org and you just click on online resources. We were also told about the new Just Ask features of the library in which you can call, come in, or instant message a librarian with any questions. Grand! We were then taken to the children’s section of the library where we met with Flo Trujillo. She took us to the children’s theatre and told us about past and upcoming events, and explained how the theatre is used. She then took us behind the scenes and showed us all the props that are used for these events, and graciously permitted us to use anything we needed for our poetry performance. WOW! How exciting! We were even given book bags from the Story Telling Festivals! Thank you Flo! Remember this Wednesday, the 19th is our Poetry Performance. Continue practicing your poems and getting excited for our big show! See you Monday. -Sarah

Monday, 17 November 2008 - 8:19 PM MST

Today we first met in Tibbetts Library to go over our poems for our debut on November 19th, Wednesday at Farmington Public Library.  There are lots of talents!  Someone should inform some talent scouts to our performance! :)  We met with our groups and we met again in the library to go over our poems and get prepared for Wednesday.  We will meet Monday, November 24th, at 1:55 to 3:00 pm because we using some time from our class for the performance.  Everyone performed very well.

Monday, 1 December 2008 - 7:47 AM MST

Monday, 20 October 2008 - 5:15 PM MDT

Hello Everyone!

October 20, 2008

Here’s the scoop:

·         Frances will be in Washington DC and we will miss her!

·         Meet Oct. 27th in Leah Finch’s classroom and then meet in the library to debrief and get ready for Nov. 3rd.

·         Children’s Literature Week Nov. 17-25. Poetry Party Performance?

·         Frances says: Thank you for midterm reflections, good journaling on Tibbetts literature circles and being good scribes.

·         Post Children’s Literature Resources monthly to your webpage.  Two resources are the NY Times in the children’s section also Book Links, and Voya.com.  You can use these as future resources.  

.         Author/Illustrator Focus is due Nov. 10th; post to your webpage.

·         Work on poetry because that’s the easiest to do with students.  They are free to write and it doesn’t have to be long.  Children are natural poets.

·         Kelly was the storyteller today; she went to the Pumpkin Patch and ran into Charlie Brown; had to sit on Linus’ dirty blanket.  The Great Pumpkin did not appear! 

·         Good class and see you next week!

Elsie

Monday, 8 December 2008 - 3:11 AM MST

Literary coaches met only with our Tibbetts students as not to interrupt the flow of our sessions and we did not meet for our children's literature clas.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Please check out our Poetry Performance pictures on our Children's Literature blog at https://unm443.tripod.com/poetry08.ppt

Frances

Tuesday, 17 February 2009 - 5:39 PM MST

There was no class 2-16-09 as it was President's Day.  We will meet again on February 23.