http://www.npr.org/2012/02/29/147572689/for-leap-day-only-a-rare-newspaper-goes-to-print
Think The Onion
Mike on Mike...

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/college-readiness-critical-reading-ben-johnson

“Dr. Mike Schmoker, in his book, Results Now recounts how reading helped Mike Rose transform himself from an educationally uninterested, nearly illiterate student to that of a successful college professor. Rose went to school in Los Angeles and until the tenth grade, he only went through the motions of learning in school. For Mike Rose, with his poor literacy, going to school made him feel embarrassed rather than challenged. His tenth grade teacher finally changed all that by exposing Mike and the other students to a heavy dose of challenging literature, talking about what was read, and writing about the issues in the books.

Today, Mike Rose is a professor at UCLA's Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Schmoker states emphatically that, ‘Generous amounts of close, purposeful reading, rereading, writing, and talking, as underemphasized as they are in K-12 education, are the essence of authentic literacy.”’

See 2/27/2012 Blog - Interview with Mike Rose

Winner of the 2011 National Book Award winner for fiction,Salvage the Bonesfollows a 14-year-old girl named Esch, newly pregnant and obsessed with Greek mythology, in Gulf Coast country on the eve of Hurricane Katrina.The New York Timescalled it a “taut, wily novel, smartly plotted and voluptuously written.”

Teaching skills for college and work

http://www.edutopia.org/files/existing/edutopianews.html

                   Quote on twitter 2/10/12:
RT @CarolJago Mike Rose on curriculum:
“If you go deep enough, you go wide."

Mike Rose interviewed by Bill Moyer about his book, Lives on the Boundary

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tCokgfZmHU

Exhibit A = Lesson:

                                                          “…wake students up to what they have inside of them.”

~Sir Ken Robinson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

Student response:

"That's how we as kids in our generation are teached."

"Teacher" response:

"Sigh..."

Exhibit B= Student’s TAKS testing results: Commended

Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America's Educationally Underprepared

 “Remedial, illiterate, intellectually deficient -these are the stigmas that define America’s educationally underprepared. Having grown up poor and been labeled this way, nationally acclaimed educator and author Mike Rose takes us into classrooms and communities to reveal what really lies behind the labels and test scores. With rich detail, Rose demonstrates innovative methods to initiate'problem' students into the world of language, literature, and written expression. This book challenges educators, policymakers, and parents to re-examine their assumptions about the capacities of a wide range of students. Already a classic, Lives on the Boundary offers a truly democratic vision, one that should be heeded by anyone concerned with America’s future.”

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/265056.Lives_on_the_Boundary

Oscar Nominations 2012
http://oscar.go.com/nominees 

A Conversation with Martin Scorsese: The Importance of Visual Literacy
http://www.edutopia.org/martin-scorsese-teaching-visual-literacy-video

Train your eye to look for clues...  (think inferring in reading)

Clip of Dead Poet’s Society

"An important theme in The Help is that we all need a person to tell

us we matter, someone who encourages us and gives us the freedom to

pursue our dreams. Just as Aibileen reminds Mae Mobley, 'You is kind,

you is smart, you is important,' one woman who always supported me and

convinced me I could achieve anything was my school librarian of 12

years, Judy Kirkpatrick."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/13/the-help-behind-the-scenes-on-the-movie.html

And the winner is…

http://www.npr.org/2012/02/13/146708601/viola-davis-the-fresh-air-interview

Oscar Nominations 2012
http://oscar.go.com/nominees 

 Mary J. Blige

“The Living Proof”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwI4zsNteU8&feature=player_embedded#at=13

See lyrics in Handout
   http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/dreamworks/thehelp/

 “Actor Demian Bichir is a superstar in his home country of Mexico, but he is relatively unknown in the United States. In his Oscar-nominated role inA Better Life, he plays an undocumented worker scraping by as a gardener in Los Angeles. A single father, he lives in fear of being deported and losing his son to gang life.”

http://www.npr.org/2012/02/17/147025376/demian-bichir-hopes-better-life-leads-to-oscar-win

Movie Trailer - think Prologue
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwIzW7yk3ZI

 "What day is today?" asked Pooh.

"It's today" squeaked Piglet.

"My favourite day" said Pooh.

Mardi Gras Anecdote

Illustration and citation

Day 1, post-storm, no problem: about a foot of storm sludge in the streets.

Day 2, the world changes. Zeitoun wakes to a sea of water, after the levees have failed. He’s neck-deep in a city of a thousand acts of desperation.

“He knew it would keep coming, would likely rise eight feet or more in his neighborhood, and more elsewhere,” Eggers writes. At that point, Zeitoun reaches into his aquarium, knowing his fish won’t survive there. He dropped them in the water that filled the house. It was the best chance they had."

Kids: that’s the kind of reporting detail that makes a book like this come alive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/books/review/Egan-t.html?pagewanted=all

“Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere. ”
Ronald Reagan (1911-2004);
40th U.S. President

Keeping it Real in Texas Classrooms:  Expository Writing & Reading in 2012

Texas Association for the Improvement of Reading (TAIR)
Central Texas Writing Project (CTWP)

“This session will invite participants to enhance their reading/writing workshops, with a focus on expository texts. Participants will discuss how to maintain student engagement throughout the literacy block, promote deeper comprehension, and build stamina as students approach the STAAR End of Course Exam and beyond.”

Co-presenters:  Lisa Blair & JoAnn Nash

Inspired by Lisa’s “Reading Workshops That Work” -Handouts

RROC-Parent Poem - Handouts

Conversation Hearts = TAKS
Lucy’s version =STAAR Stamina

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLkcR9UR9us

Do you Spotify?

http://www.spotify.com/us/about/what

“Text Rendering”

Thank you Gretchen Polnac

UTeach Liberal Arts

The University of Texas at Austin

http://teacherweb.com/BLOG/TX/RoundRockOpportunityCenter/Nash,JoAnn/1/blog.aspx?Post=967fba58-36cb-4992-9c11-02f7905579d2

Quote on twitter 2/10/12:

RT @CarolJago Mike Rose on curriculum:
“If you go deep enough, you go wide."

“…the single activity that consistently correlates with high levels of performance on standardized tests of reading [and I would say writing] ability.  And that is frequent, voluminous reading.”

~Nancie Atwell

The Reading Zone: How to Help Kids Become

Skilled, Passionate, Habitual, Critical Readers

Booktalked reading of Author’s Note from Perfect (Perfect Priscilla) 

Publishers Weekly Book Review:

“Hopkins’s verse is not only lean and sinuous, it also demonstrates a mastery of technique.”

http://ellenhopkins.com/YoungAdult/identical/

Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN (Cheers Deandre)

Dr. Victor Rios interview on PBS (thanks honey hubby) led to participate in Live Chat and follow-up letter to the author and student’s blog creation (Mmmwah! Abby) 

48 Rules of Power  “Greene and Elffers have created an heir to Machiavelli's Prince…” Publisher’s Weekly (“This book is gonna get me elected as President!”
I’m voting for you Ira)

Fiction? Yup! Bronx Masquerade prose and poetry response/conversation format

led to “Author Resources” on Teaching Books.net - including Multiple Intelligence lessons and Author Interview- “Research Resources in Context” - Harlem Renaissance - Langston Hughes - Domestic Violence - Bullying – and “What is a kufi?” question
(Whew!  Shout-Out Sherman)

“Words Changing Worlds” blog http://teacherweb.com/TX/RoundRockOpportunityCenter/Nash,JoAnn/t.aspx

*	Literary andinformational textsthat are relevant, contemporary, and interdisciplinary.
*
*	Instructional designthat builds knowledge and understanding through increasingly complex texts, skill development, and assignments.
*
*	Explicit instruction on using data tomake an argument, understanding and evaluating persuasive techniques, supporting recommendations with evidence, and more.
*
*	Daily opportunities for reflection andacademic discussionin one-on-one, small-group, and whole-class settings.
*
*	Vocabulary and language developmentthrough direct instruction, conversation and writing prompts, and repeated readings of text.

Keeping it Real in Texas Classrooms:  Expository Writing & Reading in 2012

Texas Association for the Improvement of Reading (TAIR)
Central Texas Writing Project (CTWP)

“This session will invite participants to enhance their reading/writing workshops, with a focus on expository texts. Participants will discuss how to maintain student engagement throughout the literacy block, promote deeper comprehension, and build stamina as students approach the STAAR End of Course Exam and beyond.”

Co-presenters:  Lisa Blair & JoAnn Nash

Inspired by Lisa’s “Reading Workshops That Work” -Handouts

RROC-Parent Poem - Handouts

Conversation Hearts = TAKS
Lucy’s version =STAAR Stamina

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLkcR9UR9us

Do you Spotify?

http://www.spotify.com/us/about/what

“Text Rendering”

Thank you Gretchen Polnac

UTeach Liberal Arts

The University of Texas at Austin

http://teacherweb.com/BLOG/TX/RoundRockOpportunityCenter/Nash,JoAnn/1/blog.aspx?Post=967fba58-36cb-4992-9c11-02f7905579d2

Quote on twitter 2/10/12:

RT @CarolJago Mike Rose on curriculum:
“If you go deep enough, you go wide."

“…the single activity that consistently correlates with high levels of performance on standardized tests of reading [and I would say writing] ability.  And that is frequent, voluminous reading.”

~Nancie Atwell

The Reading Zone: How to Help Kids Become

Skilled, Passionate, Habitual, Critical Readers

Booktalked reading of Author’s Note from Perfect (Perfect Priscilla)  

Publishers Weekly Book Review:

“Hopkins’s verse is not only lean and sinuous, it also demonstrates a mastery of technique.”

http://ellenhopkins.com/YoungAdult/identical/

Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN (Cheers Deandre)

Dr. Victor Rios interview on PBS (thanks honey hubby) led to participate in Live Chat and follow-up letter to the author and student’s blog creation (Mmmwah! Abby)  

48 Rules of Power  “Greene and Elffers have created an heir to Machiavelli's Prince…” Publisher’s Weekly (“This book is gonna get me elected as President!”
I’m voting for you Ira)

Fiction? Yup! Bronx Masquerade prose and poetry response/conversation format

led to “Author Resources” on Teaching Books.net - including Multiple Intelligence lessons and Author Interview- “Research Resources in Context” - Harlem Renaissance - Langston Hughes - Domestic Violence - Bullying – and “What is a kufi?” question
(Whew!  Shout-Out Sherman)

“Words Changing Worlds” blog http://teacherweb.com/TX/RoundRockOpportunityCenter/Nash,JoAnn/t.aspx

*	Literary andinformational textsthat are relevant, contemporary, and interdisciplinary.
*
*	Instructional designthat builds knowledge and understanding through increasingly complex texts, skill development, and assignments.
*
*	Explicit instruction on using data tomake an argument, understanding and evaluating persuasive techniques, supporting recommendations with evidence, and more.
*
*	Daily opportunities for reflection andacademic discussionin one-on-one, small-group, and whole-class settings.
*
*	Vocabulary and language developmentthrough direct instruction, conversation and writing prompts, and repeated readings of text.