Writer and Educator. I love words. vanessasiinohaack@substack.com
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Follows Hansel and Gretel as they walk out of their own story and into eight more tales, encountering such wicked …
Despite the tumor-shrinking medical miracle that has bought her a few years, Hazel has never been anything but terminal, her …
High in his attic bedroom, twelve-year-old David mourns the death of his mother, with only …
Really sweet book in the emotionally-lost-child-ends-up-in-fairyland vein. This one has some great themes about stories becoming alive when we read them--at times a bit heavy handed with this, but overall a really fun read.
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Really interesting and broadly applicable (my life, my students' lives, companies, organizations, political campaigns, general gettin'-sh*!-done). Also, so cool, it touches on character education ideas, specifically grit and willpower. More new ideas for the new semester!
I just read about this in Nov 2012 NCTE Chronicle this morning, got excited, and bought it online. It provides a really interesting and helpful way of thinking about how we learn across disciplines and how we think when we are learning. There are some nice parallels with the structures discussed in What Readers Really Do by Barnhouse and Vinton, and I'll be incorporating many of the ideas into my teaching right away.
So far, I've only read the non-discipline specific chapters in the beginning and the one on English. But I'll definitely go back to the other disciplines as well as the chapter on cross-discipline collaborations soon!
This book is beautiful. The characterization is fantastic. The style, which jumps around a bit in a kind of free association, took me a while to get used to, but I ended up really loving it. It felt like being privy to friends reminiscing, very intimate. Reading it felt like a temporary retreat into monastic life.
Update: More stars, because this book has deeply influenced the way I am thinking about teaching reading.
Also,
New blog post by V. Vinton that describes some open-mindedness necessary for a strong reader.
http://tomakeaprairie.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/auld-lang-syne-some-new-years-thoughts-by-way-of-don-murray/
"It seems unadvisable to me, as well, for a reader to know where he or she’s going (at least the first time through a text); for if we did know, there wouldn’t really be any need to keep turning the pages. Not knowing is what keeps us engaged; it’s what propels us forward. And it’s what helps us keep our minds open and receptive to whatever surprises the text holds. If you think, after all, that you know where you’re going, there’s little incentive to attend to the words, especially to those subtle shifts and hints that herald change—until, perhaps, you find yourself lost, which happens to students all the time.
"Unfortunately, however, many of the …
Update: More stars, because this book has deeply influenced the way I am thinking about teaching reading.
Also,
New blog post by V. Vinton that describes some open-mindedness necessary for a strong reader.
http://tomakeaprairie.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/auld-lang-syne-some-new-years-thoughts-by-way-of-don-murray/
"It seems unadvisable to me, as well, for a reader to know where he or she’s going (at least the first time through a text); for if we did know, there wouldn’t really be any need to keep turning the pages. Not knowing is what keeps us engaged; it’s what propels us forward. And it’s what helps us keep our minds open and receptive to whatever surprises the text holds. If you think, after all, that you know where you’re going, there’s little incentive to attend to the words, especially to those subtle shifts and hints that herald change—until, perhaps, you find yourself lost, which happens to students all the time.
"Unfortunately, however, many of the strategies we teach children to use, such as predicting and picture walks—and even connecting and accessing schema—work against this open mindset by encouraging students to form ideas before they even start reading. And as Murray says in yet another line that has implications for readers: “Beginning writers make the mistake of looking for ideas before beginning to write.”
. . .
As readers, however, we can’t revise the clues or patterns the writer has laid down; what we have to keep revising instead is what we think those patterns and clues reveal and what insights they might be leading us to. And to do this, once again, we have to apply Murray’s writing words to readers: “You discover what [the text has] to say by letting go of preconceptions.”"
A darn good sea yarn. At times, I wasn't sure whether I could really buy into a freed slave and a sea captain talking like professors of English and philosophy, making references to dualism, semiology, and Tintoretto, but I went with it. And it was fun and intense and disturbing, and I'm glad I did.
Meet Bridget Jones—a 30-something Singleton who is certain she would have all the answers if she could: a. lose 7 …
