Cruising down Highway 1

"Nobody wants to look at vacation pictures," one of Martin's co-workers once told him. So I won't bore you with all the photos we took on vacation but we were very pleased with this one of both of us in front of Hearst Castle.

This year we made it to a part of California we had not visited before. We flew to San Francisco and stayed a little south of town in a small motel in Pacifica. It had a lovely view of the rocky coastline and the drive into town was easy. The day we arrived we decided to ride the train/subway into downtown. We had no clue how to navigate the fee system but a very helpful BART worker showed us how to buy round-trip tickets. We walked around a very touristy area and ate dinner at a fusion/asian place in a high rise mall. Then we rode back to Pacifica. The BART tickets cost so much we decided that paying to park would be just as economical.

The next day we drove in and parked at Pier 39. We found a double decker tour bus that would show us the highlights of the area. We sat on the upper level around town and across the Golden Gate Bridge. It was foggy and chilly that morning. I was glad I had on a jacket and scarf.

Well, I won't give a blow by blow account of the week. I will just list the highlights: Muir Woods, Napa Valley, Sausilito, twisty Highway 1, Monterey Aquarium, Hearst Castle, Getty Malibu, and Garrison Keillor at the Hollywood Bowl. It was a memorable trip. As always it was also good to get back home.

Reading Results

Once again I have found that ELLs' reading comprehension has increased through extended reading time. My students read or listened to recorded books for at least 60 minutes per day for 4 weeks. Most students made six months gain in comprehension in less than a month. The other activity that seemed to help was to complete an EZ Cloze paragraph each day. This took about 15 minutes. After completing a paragraph at their seats, they moved to the carpet to highlight and check answers. Using a highlighter was fun and kept them from changing their answers. They chose a title for each paragraph which helped with main idea. I think this activity helped them understand how cloze paragraphs work, too.

I shared their improved reading levels with them after lunch today. We talked about how reading more helped them read better. Now if only we could spend more time reading at school instead of un-ending test prep junk.

Weekend Reading

My weekend reading assignment is to make a CD of a book for next week in summer school. The kids are clamoring to read TIGER, a fictional book about the five ancestors of Kung Fu. I have read it before and it is exciting and funny. The kids will love listening to it. I just need to find enough quiet time to record it.

In the non-quiet time I am going to finish reading CHILDREN OF THE LAMP. It is a very engaging and well written children's book about djinn. The title page says it is book one, so there must be a series. I'll have to check the library.

And speaking of the library, we went to the main library as part of our summer school field trip yesterday. There was a program and free stuff for the kids. Next year I am going to get the library schedule earlier so we can plan to attend more of the library programs. They are free and maybe the kids will get their parents to take them to some of the activities after summer school is over.

After the kids finish the next round of literature circles, I think we will use our reading time to read the ten books in the book bags. We'll see if that works out.

Reading to Liam

I woke up this morning thinking about what I could read to Liam. He is two days old today. It's not too soon to start reading. There are so many great children's books available. He has a little bookshelf full of books. But there are even more at the library. And some at our house, the bookstore, online, on my nook. Oh, the possibilities! I can't decide where to start. We will just have a basketful and read them one after the other. This is going to be fun!

Summers past

Today was the last day of school for students. After we put the kids on the buses and waited for the car riders to be picked up, the teachers remembered summers when we were kids. Summers seemed inviting and full of possibilities on the first day of vacation.

The early weeks of summer were filled with Vacation Bible School. When I was in elementary school VBS lasted two weeks. Then we would drive to visit our cousins in Georgia and at least once we attended VBS there.

We went to the library once a week. My favorite library was the Livingston Branch in front of the zoo. The librarian remembered us and what kinds of stories we liked to hear. My younger brother always wanted stories about cats. Some of my favorite stories were Katy No Pockets, Millions of Cats, and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. When I started reading chapter books I liked magic stories like Half Magic and classics like The Secret Garden.

We went swimming at Hoover Lake when mom's friend, Aunt Jean, invited us. Swimming in a lake was fun. The mud squished between my toes and fish gave me kisses on my legs if I was still in the water. I wasn't much of a swimmer more of a dog paddler. When I was older we went to Aunt Billie's house outside of Florence to swim in her pool. Our cousins were ten years younger than I was. I remember Bob, at maybe age two, was like a little dolphin. He mostly held his breath and swam under water, popping up to get another breath of air.

Another frequent summer activity was shelling butterbeans and purple hull peas. My thumbs turned green from the butterbeans and purple from the peas. We liked to sit in our treehouse shelling beans and peas and letting the hulls drop down onto the vacant lot next door. The best thing about having a garden was the watermelons. We had red and yellow watermelons. I never had too much watermelon.

Making homemade ice cream is another summer memory. The earliest memories are from when we lived on Morrison Road. We had a cow so there was plenty of cream and milk. Mom made custard and then it was hand cranked in a wooden ice cream freezer. The men took turns cranking the handle. Sometimes one of the kids had to sit on top of ice freezer as the ice cream became harder. We usually had vanilla but sometimes peach or strawberry.

The summers seemed longer then. We didn't start school until after Labor Day. Fewer school days were required than are required now. We played outside most of the day. When we were hot we would cool off with homemade popsicles or we would play inside making towns and roads with blocks, boxes, and peopling them with plastic animals and small dolls.

I hope my students have fun making memories this summer!

Chicago: Remembering

The summer before my tenth birthday we visited Chicago. My cousin Nancy went with us. Her mom, Aunt Becky, was expecting a baby(Virginia). I remember the strangest bits and pieces of that trip. Here are some of the things I remember- When we finally arrived in Chicago in our big, blue, Buick stationwagon, dad couldn't figure out how to get up to the street level of our hotel. We were on the lower level where the train tracks ran. We could see our hotel but couldn't get to it. Mom said dad just drove across the railroad tracks and somehow got to the right level. I asked mom why we took a trip to Chicago. She said we went to there because there were lots of museums and things to see. We stopped by my uncle's house in Urbana, Illinois, on the way. We didn't get to see Uncle Ray, Aunt Ruth, and David very often. Mom said some people in Mississippi advised dad to change car tags with Uncle Ray before we went to Chicago. A Mississippi tag in the north in 1961 was thought to cause trouble. In reality, people were nice to us. I have always found if you are nice, most people are nice, too. Mom said our hotel was right next to the Wrigley Building and the Chicago Tribune Building. She said we went on a tour of the newspaper and saw the presses run. It was a chance meeting with a Tribune employee who noticed we were not from around there, that ended up in a tour of building. I didn't remember the newspaper tour but I did remember visiting the Field Museum. I bought a metal bracelet imprinted with the name of the museum and wore it for years. After talking with mom I remembered going through a walk through model of the human heart at the museum. We took Nancy home to Georgia and if my memory is correct, she had a new baby sister when we got there. I was happy for her but I did not want a baby sister. Two younger brothers were enough for me.

Remembering Red Rocks

I have been listening to a Celtic Woman CD as I drive to school and back home. I try to sing along when I know the song. The best thing about the music is how I am transported through time and space back to the concert at Red Rocks. It was a magical setting with the massive rocks surrounding us, the light subtly changing as the sun went down. It is a wonderful memory. I am so glad we were able to share that night with Joey and Jessie.