favorite bits

{words to start the week}

Paul W. Hankins wrote "We Have a Code Situation: When the Heart of a Reader is in Arrest" for the Nerdy Book Club blog last week. It is a MUST READ for all educators. 

Franki Sibberson shared a project with the world last week. Solve It Your Way is a new site designed to foster critical thinking and global connections. I hope you'll check it out and consider ways you can participate. It will be a great resource to help teachers connect globally. 

This news story makes me chuckle. I want to tuck it away, because it might be perfect inspiration for a scene in a middle grade novel someday. A woman steals an Amazon package off of a man's porch. He files a police report, but also takes finding her into his own hands with a clever flier and sets up an email address to collect more information. Although he hasn't caught her, he has received 3 marriage proposals.

Tony Keefer shares ways he is planning to support the readers in his elementary classroom in developing reading habits and connect to many layers of communities of readers. In this post he shares systems that will support and encourage his students' reading lives. As he attests: 

The tool isn’t that important, so I will be flexible if these tools don’t work.  The more important concept is that readers track what they read and readers have plans for what they will read.  Building intentional readers has been my goal for many, many years.

I came across this truthful and humorous blog post about the stages of adoption written by Jen Hatmaker. I consider it a little more than serendipity that a friend of mine just recommended her book Seven to me. Although the blog post is a year old, Jen blogs regularly here.