"Thor's Day" Reading: A Book Blog Tour & Give-Away! - One Smart Cookie by Kym Brunner

 One Smart Cookie by Kym Brunner 

Age/Genre: YA Contemporary

Published: July 15, 2014 by Omnific Publishing

Synopsis:
Sixteen year old Sophie Dumbrowski, is an adorably inept teen living above her family-owned Polish bakery with her man-hungry mother and her spirit-conjuring grandmother, who together, are determined to find Sophie the perfect boyfriend.

 

But when Sophie meets two hot guys on the same day, she wonders if this a blessing or a curse. And is Sophie's inability to choose part of the reason the bakery business is failing miserably? The three generations of women need to use their heads, along with their hearts, to figure things out...before it's too late.

 From the moment I read the beginning of this book, the opening scene drew me in. Now that's it's available for purchase, I'm so excited to share this book with potential readers! The author, Kym Brunner has cooked up a success and a wonderful YA read with this book!

The novel starts with Sophie (our MC) taking a relationship quiz in Cosmo magazine:

         "'What's Your Guy-Q?' Given that I've only gone on three dates in my sixteen years--one with a moron, one with a liar, and one with a perv--I'm pretty sure my knowledge of guys will rank somewhere between dumbass and totally clueless."

Sophie has a lot on her plate. Besides the Polish pastries that her family-owned bakery serves up, her daily intake includes a dash of meddling from her Mom (who's flirtatious attitude takes the cake), a pinch of protectiveness from her Busia (grandmother) with her fill of faith and reliance on spirits, and a sweet-but-sometimes-sour relationship with her best friend, Teegan. Add to this mix two unbelievably scrumptious boyfriends (Nick and Giovanni), sweet but Oh-so-unexpected! and now you have the mixture of characters that make this book a satisfying read!

 Sophie's serious struggle to find the sweet-spot between work and play mixes well with the high-flavor of her Polish background that the author has masterfully sprinkled throughout. Although I don't remember ever having the pleasure of eating in a Polish bakery, I found myself dreaming of paczki and kolaczki and all variations of sweets dusted with powdered sugar! That's just the sprinkles on the cupcake! The reader won't easily forget the most important ingredients: Nick and Giovanni! O Moj Boze! (Which means, "Oh My God!" in Polish but sure sounds like you're saying "Oh, the Boys," doesn't it?)

Like any good recipe, the combination of sweet and bitter ingredients, like sugar and salt, that aren't compatible on their own, work wonderfully in this story! One Smart Cookie is a delicious read!


By sure to check out the rest of stops on the tour! Click the ATOM icon for more info.

OH! And there's a giveaway too! http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/f6237fd5449/

Want to know more?
 

• Find more about Kym Brunner and her books here: http://www.kymbrunner.com/
• She tweets! https://twitter.com/KymBrunner
• And she's on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/kymbrunnerauthor

 

Thor's Day-- UPDATE: NaNoWriMo Day 14!!!

Last weekend, the students and I got together for our first Saturday write-in. From 10 a.m. until nearly noon, we wrote, updated our status on the http://ywp.nanowrimo.org website, challenged each other with a few rounds of writeordie.com word sprints and had a nice break to create our annual NaNoWriMo writing journals and a few totem octopi.

The students that are showing up to the after-school, lunch and Saturday write-ins are a committed group. Even the high school students that are working on their own this year are making great progress!

I've included a few pictures of the journals some of the students created and a list of a few of the "mustache challenge" entries from our after-school write-in on Wednesday.  (The mustache challenge is a 10-minute word-sprint that is not won by word count, but on the best use of a mustache in your story. The winners won mustache-themed mini-notebooks.)

We still have sixteen more days of intense writing! I hope to get back to the normal routine of blog posts by the end of this month!

KEEP WRITING!

MUSTACHE CHALLENGE ENTRIES:

Alex, the bartender, "What is with the mustaches? They are kind of creepy."
"It's an annual thing. Last year, you missed it by a hair."
"That is the cheesiest pun ever."
"I know that's why you love me."
"Well, it's weird and I don't think I can handle this level of mustache."
"Very funny. I get off in about ten minutes. We could go to the club down the street."

I saw a faint outline of a bushy mustache that was plastered onto a man's face. This man I recognize as one of the leading workers in my queen's land As soon as I saw the mustache, in all it's burliness glory, I quickly get a glimpse of the bright blue eyes and the pale sweaty face.

He had a mustache. It was red, like his hair. It looked weird and almost like an orange color. It wasn't shaved so it was all over the lace. The weirdest fact about his mustache is that Justin only looked to be about 17.

The students were surprised to find the multi-colored mustache saying "good morning' and flying around the room, shocking the kids.

A pig with a mustache was carrying a taser, which also had a mustache.

Finally, the ambulance and fire truck come. Apparetnly one fire resucer likes mustaches He was wearing a "I mustache you a question. But I'll shave it for later" shrit, and he had a hairy mustache too. I mean who wouldn't liek a mustache?

The dealer his mustache is a bright neon, purple with white hairs dyed obviously, but it was in a cool way. But he didn't look a day over 20.

Thor's Day!--Deconstructing Common Core Prompts to Construct Reading Responses

It's Thor's Day! Time to take a peek at the Reading Lessons in my classrooms...

Many things frustrate teachers and parents when it comes to standardized testing. In the state of Illinois, the adoption of the Common Core Standards isn't something that truly upsets me (The Language Arts standards are clear and concise.) However, our state assessments are not as clearly defined.

Last year, teachers were prepared only with the "warning" that the ISAT would have a percentage of questions that were clearly Common Core. This year, we should be ready for a full-fledged testing based on these standards. Yet, if you visit the Illinois Board of Education site, you would find that the resources are lacking. The standards are there. In fact they are repeated in about five different "forms", but there are no clear references to scoring or practice questions. By gosh, Illinois! It is almost NOVEMBER!

Rant over...time to work it out.

Knowing that my students have been working hard, responding to tiered questions that I've modeled for them in class for weeks, I knew that it was time to step it up!

It was time to take the prompt apart and build it again from the pieces. Like learning to put together a model airplane, the students already had a good idea what a question and reading response should look like, but what I wanted them to do, was have the independent skill of taking all the pieces and reconstructing the knowledge for themselves.

First, we read and discussed three "wishes" stories. In our notes, students completed a chart comparing the wishes and general plot of all three.

I used "Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacobs, "The Third Wish" by Joan Aiken  and "Those Three Wishes" by Judith Gorog.

Today, I introduced Bloom's Taxonomy.

There are many varieties of the Bloom's Chart online. I chose this one so that we could identify (highlight) the group of Lower-Level thinking stems and Higher-Level thinking stems.

After a brief introduction and discussion of how each of these terms can be used in other subjects, we reviewed the basic construction of our previous reading response prompts and answers.

Here's what we decided that they all had in common:
     1. The Reading Responses opened with a QUESTION or COMMAND using a lower level verb. (Asking the reader to think about what they read or recall something.)
     2. The Reading Responses then asked a QUESTION or COMMANDED the reader to respond to what they read at a higher level. Often the reader needed to look at two of the text to answer.
     3. Required that the reader use evidence from the stories being referenced.

After I checked that everyone was clear about where these questioning strategies were coming from on the Bloom's chart, I set them to work. In small groups (no more than 4), they developed Reading Responses for the "wishes" stories that the other class would be answering.

As a teacher, I find it fulfilling to know that the students are excited for next week so that they can answer the questions that the other class has left for them!

Turning Summer Readers into Seasoned Vets!

It's Thor's Day! Time to take a peek at the Reading Lessons in my classrooms...

As the primary conduit between my students and books, it's important to me to know my students, their reading histories, and their personal reading skills and levels of confidence.

In the first quarter, unfortunately, many of my preteen readers are picking up a book for the first time after a three month hiatus. I'm sure you've seen a graphic like the one I'm sharing from Perry Public Schools.

These "summer" students (averaging 0% during the summer) may not have read anything deeper than the description of a double-cheese on a restaurant menu. So it's my job, a daunting task at times, to dig through their interests and backgrounds to find what works and what doesn't for each and everyone of these students.

Today, I worked with a student in my RtI small group. She struggles with fluency but is very motivated to read and she is not afraid to talk about what she likes and doesn't like. Although she started out with Andrew Clements and similar realistic, middle-grade fiction, I could tell that they weren't calling her back for more.

That's when I directed her to scan the backs of ghost stories and mysteries...

There are dozens of great mystery writers and engaging "spooky" series for middle school students available. Mary Downing Hahn appeals primarily to the girl readers in my classes, but Peg Kehret, the 39 Clues series and Patrick Carman attracts all readers!

She choose The Legend of Ghost Dog by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel. I'm happy to say; she's hooked on reading!

Of course, there are also a handful of junior high students who know exactly what they want to read and are voracious readers. They have their favorite series, author's they crave and genres that they gravitate towards.
For these readers, I provide a "shopping list" that they can fill out that will help me find new books for them.

I utilize my local libraries (and the lending library systems)! Once you've established a good relationship with them--you've returned books on time, in good condition, and share your knowledge to help the library out too--you will find that your local library can be your best outlet to keep these thirsty readers fed. (They have great library sales too!)

I have plans for the student I worked with today, though. (And she's not aware of it yet!)

As much as every reader struggles with it, we tend become comfortable within that "favorite". In the '80s I remember reading a dozen or so Danielle Steel and Stephen King books. The patterns were predictable and the characters were easy to imagine.

To grow as a reader, students have to get outside of this comfortable space. This is the hardest part of my job. I have to "shake it up" a bit in their comfortable reading world. That's why it is so important to have a plethora of books available.

One of the best ways to "sell" a student on a book that they may not have considered reading before is to let the students "advertise" to each other. Book talks, chats, reviews, "speed dates" etc are valuable ways to get the word out about an interesting book.

Recently, a student in one of my 7th grade classes demonstrated how Odysseus fooled and then stabbed Polymepheus. He learned this from reading Mary Pope Osborne's series. Another student read the chilling moment from Neal Shusterman's Unwind in which the main character, Connor, is asking, pleading, not to be unwound. (Beware teachers! Letting students share what they are reading can create wait-lists!)

Keep these things in mind as you cultivate a class of readers:
    1. Making the right match for the right student takes work. As the "model" reader for your students, they will look to you for reading advice.
    2. Stay current and read books at their levels. Your knowledge is invaluable!
    3. Read aloud and share your feelings about the books you personally enjoy and those that are not the right fit.
    4. Most of all, let students know that you are listening to them. If they like horses and you don't have any horse themed books in your class library, ask around! Find some and share them.

Raising a nation of readers will take time and hard work, but if you stock up on books and share those you love, soon, you'll find that your once "Summer Readers" will become "Seasoned Vets"!

Thor's Day! "Looking" at Reading in a New Way

It's Thor's Day! 

For those of you who didn't know this little fact, the Thursday, as we know it, evolved from it's namesake, Thor. Thus, a Eureka! moment! (Doesn't the strange spelling make sense now?)

On Thursdays I'll post a peek into the reading lessons and strategies I'm currently using in my classrooms...

At the beginning of the year, a big focus for me is how I will be working with my small groups/RTI class period. These are the students that WANT to read fluently, WANT to understand what it is that makes these books so good, and WANT to be independent readers but for one reason or another, they struggle.

This year, I'm starting with a group of 11-12 students. After conducting one-to-one reading interviews with all the students, I quickly realized that most of them struggle to make that "mini-movie" in their minds as they read. The ability to visualize a text well isn't an instinctual skill; it has to be taught. After I realized this was our greatest need, I decided it was the skill to focus on first.

To help my struggling readers, I borrowed and "leveled-up" (my term for taking what seems to be a lower/middle grade strategy and modifying it for junior high students) an idea I found through my pinterest boards. The original idea can be found here, on the blog, One Extra Degree.

In the past, I've used mini-notebooks with an entire class of students as we read Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff. It's the perfect book for middle-grade classrooms to use to practice visualization. The story has great places to stop and reflect on that are actually part of the plot. In the story, Hollis keeps her own sketch book and draws what she feels and interprets around her. I let the students draw what they THOUGHT Hollis's pictures looked like. Then we compared them to the images in the book.

For my RTI group, I had a stash of donated mini-notebooks. First, I printed out directions similar to the Snapshot page found on Amanda's website. I sized these to fit perfectly at the front of the notebook. This first week, I needed the students to begin working so that I could continue to assess individual needs and establish other skill practices. The students have been creating their own "snapshots" each day this week and are really finding it to be helpful.

Next week, we're going to add the covers to the notebooks. For now, I've included an image of my journal's sample cover.