What They Are Reading - 7th Hour!!!

First Shot - Sorrells
Snakehead - Horowitz
Buffalo Bill - Goodman
Winter Kill and Savage Run - both by CJ Box
Missouri Homestead - Tedrow
Pretty Little Liars - Shepard
Lightning Thief - Riordan
Keeping the Moon - Dessen
Dylan - Harrison

What They Are Reading - 3rd Hour!

Carnivorous Carnvial - Lemony Snicket
Marked - PC Cast
Goodbye Doesn't Mean Forever - L. McDaniel
Foxman - Paulsen
Dial L for Loser - Harrison
Twelve Mighty Orphans - Dent
Claire - Harrison
Nineteen Minutes - Piccoult
Someone Like You - Dessen
Knights of the Hill Country - Tharp
The Notebook - Sparks

What They Are Reading - 2nd Hour!

Perfect You - E. Scott
Glass - Hopkins
Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd
Just Another Day of My Insanely Real Life - B. Dee
There's Before and Then There's After - K. Harmel
That Summer - S. Dessen
The Lightning Thief - R. Riordan

and then there's Nick.

Cranberry Flats, by Lisa

My college roommate and I have reconnected thanks to Facebook and we discovered that, along with a lot of other things we share in common, we both love to blog.

Lisa's blog is right over there in the sidebar. Click on "Cranberry Flats" and enjoy Lisa's blogs on anything and everything :)

Lisa worries that I will "red-pen" her blog but she does a great job and her voice bolts out of her blogs. I can literally "hear" her while I read her entries. (We nerds that get paid to do that kind of thing work very hard to get a writer to put forth their own voice and not imitate others in their writing.)

Lisa is doing such a great job that I plan to use her as an example of "adult writers" who are writing for FUN (What, writing is fun??? you betcha!) by sharing her blog with my students.

While I often remember my year at on that college campus as being horrible in term of race relations and on-campus rape issues, CMSU should receive credit for giving me a wonderful "blind-date" roommate for my first year of college. Love ya Lisa!!!

WE DID IT!!!

The freshmen and I finished reading Romeo and Juliet today!!! What an accomplishment!

I reminded them that 6 weeks ago, they thought we'd never finish. :) Not only did we finish, I think most of them enjoyed the story. (Though they might not admit that!)

Their reading improved greatly as we moved through the five acts. They began to read with a great deal of fluency and I actually enjoyed listening to them !

My teaching assignment for next year does not include freshmen. That will be the first year of my teaching career that I will not be teaching R and J to a freshmen. I almost cried at the thought of that today as we finished 7th hour. I didn't realize how much of a part that R and J have been of my career.

Thanks R, J, and Bill Shakespeare for providing me with some memorable teaching moments.

Jonathan Tropper trumps Flannery

Oh Flannery... how I would love to love thee...but I just can't!!!

I've been working my way thru the biography very slowly. I decided to take a break and order a new book for my Nook. I'm reading Jonathan Tropper novels - every single one of them. :)

I'm now reading "Everything Changes". I love Tropper's style of writing!!!