I’ve begun summer, sort of. My summer will consist of a series of cool trainings and hanging out with my children.  My favorite thing about summer, though, is the chance to read, read, read.  I read a book this past weekend, and it was a joy to completely lose myself in it.  The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly is a book that completely stole my heart.  I simultaneously wanted to be Calpurnia and save her from history.  Calpurnia is a young girl in 1899, trying to figure out how she can grow up to be a scientist while dealing with the educational demands of young ladies at the time…In school, she is graded for her posture, hand-sewing, and lace making. Her mother is trying to teach her house-keeping and cooking.  Meanwhile, Calpurnia slinks away any chance she gets to spend time with her naturalist grandfather, digging in the mud for worms, collecting and logging specimens, classifying new plants, reading Darwin and trying her best to avoid becoming a debutante. Even though I don’t really like bugs and plants, I identified with Calpurnia.  She is a girl trying to make a place for herself in the world, even though she is kind of different from all the other girls.    I won’t spoil the book for you, but highly recommend it!

When I told my marine biologist co-teacher about how much I liked the book, she passed me Emma and Charles: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman.  I’m about halfway through, and I am learning so much!  I never knew all of the scientists that were getting close to figuring out the same theory (or pieces of it) as Darwin.  I also never knew how religious Darwin’s wife was.  How incredible.  I can’t wait to find out how they deal with their differences of perspectives on the world.

I say I have  ”sort of”  begun summer because I’ve been in class for the last four days, ten hours a day.  No breaks. (Not even for lunch!)  I've learned a lot about what not  to do.  I also learned some great strategies for teaching reading skills.  We’ve got a great text, Literacy and Learning in the Content Areas by Sharon Kane.  It is a thick book with tons of wonderful activities that I think (hope) we will enjoy.  Some of the important things to help support struggling (and even non-struggling) readers include building background and vocabulary, teaching comprehension monitoring skills and teaching how to boil things down to the relevant information and summarize.  Here is an interesting podcast from the author of another book I've recently read:

Janet Allen Podcast