The Book Somm

Book Reviews

I read so many young adult novels, it just made sense to start sharing my thoughts about them. I realize that most teachers don't have the time to read every new YA book that is published, and it is something of a hobby of mine. My hope is that by sharing my reviews of the books I read, along with the lessons that I create for them, I will introduce a teacher to a new book, which will, in turn, be shared with more students. 

Pairings

Choosing various resources will add depth to a student’s understanding of the characters, theme, setting, or conflict of a novel. By building their background knowledge through paired texts, students are able to make more connections, which will increase both their enjoyment and understanding of the text. Using paired texts within a novel unit also allows for exposure to and analysis of multiple genres. Creating novel units that include a diverse set of paired texts gives students the opportunity to work towards mastery of both fiction and nonfiction reading standards.

Lessons & Novel Units

When I really love a book that I read, I immediately start thinking about how I might use it in class. What can we learn from this?

It takes a great deal of time for me to create these novel lessons and I only do it for books that I truly love. I read a book at least five times when creating a novel study, so I really have to like it.

I also share lessons and teaching ideas for short stories and poetry.

Virtually Instructible

During the chaos of pandemic teaching and a cross country move, I lost my domain name to Middle School Mind. I am slowly but surely republishing all of those blog posts here, and adding some great new stuff as well. On this page you will find posts related to the topics seen below. This page has everything I have learned in my 21 years of middle school teaching that is not related to novels or reading.

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