Spring Break Books!

This past week was our spring break.  We did what it seems like half the population of Michigan did–travel down to the sunny beaches of Flordia.  The drive down and back was a little crazy (okay, a lot crazy) and Ft. Myers Beach was jam-packed with tourists, but it was well worth sitting in the warm sun even for a few short days.  During break, I learned a few things about myself.  I suffer from two addictions.  One I kind of knew about and the other was a surprise.  My first addiction–the internet.  Although our condo had internet and I did bring my computer with me, I didn’t take the right power cord.  My uncharged computer sat in a corner of the bedroom all week long.  I couldn’t work at all!  It took about three days, but I eventually adjusted.  My other addiction came as a surprise.  I am addicted to my books.  I have about 50 books on my countertop at home.  I had to choose which books to take with me to read on the beach.  So, which books made the cut.  Here are my favorites.

I love neurology and I’m really interested in how a typical reader learns to reads and how a struggling reader reads.  There are definite differences in the pathways that typical and struggling readers use when reading.  What’s more important is that, when given intervention, the pathways in the brain used for reading change!  It’s truly remarkable.  My favorite books on the neurology of reading are David Sousa’s How The Brain Learns to Read, Building The Reading Brain Pre K-3 by Patricia Wolfe and Pamela Nevills and Overcoming Dylexia by Sally Shaywitz.  Of course, I couldn’t leave these books behind.

On the Wednesday before break I was in one of my schools and a question came up regarding the best way to teach vocabulary.  Being a Speech/Language Pathologist prior to my current job, the topic of vocabulary is one of my favorites.  For sure I had to take my favorite books on vocabulary to the beach!

Isabel Beck’s book, Bringing Words To Life is my all-time favorite!

Janet Allen’s Words, Words, Words book made the beach read cut mostly because I really need to begin to think about literacy instruction in the upper grades.

You can’t talk about vocabulary instruction without talking about the king of educational research, Robert Marzano!  The Handbook for Classroom Instruction that Works and Vocabulary Games for the Classroom are both very heavy books, but well worth lugging to the beach.

I go nowhere without my two favorite books on Response to Intervention.  Response to Intervention: A Practical Guide for Every Teacher and A Principal’s Guide: Implementing Response To Intervention explains RtI so nicely and have many examples of successful implementation in schools.

A few of our teachers are reading “the sisters” two books, The Cafe Book and The Daily 5.  I’ve read selected chapters of the books, but really need to get a handle on the big picture and correlate it to the National Reading Panel’s recommendations.

Okay, listing all these books really does make it look like I’m really obsessive.  Truth is there are a few more books I threw in my beach reading bag and trucked down to the beach everyday.  There are even a few books that I wish I had with me.  I know most people take steamy novels with them on spring break, but I sat happily reading my professional books.  The only regret is that a few of them now have sand within their pages.