Saturday, May 31, 2008

A Great Influence

A person that has inspired me as an educator is Esme Codell. She is an educator who has made it her life's work to truly foster a love of reading in children. I first heard of Miss Codell when I found a copy of her book "Educating Esme" at my local libary. This book is an account of her first year as a public school teacher in Chicago. As I searched for more info about Miss Codell, I found that she had a website which included TONS of information about how to encourage reading in the classroom.

Miss Codell's website http://www.planetesme.com/ has invaluable information about author studies, books to use in your classroom throughout the year, and other information about reading. As a companion, Miss Codell has added another website http://www.planetesme.blogspot.com/ which gives information about new children's book titles.

Miss Codell has also written a book titled "How To Get Your Child to Love Reading." As a teacher, this has been a valuable resource because Miss Codell gives lots of books titles that are organized by subject or content areas. The list of books that Miss Codell gives in the book include classic children's book titles and new titles.

I was fortunate enough to hear Miss Codell speak a couple of years ago at the Illinos Reading Conference in Springfield, IL when she received the Prairie State Award for Excellence in Writing for Children. She was very down to earth and was very passionate about reading and encouraging a love of reading in everyone.

Miss Codell has written many books for children as well that I would recommend expecially "Sahara Special" and its companion "Vive La Paris". I would encourage everyone with a love of reading to visit her site and check out her books!

Friday, May 30, 2008

First Day of Summer

Hello-
It's the first day of summer and I am beginning my new journey of blogging about fostering a love of reading in children! I hope to give lots of information of how to foster a love of reading and links to people who I have learned from in fostering the love of reading in others...