Your Work, Your Kids, Your Ideas: Beyond Falling in Love with #CloseReading

A quick note today to say that I sometimes have to pinch myself when I think of how lucky I am to be a part of our education community. My heart and mind grows with every interaction, in person or through twitter and blogs.

I’ve been having a blast hearing some of the ideas and stories coming from studies of my newest book with Kate Roberts, Falling in Love with Close Reading.  It’s Kate and my hope that you find our book inspirational and practical. Equally, it is our hope that you grow well beyond it’s pages while you collaborate, talk, revise, and bridge our ideas to your own next studies and steps.  We don’t see the book as a strict regiment, but instead as one path from which we hope many more will grow.

by Gtapp used under Creative Commons lic

Here are a few examples of recent posts and tweets of educators, like you, developing new ideas, making your own exciting connections.  We love hearing these and hope you will share more.

Ongoing Twitter Community #FILWCloseReading

The hashtag #FILWCloseReading is alive and well.  Fran, Alison, and Laura are hosting a follow up chat, on December 9, to continue the conversation (unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, Kate and I are presenting together on Close Reading in Upstate NY, with only a few seats left, on that day and will most likely be in the air and miss it! We’ll read the archives and connect after, we promise.)

Many of you are also continuing to tweet using the hashtag. We love following your thinking and answering your questions or responding to comments.

Posts and Tweets on Next Steps and Growing Ideas after Reading FILWCR

Tara Smith, one of the new contributors to the dynamic Two Writing Teachers blog write about how Close Reading can support Close Writing. It’s a gorgeous post full of practical inspiration.

Fran McVeigh shares the development of her personal quest to study close reading in this post.

Then, follow the link below to Laura Komos’ Storify archive of Monday night’s #FILWCloseReading chat.

It’s so wonderful to learn along with all of you.  Thanks for all you do, everyday, on behalf of your students.[View the story “#FILWCloseReading chat” on Storify]