Leap to Literature

I am sort of fascinated by Leap Years. It's just one of those things that's kind of interesting to me, and since I've morphed into such a fact-bug I just had to look it up, so, here you go.

Books make me excited. I start to get the kid-in-a-candy-store reaction as soon as they're even mentioned so today I was ecstatic! It was not only the end of the Book Fair in my school, but the literacy coach of my East Harlem school was SO kind as to buy a TON of low-level, high interest books specifically for my students. I don't know if it's been mentioned that I teach 6th/7th/8th graders, and I would say on average they collectively read on a 2nd-3rd grade level. It is devastating almost every time I test them, so I am trying my best to put an EXTRA effort into organizing my library in my balcony classroom. Today was a smorgasbord of fun organizing my books. I had my absolute favorite class of 7th graders in my room for last period on Friday, which you might think would suck (it would with any other group), but with them it's a total blast. We spent half the period getting these books out of boxes, unwrapping packs of them, stamping them, labeling them. It was actually really fun and they ALL got into it. If kids can get excited about books in ANY way in my presence, I think I've had a good day. Several of them were begging to take a couple home. Triumph.

So here's a look at my shelves, loaded with books, waiting for eager students to take over reading one at a time.