Cover Reveal: Contact by Laurisa White Reyes

The best part of this crazy writing world is the people you meet along the way. 

Laurisa White Reyes in one of those special folks. 

She wears many hats including founder and coordinator of our local Santa Clarita, California SCBWI Schmooze. 

I'm delighted to share her exciting news with you - this gorgeous cover of her upcoming novel.

Drum roll please...

 It takes only half a second, like those commercials where a crash test dummy rockets forward at high speed and slams into a wall. In that instant every thought in Emma Lynn Walsh’s head collides with mine—every thought, memory, hope, disappointment and dream.

I open my eyes to see Dr. Walsh peering at me, a puzzled expression on her face.

“Let—go—of—me,” I order though clenched teeth.”

Mira wants to die. She’s attempted suicide twice already and failed. Every time she comes in contact with another person, skin to skin, that person’s psyche uploads into hers. While her psychologist considers this a gift, for Mira it’s a curse from which she cannot escape. 

To make matters worse, Mira’s father is being investigated for the deaths of several volunteer test subjects of the miracle drug Gaudium. Shortly after Mira’s mother starts asking questions, she ends up in a coma. Although her father claims it was an accident, thanks to her “condition” Mira knows the truth, but proving it just might get her killed.

COMING JUNE 23rd 2014...

 

Laurisa White Reyes
            author of 

THE ROCK OF IVANORE 
THE LAST ENCHANTER
CONTACT (coming in June 2014)

Editor in chief of

MIDDLE SHELF: COOL READS FOR KIDS

MIDDLE GRADE MANIA BLOG DIRECTORY

Website

Blog

Facebook

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Guest Post from Julie Musil - Book Reviews: Go For It!

As my southern grandmother would say, "I'm thrilled spitless," to welcome the amazing
Julie Musil - 
Friend - Talented Author - Critique Partner - Inspiration


Her fantabulous debut novel

is available NOW - YES RIGHT NOW! 

Julie was my mentor in navigating online reviewing. 
Today she's sharing her savvy on the topic. 

The Importance of Book Reviews & How to Write Them

Book reviews...who needs ‘em? 

Apparently, writers and readers!

I’ll admit, I never used to write book reviews. If I loved a book I’d share the good news with my friends and family. 

But that was it.

As I prepared to self publish my YA novel,

The Boy Who Loved Fire, 

I learned how important reviews are for authors and readers. 

Why?

• Reviews are important to the author because even negative reviews make the title visible to potential readers. Visibility helps sell more books.
• A review is important to readers because it helps them decide whether or not to invest valuable time and money in a book.

I have two tips for leaving book reviews:

Be honest but fair. No need to be cruel with a review. If you didn’t like the book, don’t feel pressured to leave a five-star review. The point of a review is to help future readers. 

Say as much or as little as you’d like. If you want to say only a few words about what you did or didn’t like with the book, that’s fine. If you want to write an in-depth review about your favorite or least favorite parts of the book, go for it.

If you’ve read the story on a Kindle, chances are you’ll receive a pop up window requesting a star rating and review after you turn the final page. (I’m not sure if this happens with a Nook. If you know, please mention it in the comments). 

Here's the online step-by-step reviewing process for Amazon:

1. Search Amazon.com for the title in question. Click on the title.
2. Below the title, you should see “Be the first to write a review” or (4 customer reviews) — or however many reviews have been received so far. Click on this statement.
3. Under “Average Customer Review” you should see “Create Your Own Review.” Click that button.
4. Click on the number of stars you want to rate it. 1= I hate it, 2 = I don’t like it, 3 = It’s okay, 4 = I like it, 5 = I love it.
5. In the line provided, write a headline summary of your review. When writing the review for Philippa Gregory’s The Kingmaker’s Daughter, my title was “Fascinating read.”
6. Click in the box below where it says “Write your review here.” This is where you can write what you did or didn’t like about the book. In the review for The Kingmaker’s Daughter, I complimented the author on her beautiful language and character development.
7. Click Submit.

The process for Barnes and Noble and Goodreads are basically the same. 

And there you have it—a quickie tutorial on writing book reviews.

What’s your opinion on book reviews? Do you still trust them? Do you write them? Any tips you’d like to add?

If you’ve read The Boy Who Loved Fire, thank you so much! If you’d like to write a review, click here.

Julie, thank you so much for popping by. 

I wish you all good things for 

The Boy Who Loved Fire

Julie Musil writes Young Adult novels from her rural home in Southern California, where she lives with her husband and three sons. She’s an obsessive reader who loves stories that grab the heart and won’t let go. Her novel The Boy Who Loved Fire is available now. For more information, or to stop by and say Hi, please visit Julie on her blog, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

The Boy Who Loved Fire

By Julie Musil

Manny O’Donnell revels in his status at the top of his high school food chain. He and his friends party in the mountains on a blustery night, sharing liquor and lame ghost stories around a campfire. The next morning, as a wild fire rages in those same mountains, Manny experiences doubt. He was the last of the drunken crew to leave the cave, and he’s uncertain if he extinguished the flames. Within hours, he becomes the number one arson suspect.

Santa Ana winds + matches = disaster. You’d think he would've learned that the first time he started a fire.

As he evades a determined arson investigator, Manny, a modern-day Scrooge, is visited by ghosts of the past, present, and future. He’s forced to witness the fate of his inadvertent victims, including Abigail, the scarred beauty who softens his heart. Manny must choose between turning around his callous, self-centered attitude, or protecting his own skin at the expense of anyone who gets in his way.

Buy Links for The Boy Who Loved Fire

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Apple

Kobo

Smashwords

Print

Here and There and Everywhere

I'm taking a breather from my Common Core posts for a bit, but will return with info. on performance tasks and assessments next month.

I have been traveling like crazy for the past few weeks. My writerly imagination cache overflows in new surroundings. 

Is the gate to Narnia in Central Park?

Central Park

Do I dare pass through the tunnel?

Central Park

Broadway

Will I meet my prince?

Where are the folks who usually sit on this bench? 






Chicago - Lake Front

If I have the luxury of a few free hours, I'll make tracks to a museum to...

Go back in time

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Brave a vortex

Chicago Museum of Science and Industry

Redecorate
Metropolitan Museum of Art

I take tons of pictures and scribble pages of bullet points in my journal, stealing settings, details, people, conversations, accents, and magic as I travel.

How do you fill your imagination cache when you are away from home?

Open Submissions for Journeys of Wonder

I'm taking a quick break from the Common Core State Standards series to share an opportunity from Fuzzbom Publishing.

Submissions are open for Volume 4 in the Journeys of Wonder, adult speculative fiction series.

Go HERE for the submissions specifics.

Journeys of Wonder, Volumes 1-3 are each available in Kindle version on Amazon for 99 cents. Whoo-hoo. Just click on the covers in the sidebar to cyber pop to Amazon.

Check out our stories and add your own to the next volume.

Happy Submitting.

View From the 5th Grade Trenches: Common Core Standards #4 - Depth of Knowledge

Time to twist the Common Core State Standards binoculars to focus on Academic Conversations. 

The goal is to guide students to discuss learning beyond mere statement of fact, identification, or detail. Take new knowledge out for a spin. Savor learning. Poke it. Prod it. Turn it over. Examine it for faults. Challenge it. Connect it to previous knowledge bobbing just beneath the surface of their gray matter. Prove it with evidence. Seek clarification. Synthesize.

Academic Conversations occur teacher to student, and more importantly student to student. They travel though layers of intensity known as DEPTH OF KNOWLEDGE (DOK) levels.

Four levels of Depth of Knowledge have settled into place. They are based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, a hierarchy of knowledge retention.

Using the concept of the water cycle, here’s an oversimplified example of student knowledge traveling through the DOK levels.

DOK Level 1: Identification

What are the stages of the water cycle?

Evaporation – Condensation – Precipitation – Run Off

DOK Level 2: Exploration/Explanation

Discuss the cause and effect relationships in the water cycle.

The addition or removal of heat will cause the water to shift into different physical states. For example: Sunlight heats water droplets causing them to change from liquid to gas.

DOK Level 3: Shift in Perspective

If you look closer at the water cycle, what else do you see?

The speed in which molecules move and their density changes based on the physical state of the water. Higher temperatures cause water molecules to move faster.

DOK Level 4: Application of Knowledge

How can you connect your knowledge of the water cycle to other concepts?

All elements have freezing and boiling points. The water cycle exists in storms. - And of course they would explain in detail - create a project/presentation to illustrate their knowledge.

Students must be explicitly taught how to “think” through these levels. My socks have been knocked off by my fifth graders as I see them engaging in these sorts of academic conversations WITHOUT my intervention.

My students have prompt sheets to guide them through the DOK levels. Depending on the concept I will set the expectation of which DOK levels their conversation is required to cover.

The following links are from the Stanislaus County Department of Education. The first is an OVERVIEW of DEPTH OF KNOWLEDGE as applied to different curricular areas. The second are DOK QUESTION STEMS for academic conversations.

Here are some middle school students taking you though one application of depth of knowledge. I promise it's short.

Next week: Common Core Performance Tasks 

View From the 5th Grade Trenches: Common Core Standards #3 - Break it Down - Math

The Common Core State Standards for math are sliced into two distinct halves: 

Mathematical Practices and Content Standards

Together they offer:

Focus

Explicit instruction on grade level concepts

Coherence

Linking/extending previous learning and new information

Rigor

Conceptual understanding/procedural skill/application

MATHEMATICAL PRACTICES

This is the kingdom of problem solving techniques. The practices are consistent across grade levels. The italics are my "translations."

Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them

 Stick it out through all the steps in a mathematically sound way.

Reason abstractly and quantitatively.

Use number sense, picture sense, charts and graphs.

Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.

Explain WHY and HOW you or someone else came to an answer.

Model with mathematics.

Equations, expressions, proofs  

Use appropriate tools strategically

Technology

Attend to precision.

Don't panic - be systematic

Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning. Patterns/Connections

CONTENT STANDARDS

Here are the strands for fifth grade. Strands may vary at different grade levels, especially in the early grades or when you cross over into middle school and beyond. 

This is where I am doing the happy dance. Have you ever tried to teach a ten-year-old to calculate the surface area of a rectangular solid with fractions and decimals, or to subtract negative integers in several permutations? It's no picnic. With Common Core the shift in concepts (pushing more difficult ones to older grades) is more in line with my students' developmental abilities. 

Operations and Algebraic Thinking - OA

Expressions, Equations, Prime Factorization, Order of Operations, Input/Output Boxes

Number and Operations in Base Ten - NBT

Whole number and decimal operations, Place Values

Number and Operations - Fractions - NF

Fractions and Mixed Numbers

Measurement and Data - MD

Charts and Graphs, Volume

Geometry - G

Two dimensional figures, The Coordinate Plane

Freak Out Alert - 

Many of my colleagues in the primary grades are concerned about the heightened expectations, especially in problem solving for the younger kiddos. 

Double Freak Out Alert - 

During the transition to Common Core, we teachers have to figure out where to fill gaps that may occur between grade levels to make sure students are ready to tackle certain concepts. 

Yes, it is going to be boatloads of additional work for we underpaid and overworked educators as we transition to Common Core. 

Is it worth it?

I think so.

This link chats about the technology tie in to Common Core. Scroll down to Page 2 for the quick list. Digital Literacy

This week's video is a speedy fly-by of Mathematical Practices.

Keep those questions coming. Have a great week.

View From the 5th Grade Trenches: Common Core Standards #2 - Break It Down ELA

Welcome to the second installment of wrapping our heads around the Common Core State Standards. I'm going to aim binoculars at the English Language Arts - ELA- standards this week.

Below are the 6 ELA standard strands and a few examples of what fall under each. A key factor in Common Core State Standards is added academic rigor for the students. Please know, my scant examples do not do the complexity of each strand justice.  

If you are itching for more detail - you can go to your state's Department of Education website and they will have a Common Core Standards link with a plethora of information.

And now - English Language Arts... 

Reading Literature

Structure of literary forms (fiction, drama, poetry), figurative language, themes, tone, author's purpose, comprehension, inferencing, quoting accurately from a source

Reading Informational Text

Structure of non-fiction texts, comparing sources across media for relevancy, extracting information, judging with criteria, proving with evidence, comprehension, drawing conclusions, citation of resources

Speaking and Listening 

Oral presentations, cooperative group strategies such as negotiation and task completion, academic conversations (I will be focusing on these in a future post)

Writing

Application of learning from both Reading Literature and Reading Informational Text standards, purposes for writing, writing across forms such as narrative/informational/opinion pieces, use of multi-media to express ideas and information

Language

Conventions of language, grammar, punctuation, parts of speech, etc.

Reading Foundational Skills

Phonics, decoding, syllabication, morphology

BUT WHERE ARE SCIENCE, SOCIAL STUDIES, AND TECHNOLOGY?

In grade K-5, they are embedded within the ELA strands.

This weeks video is a quick overview of the purpose and benefits of national standards. And the doodler in me loves the graphic style of the presentation.

Common Core Link of the Week: Engage NY - Shifts for Students and Parents

This is the link I share with the parents in my class. Don't be put off by the length of the PDF. Each slide is a mini-poster of info. not a barrage of headache-inducing verbiage.

Question from last week:

Are standardized tests going away? 

The style of the test is changing. It will be online and include both individual and group tasks/assessments. I will focus on this topic in a future post.

Next week: Common Core Math Standards and Practices 

View From the 5th Grade Trenches: Common Core Standards #1 - What and Why?

It's time for me to hop into the national conversation (or should I say "freak out") on the Common Core Standards.

*Dons 5th Grade Teacher Hat*

This will be first in a series of bite-sized posts that will hopefully demystify the Common Core Standards. 

There are a lot of statements and opinions flying around out there. Let me be clear that I believe the Common Core Standards are a gift to our students.

What are the Common Core Standards?

Simply stated, they are a set of learning objectives/goals that have been agreed upon by a consortium of 46 states so far to create an equity of educational focus across the country. 

A small portion of the Common Core Standards will remain state specific. Each state will decide on that piece for themselves.

Why do we need the Common Core Standards?

We need to refocus education for 21st Century learners. We not only need to teach kids what to think in order to pass an annual standardized test, but HOW to arrive at information, and judge its relevance.

Simply put: Instead of list or name something - prove with evidence your knowledge of...

Research -  Question - Judge With Criteria - Extend - Apply

(News Flash: Effective teachers have been doing this since education began.)

Higher education and the workplace have become environments of think tanks, collective problem solving, and technological savvy.

We owe it to our children to prepare them for the rigors of this reality.

Standardized testing HAS NOT been an effective measurement of the capabilities necessary for future success on the world stage.

Here's a funny commentary on why implementing the Common Core Standards is the way to go for our kids. 

I'd love to hear from you. If you have any questions about The Common Core Standards, pop them in the comments and I will do my best to address them during this series.

Common Core Link of the Week: Common Core State Standards Initiative

Sizzling Cover Reveal: THE BOY WHO LOVED FIRE by Julie Musil

I LOVE - LOVE - LOVE it when talented storytellers like Julie Musil let their stories take flight on the indie winds. You will want to stay tuned for her launch date.

THE BOY WHO LOVED FIRE is a gripping story.

A story as riveting as this one is deserves an equally riveting cover.

Mission accomplished. 

Genre: Contemporary YA with a splash of ghosts 

Manny O’Donnell revels in his status at the top of his high school food chain. He and his friends party in the mountains on a blustery night, sharing liquor and lame ghost stories around a campfire. The next morning, as a wild fire rages in those same mountains, Manny experiences doubt. He was the last of the drunken crew to leave the cave, and he’s uncertain if he extinguished the flames. Within hours, he becomes the number one arson suspect.

Santa Ana winds + matches = disaster. You’d think he would've learned that the first time he started a fire.

As he evades a determined arson investigator, Manny, a modern-day Scrooge, is visited by ghosts of the past, present, and future. He’s forced to witness the fate of his inadvertent victims, including Abigail, the scarred beauty who softens his heart. Manny must choose between turning around his callous, self-centered attitude, or protecting his own skin at the expense of anyone who gets in his way.

Julie Musil is the author of YA fiction. As the mother of three teen boys, she’s immersed in teen speak, drama, and gym socks. She loves to chat--just ask her Super Supportive Hubby, the guy with the glazed eyes. Connect with Julie on Facebook, Twitter, or her blog. 

View From the 5th Grade Trenches:October 2013: Supa-cool Kids Reading List

Leslie is posting? 

Whaaaaaaa? 

It is not an illusion. This is a new post.

I hope no one dropped their laptop from shock when 

they saw this post.

Don't get excited. It's a quicky.

I found this supa-cool link with supa-cool books for kids to read. Interesting to browse from both my teacher and writer perspectives.

It's from NPR - Do you think me classy and erudite?

Enjoy.

100 Must Reads for Kids 9 - 14

Coming Soon:

Just what is all this Common Core hoopla?