Revere Award Finalist! Upcoming SLJ Webinar

Over the weekend, we were delighted to learn that Teaching with Text Sets has been named a finalist for the Revere Award, for Professional Development, in the category of Curriculum, Instruction, and Classroom Practice. We are truly honored and humbled to be in the company of such outstanding authors and publishing organizations. Winners will be announced on Wednesday, June 4th.

This Thursday, May 1st, we will be presenting a webinar hosted by School Library Journal, entitled: "Text Sets: Blueprints for Curriculum Design." To register, please go to: http://www.slj.com/2014/02/webcasts/text-sets-blueprints-for-curriculum-building-on-common-core-2014/. The webinar runs from 3 pm - 4 pm EST.

Curriculum Connections at the Carle a Success!

Erika moderating the nonfiction picture book panel.

We so enjoyed our time at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art on Saturday, and working with a wonderful array of authors and illustrators. Our audience was filled with teachers, librarians, authors, and illustrators, allowing for vital cross-pollination.

Free Follett Webinar on Text Sets! April 8th

On Tuesday, April 8th we will be doing a webinar for Follett Learning entitled "Incorporating Text Sets into Elementary and Middle School Classrooms." You can find out more and register for this free webinar at: http://www2.follettlearning.com/webinars/2014-04-cappiello-dawes.cfm#.U2JvmkTB3u0.

Carle Museum and Kennedy Library

We wanted to let you know about two events that we will be speaking at this spring. 

On March 22nd, we will once again team up with the New England Chapter of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, and our Lesley colleague Grace Enriquez for "From Creative Process to Curriculum Connections," a workshop for teachers, librarians, authors, and illustrators. You can find out more about this affordable daylong workshop (only $30!) at https://newengland.scbwi.org/events/curriculum-connections/. 

We will also be speaking at "To Light the World: Stories of Hope and Courage for Challenging Times," a conference presented by the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site and John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on April 3, 2014. You can find out more about the daylong conference here: http://www.jfklibrary.org/Education/Teachers/Professional-Development-Image-List/To-Light-the-World.aspx.

Our New Book and Teaching with Text Sets in the News

Sorry that we have been remiss in posting of late. We have been hard at work writing our next book, which we like to describe as the "back story" to Teaching with Text Sets. In it, we discuss our process for selecting books for classroom use for a range of instructional purposes. We will be able to share more in the upcoming months with you. The book is expected to come out in the fall of 2014.

Also, we wanted to point out the shout-out that Teaching with Text Sets received, along with The Classroom Bookshelf blog that we co-author with two additional colleagues, from Marc Aronson's "Consider the Source" column on the School Library Journal webpage.

AASL Conference

The following story on the School Library Journal webpage discusses, among others, the picture book biography panel that Mary Ann chaired at the American Association of School Librarian's annual conference in Hartford, Connecticut. The story focuses on the many ways in which school librarians are involved, or can be involved, in implementing the Common Core State Standards in authentic ways: http://www.slj.com/2013/12/events/ala-conferences/from-definition-to-implementation-librarians-embrace-common-core-aasl-2013/.

Looking Forward to the Finnegan Lecture with Steve Jenkins and NCTE

Such an exciting week! On Thursday, November 21we will welcome author Steve Jenkins to Lesley for the Evelyn M. Finnegan Children's Literature Lecture Series. In celebration, we have a special Classroom Bookshelf entry featuring three of Jenkins's recent books. We are also looking forward to our presentation at NCTE on Friday, November 22, at 4:00 p.m. In a session titled Multimodal, Multigenre Text Sets Across the Grade Levels, we will share current work teachers and literacy coaches are doing across grade levels using the text set models. We hope to see you there!