If you've been around BubbleUp Classroom for a while, you'll know that we're all about literacy. This week's Take5 is focused on just that -- helping our students become more successful readers, writing across the content areas, a easy-to-implement quick speaking mini lesson, and the importance of all of it in the business world. 

This week's BubbleUp Classroom Take5 is all about reading. Several of our featured articles focus on best practices (for teachers and parents) to help kids become life-long, proficient readers in an increasingly digital world.  In this post we explore why every class needs read-alouds, why it is important to engage in books that focus on life's challenges, why the key to raising a reader is showing that you value reading in your daily life, and more. Plus, we highlight reading challenges and resolutions for the year ahead. So what are you waiting for? Start reading...Take5.

For this week's Take5 we are highlighting BubbleUp Classroom's five most popular posts for librarians. These posts struck a chord with teachers and librarians alike. Some have been read by over 20,000 people (which made our little blog project feel like it wasn't so little any more)! If you have been with us since we began our blog in 2016, we hope that you enjoy this little virtual trip down memory lane. 

​Last weekend, Gretchen and I had the opportunity to travel to Anaheim, California to present at ASCD Empower17. We were thrilled to represent our incredible school district, FCPS, and were blown away by the support of the teachers who attended our session. We also were able to check out a variety of talks by educators, consultants, and administrators from across the country. 

This year our school district began a new focus on literacy, which we define as reading, writing, thinking, and discussing. I have the good fortune of being on my school's literacy team, which recently brought me to a local elementary school for some informal classroom observations during their literacy block. I believe deep in my educator heart that secondary teachers have so very much to learn from our elementary counterparts. Some of the ideas were new. Some were reminders of things that I once valued but have forgotten over time. I just have to say as an aside - those little 1st and 3rd graders are adorable! And their teachers were experts at keeping them engaged and learning.  I was and still am in awe. So here are five things, in no particular order, that I walked away with that day.  I hope you find something to inspire you in your own teaching practice.

I've been reading about book tastings for years. I first saw the idea on Buffy Hamilton's blog The Unquiet Librarian in 2011, but I couldn't wrap my brain around how a book tasting differed from speed dating with books, already a tool in my toolbox of ways to share books with students. It simply felt like a different costume for the same activity.