Watching the ALA Youth Media awards with my students and Margie Culver yesterday was magical. A huge congratulations to all the winners.

I went live on YouTube after the awards to share my initial thoughts. You can check out that video below. I’ll be back later this week with a VLOG documenting celebrating the ALA Youth Media Awards with my students.

I think that the more fun we can make school the better. One of my least favorite things that I hear is that we need to prepare kids for “the real world”, and the “real world” isn’t always fun. I get that, but shesh…just because the world comes with its issues doesn’t mean we can’t make school awesome. I’m thankful that I teach in a school led by a principal (Sue Haney) that wants to make school as magical for kids as possible.

Last week Ms. Haney sent us all an email encouraging us to participate in Global School Play Day with our students. She sends us that email every year, and I’m always excited to get it. My students love Global School Play Day with all their hearts.

In the video below I share our day, my thoughts on play, and a goal that I set every year for my classroom.

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The Creativity Project drops next month! A huge thank you to everyone that has preordered a copy. It means the world to me.

If you’d like to preorder a copy you can click on this affiliate link to purchase it on Amazon, or click on the image below to purchase a signed copy from Bookbug.

Melissa Stewart is the queen of nonfiction books for kids. She does an amazing job helping teachers understand nonfiction books. She also writes awesome nonfiction books for kids. I really appreciate the way she shares new titles on social media.

Recently she wrote a blog post sharing the five types of nonfiction. I learned a ton from the post, and it is really helping my students. I decided to ask Melissa if she would be up for being on my YouTube series One Question With Mr. Sharp. She said yes!

Here’s the question I asked her: Why do you think it is important for kids to understand the 5 types of nonfiction?

Her answer below!

On November 1, Mr. Schu and I announced our 2018 Mock Caldecott list. I shared it with my students that day, and let them know that we’d be coming back to the list in the New Year. In the past I have done our Mock Caldecott unit in November, but it just felt too long before the winners were announced. I’m really glad I waited. Having our final vote at a time where the Caldecott Committee was in Denver to decide the actual winner, added a little more excitement to the event.

Our list consisted of 20 books. We read most of the books aloud in January, so that we would be ready to dig deeper in early February. We spent this week reread the 20 books over and over and over. Students worked in groups of 2 or 3. These small groups helped them have some rich and lively discussions. During our final day of the unit we, spent a solid 75 minutes rereading the books. Once the kids were ready, they voted for their top 5.

I tallied the votes, and the kids gathered on the carpet. Announcing the 5 finalists was a lot of fun. Emotions were all over the place. Some kids were excited to have 3 of their favorites on the list, and other kids were devastated that their favorite book didn’t make it to the next round. With our five books on display, kids took turns giving arguments about which books they felt were most distinguished. The conversation got a little heated when one kid called one of the finalist garbage. His evidence was impressive, but the kids that loved the “garbage book” really rallied together to defend the book.

Here are the top 5 books in both my morning class (left) and my afternoon class (right).

After every student had the opportunity to share their opinion, I passed out another ballet. This time kids were allowed to pick up to two books. Once we had our two finalist (below), students once again constructed arguments. Things got even more intense this round.

Morning Class Finalists

Afternoon Class Finalists

For the final vote, students just wrote the title they felt was most distinguished on a piece of paper. I collected the papers, and we tallied the votes live. It was so much fun watching them sit on the edge of their seats as each vote came in. In the end, The Antlered Ship was named most distinguished by my morning class.

My afternoon class went with Windows.

On Monday morning, we will stream the announcement live. I’m guessing that some of the books that the kids loved will be selected. I’m also thinking that we’ll be surprised by a few awards, and we’ll all add at least one title to our to-read list.

For more information on watching the announcement live check out this post on Mr. Schu’s blog.

Throughout the whole process, I kept my opinions about what I hope wins the Caldecott Medal to myself. If you are interested in knowing which books I picked, watch the video below.

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The Creativity Project drops next month! A huge thank you to everyone that has preordered a copy. It means the world to me.

If you’d like to preorder a copy you can click on this affiliate link to purchase it on Amazon, or click on the image below to purchase a signed copy from Bookbug.

I had no idea how important the 2008 Newbery-Caldecott Medal winning books were to children’s literature before Travis started working on this episode of The Yarn. I wonder if El Deafo and Roller Girl would have won Newbery Honors if 2008 didn’t happen. Would the committee considered a picture book like Last Stop on Market Street for Newbery 11 years ago? I’m not sure. What I am sure about is the fact that this episode that Travis made for The Yarn is one of the best we have ever created.

Check it out below!

You can check out more episodes of The Yarn podcast by visiting our School Library Journal official site.

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The Creativity Project drops next month! A huge thank you to everyone that has preordered a copy. It means the world to me.

If you’d like to preorder a copy you can click on this affiliate link to purchase it on amazon, or click on the image below to purchase a signed copy from Bookbug.