Sonya's Teaching Blog

Reading Girl Code: Gaming, Going Viral and Getting It Done  was accidentally appropriate on my part, as May 11 was National  Girls Learning Code Day . This book was written by Sophie Houser and Andrea Gonzales and tells the true story of how they spent a summer learning to code with a  Girls Who Code  camp in New York City, created a game together as a final project, and experienced their game, Tampon Run , going viral and taking their lives by storm (the game was not working for me when I tried, but there is now a version for iOS included in the link). Girl Code  cover care of Goodreads . There were a lot of things I loved about this book. I love that it was a book written for teens, by teens. I loved that they speak so frankly about their experiences, including both the positive and the negative aspects of their experience. In addition to talking about coding, they discuss topics such as anxiety and impostor syndrome, trying to figure out what you want...

Cover of Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas' Red: A Haida Manga . Image care of chapters.indigo.ca Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas is often credited with the creation of the "Haida Manga" genre of graphica, and Red  is one of his most well-known works. It tells a classic Haida cautionary tale of pride and revenge in a very visual style. What's more, the pages of the book can be removed and put together to build a mural (though readers will need two copies of the book to do this properly). Mural made of pages from Red: A Haida Manga . Image care of Huffington Post . Yahgulanaas encourages readers to take the book apart for this purpose, and as much as it hurts me to take books apart, I think this is required to really appreciate the art of this book. When read in a linear fashion, some of the book feels out of order or like bits are missing. The extra connections made between pages complete the picture, and the story. And I think students would love the opportunity to ta...

In spite of having surgery today, I am going to get out an IMWAYR post this week because I have just read so much amazing stuff!  Speak  by Laurie Halse Anderson is an incredible book that I first need to mention comes with content warnings for sexual assault, self harm. These are difficult and yet necessary topics to discuss with young adults - they are sadly a reality for many youth these days and need to be discussed in classroom in supportive ways. Anderson, Laurie Halse (1999). Speak . New York: Farrar Straus Giroux. The book itself includes resources for youth needing support related to sexual assault, though they are USA centered. The first thing I recommend if you are going to discuss this book in a classroom setting is gathering resources that are local and useful to students in your class. Chances sadly pretty high that someone in that class will need these resources. Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak . Book cover care of goodreads.com Laurie Halse Anderson t...

This week I discovered the amazing book The Singing Bones  by Shaun Tan. Shaun Tan is best known for the wordless narrative  The Arrival , a somewhat abstract (and yet universal) look at what it is like immigrating to a foreign country. The Singing Bones  is inspired by the classic tales by the Brothers Grimm. Cover of Shaun Tan's The Singing Bones . Image from Amazon.com Each of the Grimms' tales is represented by a single image. Tan first created sculptures for each tale, and then placed them in a scene before taking a photograph. In the book, each image is accompanied by one or two paragraphs from an English translation of he original tale. "Little Red Cap", from The Singing Bones . Image care of My Best Friends Are Books . The images are beautifully done and convey so much expression and each really does tell a story.  "Hansel and Gretel", from The Singing Bones . Image care of Booktopia . Even the tales I was unfamiliar with, I rea...

In one of my classes, we have been discussing books in a weekly cycle, inspired by the Twitter hashtag #IMWAYR (it's Monday, what are you reading?) so I thought that I would share my thoughts on some of my book discoveries here on this blog on Mondays! I'm going to discuss adult books, children's books, but mostly young adult books, as they are a favorite of mine. Hopefully you will be inspired to do some reading of your own. This week, I want to share with you an amazing children's book by Rukhsana Khan called The Roses in My Carpets . The Roses in my Carpets  book cover care of goodreads . This book was published first published in 1998 and is now many years old, but I think it is becoming a classic and must-have of children's books in schools. It's an incredible story exploring some deep and deep themes in a way that makes them accessible for young people. The story is of a young boy living in a refugee camp and experiencing many hardships, but creat...