September 18

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The Nerdy Bookcast by Donalyn Miller

Posted by on September 18, 2016 in Nerdy Site News | 5 Comments

When Colby and I started the Nerdy Book Club blog in 2011, we created a home where authors, illustrators, booksellers, teachers, librarians, administrators, and families can come together to celebrate children’s literature and share ideas for engaging children with lifelong reading. This community has grown into more than a blog and provides year round resources and opportunities to collaborate for thousands of readers.

As Nerdy moves into its sixth year this fall, we continue to ask our readers how Nerdy Book Club can meet the learning and sharing needs of this community. At Nerd Camp this summer, we held informal conversations with some of you to gauge interest in a Nerdy Book Club podcast. Listening to content provides one more learning option for you and gives us another mode for sharing Nerdy’s mission.

Last week, on September 11th, we launched the Nerdy Bookcast, our new podcast series created in collaboration with Kevin Carlson of Teacher Learning Sessions. Our three-part launch episode, “Books Teach Us How to Live” featured ideas for building children’s knowledge about 9/11 in the classroom and at home, and explored how books and the conversations around reading foster empathy and understanding. This week’s episode features Michigan principal, Jim Bailey, who wrote one of Nerdy’s most widely-read and shared posts, Curing the Reading GERM, and Global Read Aloud book talks from influential teacher, author, and Global Read Aloud founder, Pernille Ripp. Look for new episodes throughout the fall.

The Nerdy Bookcast is not just a recorded version of Nerdy Book Club. We want to extend conversations, build connections between ideas and themes, and offer additional learning through interviews, book talks, and other new content. We hope you enjoy the podcast and find it informative and inspiring. Consider subscribing to the podcast in iTunes and sharing it with your school communities and social media networks.

Over the years, almost 800 people have written posts for Nerdy Book Club. If you have written a post (or multiple posts) for Nerdy and would be interested in recording your post for the podcast, we want to hear from you. At the National Council of Teachers of English conference in Atlanta this November, we plan to record as many Nerdy Book Club posters as time permits. If you are attending NCTE and want to record your post, please complete our Google Form, so we may contact you.

 

Thank you for your continued support and enthusiasm for all things Nerdy. We continuously evolve this community through your feedback and active participation.

 

Donalyn Miller has taught fourth, fifth, and sixth grade English and Social Studies in Northeast Texas. She is the author of two books about encouraging students to read, The Book Whisperer (Jossey-Bass, 2009) and Reading in the Wild (Jossey-Bass, 2013). Donalyn co-hosts the monthly Twitter chat, #titletalk (with Nerdy Book Club co-founder, Colby Sharp), and created she the annual Twitter summer and holiday reading initiative, #bookaday. You can find her on Twitter at @donalynbooks or under a pile of books somewhere, happily reading.