https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HyykD0X4iWoB_roppyuChmhRaPNGf_YFpmLLInch2lI/edit?usp=sharing
Top Twenty Fleming Readers per Grade Level
These are our top twenty readers per grade level for the fall semester of 2020-2021.
Eighth Grade Top Twenty Readers
| Isabella | Castillo | 1,188,011 |
| Jocelyn | Alvarez | 1,040,439 |
| Paola | Zagaceta | 909,679 |
| Adn | Mosilhy | 884,556 |
| Samantha | Carrillo | 842,730 |
| Marvelous | Ogbonnaya | 832,678 |
| Nicole | Krikorian Lopez | 630,312 |
| Amy | Maya | 613,114 |
| Elaine | Garcia | 560,376 |
| Katelyn | Luna | 532,985 |
| Kimberly | Makepeace | 501,430 |
| German | Gonzalez | 487,462 |
| Daniel | Manzo | 431,117 |
| Julian | Brito | 403,487 |
| Christopher | Ramirez Manzo | 399,082 |
| Alexi | Martinez | 371,599 |
| Daniel | Murillo | 431,117 |
| Katelyn | Rodriguez | 328,347 |
| Taeya | Johnson | 316,799 |
| Lanae Makayla | Moore | 314,224 |
Seventh Grade Top Twenty Readers
| Fairouz | Abuamreih | 1,365,191 |
| Valeria | Jaimes Cruz | 898,194 |
| Havana | Alfaro | 790,174 |
| Aileen | Quiroz | 394,061 |
| Ayleen | Gomez | 331,460 |
| Courtney | Parx | 286,146 |
| Abella | Kaylene | 266,842 |
| Ami-Alexander | Rodriguez | 263,709 |
| Desi | Yeaman | 259,614 |
| Christopher | Fratz | 257,154 |
| Gabriella | Camacho | 245,156 |
| Katherine | Tayun Mazariegos | 229,146 |
| Luna | Orozco | 227,781 |
| Sesimani | Finau | 204,468 |
| Zainab | Hussein | 199,457 |
| Jericho | Rabanal | 198,960 |
| Natasha | Velazquez | 188,801 |
| Kimberly | Heredia | 185,065 |
| Jonathan | Gutierrez | 183,055 |
| Andrew | Norris | 181,999 |
Sixth Grade Top Twenty Readers
| Mia | Alfaro | 2,174,419 |
| Daniel Clark | Moyo | 1,959,905 |
| Ahmad | Kamran | 983,397 |
| Amanze | Igbonagwam | 317,685 |
| Amy | Aranda Constanza | 256,220 |
| Natalie | Hernandez | 255,205 |
| Kirk Damien | Luz | 226,940 |
| Carlos | Herrera | 225,740 |
| Mia | Ramirez | 223,882 |
| Ranci | Morhamedali | 218,435 |
| Kevin | Nunez-Toledo | 216,368 |
| Katelyn | Hernandez | 194,876 |
| Somtoya | Oranu | 175,457 |
| Abraham | Duru | 162,228 |
| Kian | Aristides | 161,883 |
| Daniel | Ramirez | 150,255 |
| Jessi | Sanchez | 150,155 |
| Andrea | Sandoval | 140,822 |
| Kaylee | Allen | 131,380 |
| Lil’ Moses | Garcia Jr. | 129,34 |
Creating Avatars
Me as a Great Gatsby Character! How fun!
There are many sites where students (and teachers) can create avatars. Some are free, and some require a fee. I like Voki because it’s developed for the classroom, and teachers have control over the student accounts. However, I don’t know enough about coding to add my Voki to this blog other than adding the link. They are easy to embed in web pages though. Students love creating Vokis, and besides using their imaginations to create characters for stories, students can also use Vokis to present material, and so can teachers. There are 186 lesson plans from different subject areas. The cost is $29.95 a year. Below is the link to the one I created. The other avatars I created from free websites: http://apps.warnerbros.com/greatgatsby/avatarcreator/us/ and http://avachara.com/avatar/.
This one looks a bit more like me, sort of.
The Stories Hidden in Junk Art
Summer school ended Friday morning and I spent a lovely afternoon at the Los Angeles Museum of Art with my friend, Joni, viewing the contemporary art of a great junk art master, Noah Purifoy. I never thought I would enjoy junk art, but as I stopped to view his work, I realized that in every tiny piece embedded in each work, there was a story of someone’s life. And then I started imagining those lives and I was hooked. Someday I want to go to Joshua Tree to see the work his large-scale sculptures.
His earliest body of sculpture, constructed out of charred debris from the 1965 Watts Rebellion, was the basis for 66 Signs of Neon, a landmark group exhibition about the riots that traveled to nine venues between 1966 and 1969. In line with the postwar period’s general fascination with the street and its objects, Purifoy’s 66 Signs of Neon constituted a Duchampian approach to the fire-molded alleys of Watts, Noah Porifoyhttp://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/noah-purifoy-junk-dada
One more day of summer school…and then…
One more day of summer school and then a few days of reading and relaxing, then many days of getting ready for the new school year. Like many teachers, I find the beginning of the year my favorite. I enjoy decorating and organizing my classroom, researching ideas, and writing lesson plans. The anticipation and excitement of meeting my students the first day is an amazing, almost overwhelming feeling. Nothing can beat that first day of school…more on that when it happens.
I found a couple resources for getting ready for the school year I don’t want to forget: http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/critical-first-week-high-school. This is an article of ideas for establishing rapport among students and building classroom community the first week of school. Christy Brown, a middle school language arts teacher also came up with this idea for team building http://inthemiddle7thgradeela.blogspot.com/2013/08/i-am-loving-my-new-group-of-seventh.html. And, there are even more ideas here on the We are Teachers blog http://www.weareteachers.com/blogs/teachers-lounge/2012/08/30/get-to-know-a-middle-schooler.
Wow! I have a lot to do!
Exploring Hannibal
Welcome to Hannibal
My husband and I spent a wonderful day in Hannibal. The townspeople were so friendly and helpful and seemed so proud to have Samuel Clemens as an honored son. After grabbing iced coffees at Java Jive (a wonderfully atmospheric coffee house), we began exploring the shops and museums on Hannibal’s Main Street. The shops had quaint names like “Aunt Polly’s Treasures” and were filled with all types of Mark Twain paraphernalia, from typical souvenir mugs to scholastic books on Mark Twain.
The Mark Twain Boyhood Home http://www.marktwainmuseum.org/ was our first museum stop.
The original home of Samuel Clemens has been carefully maintained and includes the bedroom of the young boy and the infamous window that like Tom Sawyer, he stole out of to meet up with friends like Tom Blankenship (the boy Huck was modeled after). Each room of the house has a white statue of Mark Twain, looming ghost-like from windows and corners. Beautiful closet dioramas reveal the lives of Samuel Clemens’ family members.
Exhibit at Mark Twain Boyhood Home Museum
Mark Twain Boyhood Home
Tom Sawyer Fence at the Mark Twain Boyhood Home
Mark Twain House: Climbing Out of the Window
Closet Dioramas
Mark Twain’s Ghostly Statue
Becky Thatcher House
Across the street from the Clemens’ home is the Becky Thatcher house, the real life home of the girl she was modeled after, Laura Hawkins, Sam’s boyhood sweetheart. Every year during Tom Sawyer Days five seventh grade couples are selected to represent Tom and Becky throughout the following year. We were not able to attend, but I found this cute couple on the Facebook page for the contest.
2014 Tom and Becky Finalists
Next to Becky’s house is the building housing the law offices of Sam Clemens’ father…you can peer in one window and see a dead body on the floor, of course it’s not the same one young Sam saw in the middle of the night. The story goes that he knew he would be in trouble for sneaking out of the house, so he thought he would spend the rest of the night sleeping on a cot in his father’s law office. Feeling around he stumbled across the body of a man that his father was investigating in a murder case, but of course the boy didn’t know that and received a bad scare.
Clemens’ Law Office
Tom Blankenship House
Behind the Mark Twain House is the Tom Blankenship house where the real Huckleberry Finn lived with his …. brothers and sisters. a small place for a large family. In his autobiography, Mark Twain said, “In ‘Huckleberry Finn’ I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. he was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had. His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person–boy or man–in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy, and was envied by all the rest of us. We liked him; we enjoyed his society. And as his society was forbidden us by our parents, the prohibition trebled and quadrupled its value, and therefore we sought and got more of his society than of any other boy’s” (p. 1884).
Mark Twain’s Writing Desk
Life-size raft in Mark Twain Museum, Hannibal, Missouri
Exhibit in Mark Twain Museum, Twain, Tom & Huck
Further south on Main is the Mark Twain Museum featuring a life size raft, stage coach, and riverboat wheel. The most memorable exhibits in the museum for me were: a beautiful display with Twain and his characters, Mark Twain’s writing desk, the first editions of Twain’s works, and the fifteen paintings by Norman Rockwell for special printings of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn which were presented to the museum by the artist. I was thrilled to find copies of these at one of the little souvenir stores that I can’t wait to put up in my classroom!
Life Size Edition of A Connecticut Yankee in King Author’s Court
Norman Rockwell painting of Tom Sawyer white washing the fence.
Hannibal, Missouri “America’s Hometown”
The first leg of our trip was a long wait in LAX for American Airlines to get their combined act together, but the second leg, on Cape Air’s Cessna, made up for it with a thrilling, gorgeous flight over the Mississippi (when I dared to look down). I sat right behind the pilot and had the perfect view. We checked into our very nice room at the Ramada where we found out that the Water Treatment plant had been hit by lighting and the tap water was now the color of the muddy Mississippi. No worries, bottle water and a bit of bubble bath took care of that issue (nothing like taking a bubble bath in brown water).
Hannibal became the home of Samuel Clemens at the age of four. He was actually born in Florida, Missouri which is a half an hour from Hannibal. When Sam became Mark, he eventually wrote several books, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn based on his childhood friends and experiences. Many of the original buildings have been preserved by the dedicated people of Hannibal, who are very proud to be “America’s Hometown.” My husband and I walked down Main Street and staked out the Mark Twain Museum, Tom Blankenship house, the Becky Thatcher house and Sam’s father’s law offices which we planned to see the next day. We had dinner across the street in the Mark Twain Diner, where we enjoyed their hospitality and food, but didn’t get the root beer they are famous for because of the water issue. Darn!
Grant loved the ride!
After dinner we explored the small town further with a “Haunted Hannibal Tour.” http://www.hauntedhannibal.com/ This is a ninety minute trolley tour of local 19th century homes, churches, businesses, and the Old Baptist Cemetery where sightings of ghosts and other paranormal events have occurred. Along the way the tour guide shared stories about Hannibal’s’ haunts. The nineteenth century houses were terrifically spooky at twilight and the guide assured us that the cemetery was most certainly one that Samuel Clemens/Tom Sawyer would have explored. Unfortunately, we did not see any ghosts; maybe it was too early for them. I think Tom and Huck would have agreed that midnight would have been the best time for a haunting. http://www.hauntedhannibal.com/
Civil War Graves at The Old Baptist Cemetery in Haunted Hannibal
Haunted Hannibal House
The Jumping Frog Festival of Calaveras County
The second jump of my FFT trip was to the Jumping Frog Jubilee of Calaveras County http://www.frogtown.org/. In 1865 Samuel Clemens was in a bar where he heard a tale from a bartender named Simon Wheeler who related the story of a gambler who would bet on anything, including how far a frog could jump. Intrigued by the story, Clemens, soon to be known as Mark Twain, wrote his first story which was published under the title, “Jim Simely and His Jumping Frog” in The Saturday Press. 
Instantly popular, the tale was reprinted many times and in 1867 was one of several short stories published in his first book The Celebrated Jumping Frog. (only 1,000 copies were printed and we were fortunate to see one of them in the UC Berkeley archives. Not only did the story propel Clemens to fame as a writer, but it also made the Calaveras County Fair legendary. In 1928 the “modern frog jump” was first held and since then people travel from all over the world to see the competition; however the festival remains a community affair. My husband and I were struck by the close neighborhood feeling of friendliness, fun, and laughter. We enjoyed watching the Frog Jump (what the locals call it), visiting the exhibits, and eating corn dogs. I even joined the little kids for the Junior Frog Jump, my frog, nicknamed Edison, jumped 11 feet 9 inches, a record for the day! Click on these links to see the video of my frog jumping: Frog Jump 1 and Frog Jump 2.
While I enjoyed the festival, I have to add that I really hope my frog leaps away! It must be a terrifying experience for a frog! I think Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn would have broken them out of the so called “Frog Spa” and let them go in the nearby pond! Below is one of the frogs from the Frog Spa that is housed beneath the Jumping Frog staging area. Hopefully, the frogs are released back into a wild pond after the festival.
Jumping Frog from the Festival enjoying the Frog Spa
The Mark Twain Cabin
Mark Twain Cabin Marker
On our way to the Jumping Frog Festival, we stopped along the Bret Harte trail to see the reconstructed Mark Twain Cabin. On December 4, 1864 Clemens arrived in at Jackass Hill in Tulomne County, Ca. The hill was called “Jackass” because the miners’ mules would be gathered together. Once a famous, busy camp, by the time he arrived it had lost its original glamour. A log cabin built by Dick Stoker in the 1850s became his home. While in a saloon at the nearby town of Angels Camp, Twain heard and took the notes that became the Jumping Frog story that he wrote when he returned to the cabin. The original Stoker cabin was burned in the 1890s and in 1922 a commemorative cabin was erected. In 2002 this second cabin was also restored. Information from http://www.noehill.com/tuolumne/poi_mark_twain_cabin.asp and Critical Companion to Mark Twain: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work By R. Kent Rasmussen
Mark Twain Cabin
What amazes me about all of this is the effort and expense local people will go to anywhere in America to be able to save any place where Mark Twain took a breath or walked. He is truly an American icon. Here in California, we especially love the short stories collected in the Celebrated Jumping Frog and those in Roughing It.
The Mark Twain Papers
Manuscript at MTP, Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley
My husband and I had an amazing trip to the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. After a very strict security check (you are only allowed to bring a pad of paper and pencil into the Mark Twain Papers, aka MTP) we took the elevator (stairs not allowed) up to the rooms storing the precious works and correspondence of the great American author and humorist.
“The Mark Twain Papers contain the private papers of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) that he himself segregated and made available to his official biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine…As a result of intensive, ongoing editorial work since the mid 1960s, and with the cooperation of hundreds of institutions and individuals around the world, a working archive of photocopies and transcriptions has also been assembled—chiefly of letters by Clemens, his wife, and three daughters, but also letters to them, all the major literary manuscripts (published and unpublished) that are known to survive, books from his personal library, photographs, drawings, and so forth” (http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/MTP/about.html).
We were warmly welcomed by Neda Salem, MTP Research Assistant. She was so helpful and brought out first editions of “The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, as well as the first printing of “The Californian’s Tale” in the Harper’s Monthly March 1902 issue. I was particularly interested in these works because my students have or will be studying them. In addition, I was allowed to examine “A Cat Tale” [manuscript, 1880].
“This manuscript, which plays on the word ‘cat’ and includes the author’s illustrations, was based on the bedtime stories that Clemens improvised for his daughters. It was not published until 1959, when it was included in Concerning Cats: Two Tales by Mark Twain (San Francisco: The Book Club of California)(http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/Exhibits/mtatplay/catsbilliards/cattale.html).
One of the most marvelous experiences I’ve ever had was to see the actual writing process of this prolific author! How amazing to see his creativity intertwined with the relationship with his daughters, Suzy and Clara.
In addition to providing me with the opportunity to see all of the above works, Ms. Salem showed us archives of Harper’s Monthly stretching back a hundred years, donated editions of special editions and a large collection of books related to the study of Mark Twain. Since I don’t live near Berkeley, I will either be visiting the local library or ordering a large list of books! Ms. Salem also gave me a bag full of handouts with nonfiction articles about Mark Twain, enough for an entire class, which will help me in planning and implementing my Mark Twain unit next year. Thank you so much Ms. Salem!
The six editors at the Mark Twain Papers have also compiled and edited many publications which can be found here http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/MTP/publications.html and ordered directly from the University. One of the audio editions, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1, my husband and I enjoyed as we traveled from Huntington Beach to Berkeley and then to Sonora and back home. I am convinced this is the best way to begin understanding Twain, and after listening I wanted to return to the Bancroft Library to examine the many letters, especially those about his experiences in California. Fortunately, these have been published in Mark Twain’s Letters, Volume 1: 1853-1866 and I will be able to purchase the book…still, it’s not quite the same as seeing them in person.
