Awards

We received an Arte y Pico Award for the work we do here at TWT by a blog entitled “There Is No Such Thing As a G-d-Forsaken Town.” Thank you for that honor!

Essentially this award is like a Meme. There are rules for paying it forward after your blog gets recognized. They are as follows:

1) Select 5 blogs that you consider deserving of this award, based on creativity, design, interesting material, and contribution to the blogger community. The blogs can be in any language.

2) Post a link to each blog so that others can visit.

3) Each award-winner has to show the award and link to the blogger that awarded it.

4) The award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show a link to Arte y Pico.

Hence, in the name of paying-it-forward, I’m awarding the following folks with the Arte y Pico Award. I’m only selecting literacy and teaching blogs, which is hard to do since there are SO MANY great ones out there. (If you were selected, don’t feel compelled to put the logo on your blog, even though the rules say you must)

1. A Year of Reading: Mary Lee and Franki are THE two teachers who inspired Ruth and I to create a blog about writing since we saw blogs about writing missing from the Blogosphere about a year ago. The collaboration that Mary Lee and Franki have is inspiring. The quality of their posts are top-notch. Their ability to recommend a book (and subsequently empty my wallet) is impeccable; they’re always right-on.

2. Kevin’s Meandering Mind: Kevin is a technology teacher from Western Mass. who is thoughtful about his teaching practice and also writes A LOT! He participates in our weekly challenges and challenges us to do summary work with his Day in a Sentence Challenges. Finally, Kevin is always introducing new technology on his blog, which he’s tried out BEFORE he posts it and presents it to the world. This is helpful since I consider him a reliable source.

3. The Reading Zone: She’s a middle language arts teacher who is constantly brimming with new, innovative ideas for her kids. She’s the kind of middle teacher you wish you could clone since that is one of the toughest age groups to work with (but yet she makes it sound so easy)!

4. Reading and Writing Lessons: Deb is one of the most giving bloggers I’ve encountered online. She literally posts reading and writing lessons on her blog, nearly every day, that take you through every step of the process. Her blog is a wealth of information for elementary school teachers who do Workshop Teaching.

5. Jen Robinson’s Book Page: Jen is not a teacher, but she has a passion for books. When I heard her speak at NCTE last year, I realized that she’s blogging to make a true difference in children’s life, one-at-a-time. If you can’t get to her blog daily, then don’t worry… she has a great weekly newsletter that sums up all of her posts.