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The winner of Not Just Spirited by Chynna T. Laird is. . .

ELYSE!

Congratulations to Elyse! Enjoy this wonderful, hopeful, and inspirational memoir.

If you or someone you know has Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), then don’t miss Chynna’s interview on Wednesday. She provides several resources and lists for parents and teachers as well as books to read about children and SPD. If you didn’t win Not Just Spirited, you can order it right from that blog post.

Thank you to everyone who read Chynna’s post and who left comments. It means a lot to both of us to know that we touched some people’s lives and provided information for a disorder that can be heartbreaking but improved with proper education!

Thank you.

I am very excited about this week’s Wacky Wednesday post because I am welcoming, Chynna Laird, on her WOW! blog tour. Chynna is the author of a must-read book for all teachers and parents, especially those of us who have a child with special needs. If you know a child with Sensory Processing Disorder, or SPD, you should read this book soon. It may just be the inspiration you are looking for!

This is Chynna’s second visit on Read These Books and Use Them. She also wrote a picture book called I’m Not Weird, I have SPD, which was given away to Jennifer L. in that book contest.

So, here Chynna is again, and this time with a memoir about parenting her daughter with Sensory Processing Disorder. ***BOOK GIVEAWAY CONTEST! Please leave a comment by Friday, January 8 at 6:00 pm CST for a chance to win Not Just Spirited.

Here’s a little about this wonderful book:

What would you do if your child suffered with something so severe it affected every aspect of her life?

And what if your cries for help fell on deaf ears at every turn? You’d follow your gut and fight until someone listened. And that’s what Chynna Laird did. When she was just three months old, her daughter Jaimie’s reactions to people and situations seemed odd. She refused any form of touch, she gagged at smells, she was clutzy and threw herself around, and spent most of her day screaming with her hands over her ears and eyes.

By the time she turned two, Jaimie was so fearful of her world they spent most days inside. What was wrong with Chynna’s miracle girl? Why wouldn’t anyone help her figure it out? Jaimie wasn’t “just spirited” as her physician suggested nor did she lack discipline at home. When Jaimie was diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) at two-and-a-half, Chynna thought she had “the answer,” but that was just the jumping off point for years of questions. Chynna embarked on a three-year quest for the right treatments to reveal the Jaimie she loved so much. With the right diagnosis and treatment suited to Jaimie, her family finally felt hope. Not Just Spirited is an insider’s peek at one family dealing with an “invisible” disorder and fighting to find peace for their daughter.

And now for an interview with the author:

Margo: Welcome, Chynna, and thanks for taking the time to talk with us today. If you are a parent with a child who has Sensory Processing Disorder, what are three important, important things that you need to tell the school and teacher about your child?

Chynna: This is an amazing question, Margo. Jaimie did one year of pre-preschool and two years of preschool before we felt she was ready for public school. We found it incredible that, at that time, none of Jaimie’s teachers even knew what Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) was. These days, there seems to be a lot more effort being made to inform teachers about sensory issues and SPD because so many children have it, from mildly to quite severely.

So the first important thing I’d say parents need to do is INFORM. They don’t need to go into the school and conduct a full workshop on SPD; but it’s important to explain, basically, w

And the winner is. . . Jennifer L.

Thanks to Jennifer and everyone else who commented on Sunday’s post. If you have any questions about Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD or also known as Sensory Integration Dysfunction or SID), please e-mail me, and I will connect you with some people who can help you and your family! My email is margodll (at) aol (dot) com

Later in the week, I will be blogging about a cute, easy chapter book series for boys with the spunky main character, Roscoe Riley!

Again, congratulations to Jennifer!

I'm always looking for fun, engaging, motivating ways for my fourth graders to build up their knowledge of the way words are built -- roots, prefixes, suffixes, and even the little parts that make rhymes, like -at, and -up that make cat and pup.

This week, I tried out this game, Eight Letters In Search of a Word, with my students. I was worried that they would get frustrated, and some did, but because they have grown up on Nintendo and Xbox and Game Boy, they had no problem with running out of time and trying again. They worked to beat their own high scores, they were realistic about low scores when they got a tough set of letters, and when one student figured out the "big word," a new standard was set for ALL of the students (a REAL standard set by the students, not by some governmental committee...but don't get me started). They got really good at finding every variation possible on a small word by substituting consonants, they were smart about using s to make every plural possible, and they worked -ed and -ing for all they were worth when they got those letter combinations. Because all the letters given can ultimately make up an 8-letter word, there was even a little vocabulary development thrown in. When you play this game, you might think it is too hard for 9 and 10 year olds. That is, however, precisely why they liked it so much. It was hard. They had to work for their success. They knew they earned it when they got a high score. And those times when they got the "big word?" Priceless.

Next week, we're going to see how much rice we can donate through the United Nations to help end world hunger by learning new vocabulary words. At Free Rice, you donate 20 grains of rice for every vocabulary word you get right. As you play, the game automatically levels the words you get -- if you get words right, you get harder words, if you miss words, you get easier words. I'm not sure how this will work with my students. Just like we did with 8 Letters, we will play together first, with my computer hooked up to the class TV. I think we can have some great conversations about root words and related words that can help us make a smart guess about the words. Stay tuned for a report on how this goes in my classroom. In the meantime, how much rice did you donate today?

Ginormous made it into the new edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. I remember hearing my students (one in particular...you know who you are) use this word for the first time four years ago.

Here's my prediction for a word that will be added some time soon, based on 1. my inability to break my students of saying it, even after two years of intensive interventions, 2. the efficiency of this word compared with the "correct" version, and 3. I broke down and used it myself. The word? VERSE, vb., meaning to compete with someone in a game or sport. "I'm going to verse him in chess." The roots of this word are in the preposition VERSUS, as in Army vs. Navy. (The correct/clunky/inefficient way to say "verse?" "Go against." How does "go against" relate to versus? On the other hand, it is clear to see how "verse" relates to versus.) Other words in the dictionary around VERSUS include, as a reminder that language is a living, changing thing: versatile and version.

For other new words that made it into the dictionary, see USA Today's AP story.

Nancy at Journey Woman has proclaimed March 31 SILLY WORDS DAY!

My students and I are always on the lookout for words that are fun to say and/or spell. Here are a few we treasure (in order from shortest to longest):

Zit (won't be long before they abhor that word!)
Dilfy (a made-up mom word for messy)
Atlatl (a prehistoric spear thrower)
Boonka (a word remembered from pre-speech, meaning blanket)
Kwakiutl (a NW tribe of Native Americans)
Mississippi (fun to say and more fun to spell FAST)
Tegucigalpa (the capital of Honduras)
Onomatopoeia (fun to say and spell)
Gift Certificate (because the nominator only recently mastered the pronunciation of certificate...cerFITicate? cerFICKatut? Plus, they're fun to get!)
Pachycephalosaurus (there's nothing better than dinosaur names!)
Antidisestablishmentarianism (is that really a word?)
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (we KNOW that's not a word, but it's delicious!)