Writing a lesson with pen pals. Assembling four paragraphs took the students hours to write, he said. Practice makes perfect, though, and his students and other Gertie Belle Rogers Elementary fifth-graders got that throughout the year. A year-long project was completed Monday when a group of fifth-graders met with high school students who volunteered to exchange letters and become pen pals with some GBR students. "Letter writing has become a lost art," said Flemmer, who enjoys teaching the "mechanics of a friendly letter. " Brett and his wife, Carli Flemmer, a English teacher at the high school, had a desire to strengthen students' writing skills, prompting the pen pal project. This was the third year that Carli and Brett organized the program. Students from Gertie Belle Rogers Elementary and Mitchell High School wrote letters to each other during the school year, but the students met face to face for on the first time Monday at the high school.
"It is not as much of a battle," Carli said. "I hope it grows," Brett said. Theo Tso's CAPTAIN PAIUTE (is awesome!!!) Among the gems of 2015 is Theo Tso's Captain Paiute: Indigenous Defender of the Southwest. Captain Paiute is published by Native Realities. As you can see by the cover of this comic, Captain Paiute is a superhero. An Indigenous superhero, that is! A Paiute one. Already we have so much good going on! Theo Tso is Paiute. He created Captain Paiute because the Native characters he saw in comics were sidekicks, mystics, or shamans who spoke in that ridiculous TV style (like when Tonto tells the Lone Ranger how he found him in the pilot episode: "Me hunt here in canyon often. " and "Me help Kimosabe. " and "Here hat. To develop Captain Paiute, Tso drew on what he knows, about his own nation. By day, Captain Paiute works for his tribe as a water hydrologist.
See that beaker with sulfuric acid? With his parents gone, he lives with his grandfather. On the cover, that is water coming forth from Captain Paiute's hand. I love what Tso has done with Captain Paiute. I highly recommend it! TV Hosts 'Page to Stage & Screen’ Panel at Kid Lit Conference - KidLit.TV. This June, attendees of New Jersey’s Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators (NJ-SCBWI’s) annual conference are in for a treat – and we’re taking KidLit TV viewers along for the ride! KidLit TV’s founder, Julie Gribble, will moderate a panel of three children’s media experts.
These experts will discuss their experiences taking children’s manuscripts beyond the confines of the bookstore to stage, screen, and other cutting-edge media channels. Tish Rabe, Jonathan Rockefeller, and Marisa Corvisiero take the stage at the Crowne Plaza’s Conference Center in Plainsboro on Saturday, June 4th. Facilitated by Julie Gribble, these kidlit rock stars of film, television, stage, and more will offer their expertise to a room packed with writers, illustrators, and others who share a passion for children’s literature. Early indicators suggest that this workshop may be standing room only, if you can get in at all.
The trio of panelists Gribble will be facilitating are no less impressive. Why We Are Moving on from AR. This post was written with Brandon Blom (@brandonkblom, you can check out his blog here). Brandon and I are both elementary school principals in the Roseville City School District. Before being principals, Brandon was a middle school math teacher, and I was an elementary school teacher and then a middle school ELA/History teacher. Both of us are passionate and avid readers. What has Accelerated Reader (AR) been used for in the past at our schools? AR has been used as an accountability system to set point goals for kids to achieve by taking quizzes that only include multiple choice questions to check for basic understanding. For one year, AR would cost Stoneridge, a school of 550 kids, $4,085. What do we want for our students? As principals and parents we want our children to develop and continue a love of reading.
What do some students and some teachers like about AR? What do others say about AR? In a recent blog post, teacher and author Pernille Ripp stated, “We must be reading to read. Read, now even better in and out of the classroom! By: Christina Samek, OverDrive Marketing Specialist OverDrive Read has always been the preferred option for our student users across the world. It’s easy to use, requires no additional sign-ins or software and opens conveniently in a web browser. It’s also the option utilized most by educators when offering our class and novel-sets.
The fact that schools love OverDrive Read isn’t shocking, as it’s the best option available for usage in and outside a classroom. One of the chief reasons OverDrive Read has been so popular in our school communities is the fact that it offers a note-taking feature. Students are able to highlight a section of text while making a note, excellent for retention, paper-writing, and questions for in class discussion.
And now, they don’t have to worry about losing them upon retuning their titles. The notes are even printable should you students want to quickly reference them for homework, book reports or in class discussion. Outlook Web App. OpenEbooks OnePager Final. Express 9.14 - Writing in the <i>Other</i> Core Content Areas. Writing in the Other Core Content Areas Gerry Petersen-Incorvaia How do you respond when your teaching team, principal, or superintendent says, "You must teach writing in your classroom?
" As an arts teacher, my defenses go up and I tend to think either "I am already doing it" or "When do I teach my own content area? " Instead, those of us who don't teach English and language arts (ELA) and math can advocate how we create lessons that intentionally integrate the Common Core State Standards for writing into our content areas. Your content area is important. Moreover, students need to use reading and writing skills in your content area to truly gain the knowledge and abilities necessary to perform in that content area. Use this article as an easy and practical reflection guide to infuse writing in your classroom while still prioritizing your content area. The writing process is similar to many of the processes, practices, and thinking found in content areas other than math or ELA.
Figure 1. This is my Anti-Lexile, Anti-Reading Level Post. | Unleashing Readers. This is my anti-lexile, anti-reading level post. I get it. Well-intentioned parents want to challenge their children. Well-meaning, (perhaps new) teachers want to be sure that students are advancing in their reading levels. Maybe this is okay in first or second grade.
Beyond this, let’s stop this madness. We can do better. We cannot calculate the complexity of a text using a mathematical equation. A few words from Mike Mullin, author of Ashfall: “Try taking this comment, and running it through the Lexile analyzer. So why do we use Lexiles for older kids? Even worse, some parents/teachers make students internalize levels. (A great graphic from Unshelved) I cringe when I hear about parents or teachers who strictly adhere to reading levels alone and won’t let children read books that are “too high/low in their Lexile number.” (Another great graphic from Unshelved. Let’s take a look at the Lexile Bands by grade level: Grade Lexile Band – Text Demand Study 2009 6 860L to 920L 7 880L to 960L.
Education Week. Slightly fewer Americans are reading print books, new survey finds. The number of book readers has dipped a bit from the previous year and the number of e-book readers has remained flat, according to new survey findings from Pew Research Center. Seven-in-ten American adults (72%) have read a book within the past year, whether in whole or in part and in any format, according to a survey conducted in March and April.
That figure has fallen from 79% who said in 2011 they had read a book in the previous year, but is statistically in line with survey findings starting in 2012. Many book publishers, researchers and retailers have wondered whether the introduction of e-books would impact book reading overall or lead to a decline in the number of books read in print. This year’s data show a slight decline in the number of American adults who read print books: 63% of American adults say they read at least one book in print in the past year, compared with 69% who said the same the year before and 71% in 2011. Topics: E-reading. South Dakota State Library. South Dakota Titles To Go.
You will be prompted to sign into your library account on the next page. If this is your first time selecting “Send to NOOK,” you will then be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK. " The first time you select “Send to NOOK,” you will be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account.
You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. You can read periodicals on any NOOK tablet or in the free NOOK reading app for iOS, Android or Windows 8. Excessive Checkout Limit Reached. There have been too many titles checked out and returned by your account within a short period of time. Try again in several days. 2015: Free Ebooks & Apps. Position Statement on Labeling Books with Reading Levels.
The following position statement is currently under review to align with the National School Library Standards. Librarians use spine labels to organize and identify library resources by call number to help patrons locate general subject areas or specific fiction, non-fiction, reference, audiovisual, or other items. Viewpoint-neutral directional labeling in libraries increases students’ access to information and supports their First Amendment right to read. Best practice in school libraries includes books and other resources being shelved using a standard classification system that also enables students to find resources in other libraries, such as a public library, from which they may borrow materials.
One of the realities some school librarians face in their jobs is pressure by administrators and classroom teachers to label and arrange library collections according to reading levels. For additional supporting information see also: American Association of School Librarians. Engaging with Ebooks Can Aid Children’s Literacy, Study Finds. Photo by Peter M. Fisher/Thinkstock Getty Images for SLJ. As younger and younger children recognize and use electronic devices as sources of information and entertainment, what is the impact on their literacy skills? Largely a positive one, according to a study printed in the January 2014 edition of the peer-reviewed journal SAGE Open.
The report examines how different digital tools—an iPad, an iPod, and a tabletop touchscreen computer—capture and hold children’s attention to print media delivered electronically. In the study—Young Children’s Engagement With E-Books at School: Does Device Matter? , by Kathleen Roskos, Yi Shang, and Emily Gray of John Carroll University and Karen Burstein of the Southwest Institute for Families and Children—the authors speculate that the “spatial and temporal synchrony” of children looking, listening, and touching while reading may be the “sweet spot” that garners their “attention to e-text in ways that support early literacy experience and learning.”
Some Rules We Need to Break In Our Reading Classrooms. We seem to be run by the rules of what came before us. We seem to be trying to uphold traditions that were started all in the spirit of becoming better reading teachers. And yet, I think it is time for us to break some rules, to become reading warriors, and to speak up and say no; this is not what reading will look like in our classroom.
This is not the reading experience that my students will have, this is not what will make students fall in love with reading. So I present you with some rules that seem to perpetuate much of our reading instruction and encourage you to break them just like I have and so many others before me. Rule number 1: You must read X number of pages before you abandon a book. I used to enforce this; give it 30 pages, give it 50, then I read the False Prince and I told them to keep reading to page 88 where it gets so, so so good.
Rule number 2: You must read a book from every genre. Rule number 3: You must fill out a reading log. I do it all the time. Like this: Slightly fewer Americans are reading print books, new survey finds. Best Apps for Teaching & Learning. BiblioNasium - Kids Share Book Recommendations. Use Online Reading Logs, Find Books At Their Reading Level. FREE Student Publishing | Studentreasures Book Publishing. How to Access Thousands of Free eBooks for Kids.