One Book, One School: Building Community with Shared Text Some time ago I had the opportunity to read an early copy of R.J. Palacio’s debut novel, Wonder . The next spring brought opportunities to meet the author, talk about the book with colleagues, and read it to my class. with my fifth graders was amazing. When given the choice between being right or being kind, choose kind. I knew then that the book had touched the students. throughout the year. As summer began I heard about the movement Random House and R.J. When recommending Wonder to my mom this summer, I told her that my mission was for everyone in our town to read this book. With the start of the school year just around the corner, I scheduled a lunch with my school’s librarian. With the idea of sharing one book with the entire school, we began running through questions and discussing ideas. ? Another possible tie-in is our Family Reading Night this fall.
edutopia Every teacher I've worked with over the last five years recalls two kinds of digital experiences with students. The first I think of as digital native moments, when a student uses a piece of technology with almost eerie intuitiveness. As digital natives, today's teens have grown up with these tools and have assimilated their logic. Young people just seem to understand when to click and drag or copy and paste, and how to move, merge and mix digital elements. The second I call digital naiveté moments, when a student trusts a source of information that is obviously unreliable. Even though they know how easy it is to create and distribute information online, many young people believe -- sometimes passionately -- the most dubious rumors, tempting hoaxes (including convincingly staged encounters designed to look raw and unplanned) and implausible theories. How can these coexist? What to Believe? Understanding this extends beyond customary generational finger wagging. 3 Exercises in News Literacy
25 Reading Strategies That Work In Every Content Area 25 Reading Strategies That Work In Every Content Area by TeachThought Staff Reading is simply a sequence of symbol interpretation. By understanding that letters make sounds, we can blend those sounds together to make whole sounds that symbolize meaning we can all exchange with one another. Without getting too Platonic about it all, reading doesn’t change simply because you’re reading a text from another content area. Science content can often by full of jargon, research citations, and odd text features. Social Studies content can be an interesting mix of itemized information, and traditional paragraphs/imagery. Literature? This all makes reading strategies somewhat content area specific. But if you’d like to start with a basic set of strategies, you could do worse than the elegant graphic above from wiki-teacher.com. Looking for related curricula ideas? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. To the above list, we’d add: 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.
25 Reading Strategies That Work In Every Content Area 25 Reading Strategies That Work In Every Content Area Reading is reading. By understanding that letters make sounds, we can blend those sounds together to make whole sounds that symbolize meaning we can all exchange with one another. Without getting too Platonic about it all, reading doesn’t change simply because you’re reading a text from another content area. Science content can often by full of jargon, research citations, and odd text features. Social Studies content can be an interesting mix of itemized information, and traditional paragraphs/imagery. Literature? This all makes reading strategies somewhat content area specific. But if you’d like to start with a basic set of strategies, you could do worse than the elegant graphic above from wiki-teacher.com. Looking for related curricula ideas? 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. To the above list, we’d add: 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. See Also: 25 Self-Guided Reading Responses For Fiction And Non-Fiction
Teaching Strategies to Enhance Memorization The memory demands of school-aged children are more regimented then they were a decade ago. While many schools’ main teaching strategies are not mainly on memorization, but more on higher-order thinking skills, the ability to memorize information is still vastly important. Children are constantly being inundated in the classroom with information on new topics and concepts. While some children may find it to be easy to recall words or math facts in an instant, others’ short-term memory may find it more difficult. Luckily, there are teaching strategies that you can use to enhance their memory. Try integrating the following teaching strategies into your curriculum to help your students develop a more efficient memory. Mnemonic Devices Mnemonic devices have been thoroughly studied and have been proven to be an effective way to help one remember information more efficiently. Chunking Words and Activities Encourage your students to chunk. Students Teaching Others Using Mental Imagery
Teaching Students How to Set a Purpose for Reading By Sarah Tantillo I think we can all agree that annotating texts helps students comprehend them more deeply. But not all forms of annotating are helpful. I’ve seen this problem quite often: students cover their texts with so many notes that it seems to take them an hour to read one page. While it’s great that students can annotate with generic strategies such as underlining topic sentences and starring supporting details, the truth is that they need to learn how to analyze texts more effectively and efficiently. How can we teach readers to determine what’s most important? Students must learn to set a purpose for reading. Too often, teachers set the purpose (with assignments such as “Read Chapter 7 and answer these three questions” or “Read this article and write a summary”), and students do not actually learn how to set a purpose on their own. ► A helpful first step is to identify the GENRE of the text. And here’s an important follow-up question: “How could you tell?”
Top 10 ways to use technology to promote reading I only steal from the best. So here we go. Johnson's Top Ten... Author and fan websites. Young readers like know more “about the author” and the Internet is rich with resources produced both by the authors themselves, their publishers, and their fans. Want to know what’s next in a favorite series? Here's the thing.
Downloadable Materials — The Learning Scientists About the six strategies for effective learning resources: These resources were created based on research from cognitive psychology from the past few decades. To learn more about how we created the materials, see this blog. Fair use of the materials: Please use our materials and pass them along to others for educational purposes! Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article I come back from lunch to join my second block of students, whom I always greet with “Did everyone have a good lunch?" There are the usual grumblings about the cafeteria food, brief interjections about someone who got in trouble for throwing food, or who left a mess that caused their whole table to have to stay behind to clean up. But inevitably, there is my ever-so-eloquent Violet, with her daily blotter on who is dating whom, or who just broke up. I arranged my classroom tables in several rows with chairs on both sides facing one another. Me: As you all know, we take time each week to share as a class the books that we are reading. Whispers . . . Student: Um . . . if they’re hot. Giggles. Me: So perhaps, before we approach or talk to someone, the first thing we may notice is their physical appearance. Student: Well, you ask them who they are, maybe something like, “Hi, I’m Ben. Me: Exactly—you start to try to get to know them. Book Speed Dating: First Impressions “Pro” sentence leads:
Using Images as Scaffolds for Reading Complex Text – School Library Connection Blog April at School Library Connection has been all about inquiry—but we’ve got inquiry on the brain all year long! In case you missed it, check out this great article from our November 2015 issue by Nicole Waskie-Laura and Susan LeBlanc on using images to scaffold learning as we move students toward the goal of reading complex texts. Picture this: a class of students with a wide range of reading levels and abilities engaging deeply with the same introductory text. How is it possible that all students across reading levels are independently accessing the same text? Defining Text Text has long been defined as words printed on a page, and as school librarians, we believe this definition is far too narrow. The Goal: Reading Complex Text Images are an excellent source of information on their own, but they are doubly powerful as introductions to complex, printed texts. Images as Scaffolds Images for Inquiry Moreover, this type of investigative thinking crosses disciplines. A Real-Life Example
Strategies to Build Intrinsic Motivation Punishment, Rewards, and Commitment The issue with classroom management policies in most institutions is that it operates on a carrot-and-stick model. Carrots include PBIS (Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports), Classroom Economy, and other class rewards. Sticks include punishment such as detention, suspension, or withholding from other activities. The goal of self-persuasion is to create cognitive dissonance in the mind of the one being persuaded. Punishment In 1965, Jonathan Freedman conducted a study in which he presented preschoolers with an attractive, desired, "Forbidden Toy." Weeks later, Freedman pulled the students out of class one by one and had them do a drawing test. Recently studies (PDF) have shown that using fear in high-stakes testing actually lowers performance on that test. Rewards Programs like Classroom Economy may appear to work because the extrinsic rewards offer short-term motivation. Commitment 7 Examples of Self-Persuasion 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article A few weeks ago, Kim and Lily were snuggled in a beanbag chair with their heads together. They were trying to decipher some troublesome words in a book. “Sat? Seat?” tried Kim. “What about that w? “Sa-wet?” After a few more attempts, Lily said, “Let’s put this one back and get the good one.” Lily crawled out of the beanbag chair and marched across the room. Kim and Lily were originally trying to read Pete the Cat and the Bad Banana, one of the “beginning reader” offerings in the Pete the Cat series. Somehow, things weren’t quite working out. What Are Beginning Readers? Beginning readers, also called “easy readers,” is a category of books specifically designed for children in the early stages of reading acquisition. In an effort to make the books easy to read, a number of concessions are made. Fortunately, not all beginning reader books suffer from this drawback. What Are Picture Books? A picture book is a book in which the illustrations are critical to the telling of the story.
What I am thinking about – Part 1 – Leveling the Library | Library Goddess Hello readers! The school year is winding down (or actually, it feels like it is busier than ever…so really we are winding up, but that’s school life for you) and I’ve started thinking a lot about next school year. Thinking about next school year means learning more about a reading “program” my teachers will be using and thinking about how to implement a Reading Plan that our state has mandated all schools develop. Part 1 – Leveling the Library…my teachers are going to start using Lucy Calkins Reading in their classroom for their ELA instruction. I feel that the purpose of the school library is to be a place where students learn how to make good choices based on what they WANT to read. And, you don’t have to take my word for it Here are a couple of other places to go to find more information on why choice is so important for growing readers: Donalyn Miller “I’ve Got Research. Part 2 – The point of the games and Makerspace in the library – coming soon! Happy Saturday, friends! Like this: