Reading Home

January 23

In the News

Audit: US tutoring is poorly enforced - Schools unable to comply with law: http://tinyurl.com/nrnkx
"Failing US schools required by federal law to provide students with extra tutoring are not making sure the teaching is effective or in line with existing programs, congressional auditors reported."

Back to School/ 7 Trends to Watch: From Reading to Algebra Everything is Starting Earlier:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06239/716712-298.stm
" Parents are taking 3-year-olds to academic tutoring programs, complete with flashcards and homework."

Banned books ordered back on shelves: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/education/15114360.htm
"A series of children's books banned last month by the Dade School Board must remain in libraries while the district fights a lawsuit filed by the ACLU."

Department of Education - Latest Press Releases: http://www.ed.gov/news/pressreleases/latest/index.html?src=ln

Drop Everything and Read—But How?: http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/summer06/fluency.htm
"For students who are not yet fluent, silent reading is not the best use of classroom time."

Free Tutoring Promise Left Behind: http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2006/08/27/free_tutoring_promise_left_behind/
"Sandra Senda wanted a free private tutor for her kids, just like the No Child Left Behind law promised. She had no idea the deal came with a big headache."

Kids' English Fluency Flourishes: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/education/20060815-9999-1n15speak.html
School-age children from Spanish-speaking households throughout California are gaining English fluency at record rates.

Kids and Family Reading Report: http://www.scholastic.com/aboutscholastic/news/reading_survey_press_call_2.pdf
Children's librarians and school librarians take note. There's both discouraging news (the falloff after age 8 in the number of children who enjoy reading) and opportunity here (the top reason given for not reading is being unable to find books that interest them).

Lesson plans aim for smooth start: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/local/15214796.htm
"Hoping to avoid a slow start to the school year, the Miami-Dade school district has written lesson plans for the first two weeks of every class."

The National Association for the Exchange of Industrial Resources
This is a nonprofit organization that accepts donations from companies and redistributes them. Schools and nonprofits can get, for example, classroom supplies, games, toys, art supplies and holiday decorations. Interested school staffer members should call (800)562-0955 or email member@naeir.org for a free membership information kit.

Search Me?: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/12/AR2006081200886.html
"Google Wants to Digitize Every Book. Publishers Say Read the Fine Print First"

States, feds partner on English testing: http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=136&languageId=1&contentId=130627
Twenty-four states are being invited to work with the U.S. Department of Education to develop acceptable math and reading tests for students with limited English proficiency.

Teens rely on TV, games for sleep: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19917867-23289,00.html
Many Belgian children aged 13 or 16 use TV, computer games and music at bedtime, but such devices disrupt sleeping patterns and leave children more tired the next day, a study in an Australian pediatrics medical journal reveals. Books were the only media that helped teens nod off earlier and stay asleep longer, the study found.

To find the answer to our illiteracy crisis, Americans must look within: http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20060817/opcom17.art.htm
"A half-century ago, Rudolf Flesch wrote his classic Why Johnny Can't Read: And What You Can Do About It , in which he described how a growing confusion in American academic circles was undermining the literacy of future generations."

Want to Write? Read: http://www.latimes.com/news/education/la-op-skube27aug27,1,7786277.story?coll=la-news-learning
"Just in time for the start of school, an interviewer on National Public Radio solicited the counsel of an education expert from Santa Monica. The gentleman had nothing particularly new to say — our schools have too many rules, too little freedom, they stifle creativity — but his words were catnip to the ears of his interviewer. Inspiring, she called them."

New York State Learning Standards
Connected Learning: http://www.title3.org
K-12 lessons/units that utilize technology as well as other subject areas. They were created as part of the Literacy Challenge Grant program in New York. All lessons are geared to state and national standards.

Introduction to the Grades 3-8 Testing Program in English Language Arts and Mathematics:
http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/3-8/intro2.pdf

New York State Learning Standards: http://www.nysatl.nysed.gov/standards.html

Literacy in the United States and Around the World
Becoming a Literacy Leader by Jennifer Allen: http://www.stenhouse.com/0419.asp?r=mw060112
Jennifer Allen explores her role as literacy specialist, staff developer, and study group facilitator, and provides practical suggestions for collaborative change, coaching, intervention, fluency, classroom design, assessment, and more. The entire book is available online.

A Child Becomes a Reader Birth through Preschool: http://www.nifl.gov/partnershipforreading/publications/html/parent_guides/birth_to_pre.html
The Partnership for Reading
When does a child learn to read? Many people might say, "in kindergarten or first grade." But researchers have told us something very important. Learning to read and write can start at home, long before children go to school. Children can start down the road to becoming readers from the day they are born.

A Child Becomes a Reader Kindergarten through Grade 3: http://www.nifl.gov/partnershipforreading/publications/html/parent_guides/k-3.html
The Partnership for Reading
The road to becoming a reader begins the day a child is born and continues through the end of third grade. At that point, a child must read with ease and understanding to take advantage of the learning opportunities in fourth grade and beyond--in school and in life.

Children of the Code: http://www.childrenofthecode.org/
A Social-Education Project and a PBS Television Documentary Series By David Boulton
Statistically, more American children suffer long-term life-harm from the process of learning to read then from parental abuse, accidents, and all other childhood diseases and disorders combined. In purely economic terms, reading related difficulties cost our nation more than the war on terrorism, crime, and drugs combined.

Education Commission of the States: http://www.ecs.org/
A Web database by the Education Commission of the States (ECS) provides a real-time "snapshot" of all 50 states' progress in meeting the goals of NCLB (No Child Left Behind). The site's color-coded maps and charts allows policy makers and the public to track how their states are doing on NCLB. Visitors to the site can see the status of the nation as a whole, review individual states or compare two or more states side by side. A nonpartisan national organization, ECS helps governors, legislators, state education officials and others develop policies to improve student learning. The ECS study used to create the database looked at indicators in standards and assessment, annual yearly progress, school improvement, supplemental services, report cards and teacher quality.

The Nation's Report Card: http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES): http://nces.ed.gov/
The Condition of Education 2005: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2005094

NEA (National Education Association): http://www.nea.org/

Reading - Improving Students Preformance: http://www.ed.gov/teachers/how/read/edpicks.jhtml?src=fp

Texas Information Literacy Tutorial (TILT): http://tilt.lib.utsystem.edu/
This online tutorial presents the skills needed to evaluate information in this age of overload.

United Nations Literacy Decade 2003-2012: http://www.unesco.org/education/litdecade

Things to help you during the course
Assign-A-Day!: http://assignaday.4teachers.org/
This is an on-line teacher-managed calendar.

The Common School Movement and Compulsory Education: http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?Id=1679
In 1837, Horace Mann became the first secretary of the State Board of Education for Massachusetts. According to most accounts, this event marks the beginning of the common school era. Mann led the fight to institute common schools, and his influence extended from New England to America as a whole.

Creating an A+++ Classroom Library: http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/instructor/creatinglibrary.htm
Here are some suggestions from a classroom teacher on how to surround students with books.

Furl: http://www.furl.net/index.jsp
This site that manages your favorite Web sites. With Furl, your Favorites (or in Firefox, Bookmarks) are accessible from any computer. You add them with the click of a button. Then share them with friends and get recommendations from Furlmates. What’s a Furlmate? It's someone who likes similar Web sites. You can start by adding my site! You can access Furl from any browser. But you’ll need to download an add-in for one-click Favorites and Bookmarks.

Ikeepbookmarks: http://www.ikeepbookmarks.com/home.asp
"iKeepBookmarks.com allows you to upload, and keep, your bookmarks on the web. You can access them at any time, from any computer... anywhere!"

Simile: Studies in Media and Information Literacy Education
http://www.utpjournals.com/jour.ihtml?lp=indexj.html
For educators and librarians, these articles address the impact of the Internet and the evolution of mass media.

Webnote: http://www.aypwip.org/webnote/
Webnote is a simple, easy-to-use tool that enables you to take notes via a Web browser and then access and share those notes from any computer. You create and name a workspace—the name is then integrated into the URL for your notes. Your workspace isn’t password protected, so anyone who knows the name of it can get into it—which is an advantage if your goal is collaboration or sharing and a disadvantage if you’re looking for a place to keep sensitive info (this probably isn’t it). The tool’s main features are basic: Once in your workspace, you create sticky-notes on a screen and then can fill them with text or html links. You can change the size, shape, and color of your notes with just a few clicks.

Elementary Presentations: http://www.graves.k12.ky.us/powerpoints/elementary/
This is library of PowerPoint slide shows for many elementary topics.

First Lines: http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/jad22/
Information on this site says about the online quizzes: "We have collected here the first lines of books we hope you will recognize as old acquaintances. Your challenge is to name the book given the first line. The books are divided into categories which may help you identify them."

The T. S. Eliot Prufrock Page: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/5616/eliot.html

Vantage Books Reading-Group Guides: http://www.randomhouse.com/vintage/read/
A useful tool, this site provides reading lists, discussion questions, even tips on how to form and lead a book club. It's also a virtual crib sheet for those who haven't had a chance to actually read the book, as well as reviews and author questions and answers to keep conversation flowing. The site, however, only features Random House/Vintage titles.

Secrets of Becoming a Good Reader
The Reading Foundation: Stages of Reading Development: http://www.thereadingfoundation.com/stages.html

Think back to your early days of schooling. What made you a good reader? Was it the phonics instruction, the workbook activities, the oral reading you did in reading group? Discuss in a group.
The key to becoming a proficient reader is to read. Practice, and lots of it, lead to profeciency.
Students show significant gains when they rad for as few as 10 extra minutes a day (Anderson, 1996).
The poorest readers make the most gains by reading. Below-average readers gain as much as 2 1/2 years when they read for 60 minutes a day. This includes reading done in school and at home (Paul, 1996).
Wide reading leads to improvement in writing, spelling, and overall language development (Krashen, 1993).
Children's reading habits have undergone great change, most of which are a direct result of television in their lives. They are used to receiving information faster na dmore superficially than the pace of a well-written book would give them. Junior novels get well into the plot in the first page and a half. Descriptions of setting, circumsatnes an the like are kept to a minimum and much plot and character development is done through dialog. The quality of the paper, the printing, and the illustrations have never been better. One of the most important improvements has been the increased number of high-quality nonfiction books for the prereading and beginning reading child.

Traits of Successful Early Readers
1. Moved through a progression of phases from scribbling and drawing to copying objects and letters of the the alphabet to asking frequent questions about spelling and finally gaining the ability to read.
2. Used ordinary size pencils and pens as well as small blackboards.
3. Expressed continued interst in letters and words, and their parents tended to talk more about sounds of letters which sometimes proved productive, but not always.
4. Stayed with a paraticular phase of letter and word development for long periods of time until it no longer interested them.
5. Had their interest in words stimulated in many ways such as seeing them on TV, billboards, food packages, menus, cars, trucks, etc. (Durkin 1966, 136)

Sound Patterns
Practice pronouncing words that begin with the letter "t" with this poem.
“Tim the Turtle”
Tim the turtle
tried to trot while
taking a short trip.

Tim’s toes tripped.
Then Timmy tipped
and did a turtle flip.

1. Recite the poem to children.
2. Recite the poem again; this time have children “echo” you.
3. Write the poem on the board. Recite the poem again using a pointer. Ask children to identify all the words in the poem that begin with the letter t.
4. Ask children to identify rhyming words from the poem.
5. Discuss the letters and sounds each rhyming word has in common.

“Tea Time”
Here's a cup
Here's a cup,
And here's a cup,
And here's a pot of tea.
Pour a cup,
And pour a cup,
And have a drink with me.

“I'm a Little Teapot”
I'm a little teapot,
Short and stout.
Here is my handle,
Here is my spout.
When I get all steamed up,
Hear me shout,
"Tip me over and pour me out."

1. Recite the poems to children.
2. Recite the poems again; this time have children "echo" you.
3. Write the poems on the board. Ask children to identify rhyming words from the poems.
4. Discuss the letters and sounds each rhyming word has in common.
5. Add movement to each verse. Discuss the vocabulary in the poems and allow the class to brainstorm appropriate movements.

This site began in March 1998 by Janet Luch. It was last updated on January 18, 2007
Email comments and questions to studyplans@yahoo.com