Off to Illinois . . .

I'm off to the Illinois Reading Council's Annual Conference next week (March 17-19) to present (The BIG Picture of Reading and Engaged Interactive Read Aloud).  Good thing I haven't put away my winter coat!  This year's theme is Literacy Outside the Box.  They have even set up a blog you can go to for the latest on the upcoming meeting. 

Do you ever feel like you are "inside a box" as an educator?  Are you looking for ways to improve your teaching that are liberating, freeing, challenging for you and your students? (do you secretly want to be more "outside the box"?)  This will be a great place to get ideas and get energized.   Think BIG! (And by the way, if you know educators or reading advocates who live in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky or Wisconsin, be sure to share this blog with them).

Just a few ideas to start you thinking when I'm traveling to Illinois:

1) March 4, 2011 marked an historic day in the world of reading - World Book Night in London - readings, sharings, free book giveaways, book clubs, and more.  You could each have your own World of Reading Day, highlighting the power of books read individually and shared. 

2) March 7, 2011 kicks off the 2011 Tournament of Books, a March Madness-style competition.  Although this is an adult competition, you can find plenty of ideas for creating your own tournament of books at a school or library.  A cool book/journal to keep track of reading,  your own March Madness of books with student recommendations and voting, culminating in a Champion Book of the Year; use of technology to get down to the Sweet Sixteen with online voting, tweeting, etc.; honorable judges from the community, etc.

3) Appalachian State University (in the NC mountains, a former teacher's college) has a great new tradition,. Summer Reading Club.  Why not start your own version by providing the same book to every student in a class or grade as they go home for the summer?  Set up blogs, wikis, a Facebook page, or other media to communicate about the book over the summer and raise the excitement.  Ask students to identify other books that connect to the chosen on and build a reading chain for the summer to choose from.  Involve your media specialist and local public librarian in creating a reading chain and sharing it with students as they interact with libraries (school or public) during the summer months.  Here's an example of a reading chain:

Diary of a Wimpy Kid (out in a movie 3/25/2011) - there is a series of these titles by Jeff Kenny
Dork Diaries by Rachael Russell.
The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot
Horse Diaries by Meg Cabot

OR


The Lucky Baseball by Suzanne Lieurance
Lucky:  Maris, Mantle and the Best Summer Ever by Wes Tooke
Keeping Score by Linda Sue Park
Boy of Steel by Ray Negron

Make your own!

Remember that choice is a key factor in whether children will become engaged in reading.  If you'd like to learn more, read about the research of Guthrie and Morgan and Fuchs.

I'd love to meet you!

If you are attending the IL Reading Council event, please come join my sessions on March 17 (8-9AM, 9:15-10:15AM, and 1:45-2:45pm (with autographing of Anytime Reading Readiness and Before They Read, for parents and educators of 3-6 year olds respectively immediately following the 10;15AM and 2:45PM sessions).  What I find with my interactive style of presentation is a richness coming from the experienced folks in the audience.  It really adds to the content and keeps things interesting.   I also promise, as always, there will be plenty of resources and a fine, fun time.  After all, anytime we talk about reading should be an enthusiastic event, right?

Post a comment here to let me know your thoughts about any of this posting or just a "hey, see you at the conference"!  Your words are always welcome.

Reading Aloud: More Than An "Old Fashioned Event, If I Have Time" Event

Do you read aloud regularly with your students? 

It doesn't matter how old or young they are, reading aloud with students can have more impact than any other instructional event in your day.  It can be used to grow both reading skills and writing skills (i.e., I'm reading to my 7-8th grade writing class in the photo to the right).  The best part about reading aloud to students; they don't see it as instruction.  The trouble may be that your administrators may not see it as such either.  Here are solutions:

Plan read alouds carefully but deliver them with the instruction element hidden in a cloak of enthusiasm, drama and theatrics.

Pick books that hook, that connect to the experiences and the imagination of the students you will be reading to.  Plan a quick "lesson" document for each book so that you have that ready to draw out when your principal visits and says, "I don't see any teaching going on here."  Here are a few benefits to reading aloud that you can highlight in that lesson plan and connect directly with the instructional pieces you are teaching:

• Reading aloud exposes and highlights new, rich vocabulary (or may even reinforce vocabulary you have taught in social studies or science if you select carefully), thus expanding the number of words a child knows.
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• Reading aloud gives students opportunity to practice comprehension strategies such as visualization, prediction and questioning, and recognizing a gap in understanding (especially when the teacher is modeling that strongly through a technique like Engaged Interactive Read Aloud).
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• Reading aloud builds background knowledge and strengthens mental schemata (the ability to take what they know and bring to a new experience or idea). 

Reading aloud also impacts fluency, phonological awareness, phonics instruction so you get a focus on all of the five key components identified by the National Reading Panel as the cornerstone of reading instruction today.

It also grows writing skills as you share writing together and then discuss whether it is great writing and why or why not.  I love to do this at the start of every writing class or event I conduct.  It turns the brain juices on!

Reading Aloud is an RTI Strategy

Did you realize that reading aloud is a strategy for the popular "response to intervention" approach to addressing the needs of every student?

R. David Freeman, Ed.S. says that "In order to read fluently, students must first hear and understand what fluent reading sounds like. From there, they will be more likely to transfer those experiences into their own reading. The most powerful way for you to help your students is to read aloud to them, often and with great expression."'

LIFT (Literacy Instruction Framework for Teaching) states:  "  that a teacher may choose a read aloud based on a specific teaching purpose, then give explicit instruction on that strategy, and models the strategy during the read aloud.  This is an opportunity for students to hear the teacher’s thinking.  This element offers the highest level of teacher support in the gradual release of responsibility and is the teacher’s opportunity to model.

Education friends Fountas and Pinnell in their book, Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency, Grades K-8,  write extensively about the role of the interactive read aloud.

You can learn more about effective ways to share  read alouds with students and still meet your instructional goals at TLA, Inc  If you are a teacher in preK or Kindergarten, you'll want to check out a more specific description of the Engaged Interactive Read Aloud technique in my new book, Before They Read..

A QUICK P.S.

While I was researching this topic, I found an incredible statement from these incredible researchers that I want to immediately share with you.  I hope you will share this with your colleagues, administration and media specialist (the latter of whom I believe will greatly relieved to hear this clarification of many of their "gut feelings" that over-labeling restricts reading growth.
 
"We recommend that you do not level or label the books in the school library or the classroom library. (You can find this recommendation in the text mentioned above and in Leveled Books, K-8: Matching Texts to Readers for Effective Teaching.) We would not want students to self-select books by level or to think of themselves as a 'level T reader,'for example. They need to be taught to choose books using many different criteria."

As always, I'd love to hear your comments and encourage you to share this blog with your fellow teachers.  We can grow the numbers of visitors and followers but only with your help!

A Quick Post to Share

Testing is over or will soon be for most of you.  Congratulations!  Now you can get back to what you love - teaching!


I recently was honored to speak at the AL Library Association conference and heard again from my friends who are media specialists and librarians that they would like me to do a blog for them.  Abracadabra!  This initial posting, entitled The Literacy Ambassador Club, is simply to solicit ideas for what media specialists and librarians need in a blog.  Will you please share this with the librarians in your life?

I'll be posting again for you in just a day or two but in the meantime, here's a couple of little gifts from The Literacy Ambassador:

a new resource for children's books, The Book Farm, from Blanchester, OH.  They have some good ideas for encouraging summer reading (it will be here before you know it).

secondly, a link to my a master list of all my columns for Educationworld.com.  Scan through and find the one that fits what you are planning for your next few weeks' teaching; there are bound to be several.  I also include ideas for summer reading in the article entitled Summertime Reading.


After you capture one of those quick and resource-rich articles, come back and post your response, your thoughts, your questions or what you're going to do with that spark of an idea you picked up.  I look forward to hearing from you!

The Little Engine That Must: Inspiring Young Readers

I just spent a terrific hour talking with J. Renee Gordon of the BlogRadio show,  
Empowering Educators.

We talked about

- the importance of early childhood learning in both preschools/child care centers and at home

- what is essential for kindergarten readiness (and partnerships that foster that) and

- placed a special focus on literacy for children ages 3-6.

Whether you joined us live on the show or want to listen to the podcast later, you'll find information and resources right here.

Findings of The National Early Literacy Panel (2009)

Six early skills predictive of later literacy achievement

1. Alphabet knowledge
2. Phonological awareness
3. Rapid automatic naming of letters or digits
4. Rapid automatic naming of objects or colors
5. Writing or writing name
6.  Phonological memory

Five early skills modernately predictive of later literacy achievement

1. Concept of print
2. Print knowledge
3. Reading readiness (usually a combination of alphabet knowledge, concepts of print, vocabulary, memory and PA)
4. Oral language
5. Visual processing

Studies conducted by Hart and Risley (1995) showed that three-year-old children of professional parents had larger vocabularies than children of parents on welfare.  This finding is less shocking when considered in light of another:  children in professional homes heard 382 words an hour while children raised in welfare homes heard an average of 167 words an hour.  There can be a gap of as much as five times greater in vocabulary between these two groups by the time children reach kindergarten.  This doesn't have to be economically driven, if we can help families, in a supportive way to experience literacy with their children.  If you'd like to do more reading on this research, check out this summary of Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children or find the book itself (a good choice for staff development discussions at your school.  .

On average, according to the American Association of Pediatrics, preschool children watched 2.6 hours of TV on weekdays and 2.7 hours on weekends.  This association, however, recommends that children under 2 years old watch little or no TV.

Here are additional resources to check out on these topics:

PreK Now is an advocates of high quality early childhood experiences for young children

Harlem Children's Zone - 100% of their children are ready for kindergarten for the 7th consecutive year!


100% of third graders at Promise Academies I and II tested at or above grade level on the math exam, and in the English and Language Arts (ELA) over 93% of the Promise Academy I third graders tested at or above grade level, outperforming New York State, New York City and District 5 peers.

The National Association for the Education of Young Children addresses the needs and education of children ages zero to eight.

Want to be inspired?  Visit Inspiringteachers.com.  You might start with The Power of Teaching. 

Don't forget to visit Share A Story:  Shape A Future.   Whether you are a parent or a teacher or just someone how loves children and wants to share the incredible gift of literacy with a child, you should visit this live, week-long (March 8-12) virtual event sponsored by my friends at
The Reading Tub.

While you're on the inspiration channel, join my revolution!   

Whether you are a parent or an educator, you CAN make a difference with your child (or children) when it comes to reading.  The first step is to ENGAGE them, reach out to families and schools and children with the message that reading IS for everyone.  These tools will help you do just that.

Educators, librarians and parents can all benefit from this annotated list of over 180 picture books that can be used with 5-18 year olds to introduce knowledge as a base to understanding textbook contents in science, history, art, math, etc.

Extensive indexing gives educators, librarians and parents a variety of ways to use a picture book a day with great results. The 1-180 listing also provides a convenient "one picture book for each day" approach that follows many familiar themes (such as Grandparent's Day, winter holidays, etc.) throughout the school year.
Available through Inspiringteachers.com. 

Two guidebooks, designed to be used in tandem, one for preschool and kindergarten teachers (Before They Read) and the other for parents of 3-6 year olds (Anytime Reading Readiness).

Here's what others say:

“If you want to turn your preschooler into a lifelong reader, you need Anytime Reading Readiness. It skillfully guides parents as they create a pressure-free love of language and learning in their child.” – Susan Newman, Ph.D., social psychologist and author of Little Things Long Remembered: Making Your Children Feel Special Every Day

“This book is chock full of great suggestions for helping children learn how to read. It includes all you need to put together a wonderful research-based program—a must-read.”
—Susan B. Neuman, former U.S. Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary Education

Final Words

In closing let me invite you to post your own comments about these topics and to share my parent blog full of fun, practical ideas and information, as well as this teacher blog, with those you know who play those roles. 

One question to ponder that arose during the show:

Does coloring have anything to do with literacy development?  Is there research out there to address this question?

My sense was that it is certainly a pre-writing experience that builds muscles in the hands.  I also know the importance of eye-hand coordination in coloring and in reading, so I see some anecdotal connections there.  If you know of any research, please share it.  Here's a good article about how learning across many spectrums works in early childhood, from ReadingOnline.

Are you inspired?