Literacy is Priceless: A Blog for Reading Teachers

Jumpstart’s Read for the Record is a campaign designed to promote early literacy. As stated on their website, the number of books in a home is the single strongest indicator of a child’s future reading ability. When you make a donation to Jumpstart, they give books to those children who need them the most. In addition, Jumpstart connects at-risk children preschool children with adult mentors, to help them get on the right track with books before they even enter kindergarten.

You can help Jumpstart on October 2, 2008. Jumpstart is encouraging every adult everywhere on this day to take a few minutes and read the book Curdoroy to a child in his or her life. Read with your community on October 2^nd and show your support!

Jumpstart also highlights several other ways you can get involved to make a difference. This website can help you organize your own book drive or join an event in your neighborhood. Learn more about the risks of failing early literacy and make a difference! - Melissa

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The summer is a good time to brush up your own vocabulary while your students are on holiday. Therefore, why not play a few rounds of this tricky etymology game on the site Words of a Feather. The site states:

Words of a Feather is a book of doublets: word pairs that trace to a common source. An example is card & chart. Both come from the Latin charta, “leaf of paper.”

What is the doublet of demin–Denis, dense or Nimes?! Play the etymology game to find out!

Thanks to Debbie Shults for recommending this site and other vocabulary instruction tips and resources in her recent article titled, “Vocabulary Instruction: The Non-amorphous Shape of Word Knowledge.”

Cheers!

Anna

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I recently discovered Eye on the Sky while surfing the web. The mission of Eye on the Sky is to foster early literacy through science and technology.

Project FIRST has focused its efforts on the collaborative development and on-line publication of integrated science/literacy teaching materials. This site contains engaging inquiry-based and hands-on science activities developed and tested by UC Berkeley educators and scientists at the Center for Science Education @ SSL in partnership with classroom teachers.

The program features a cluster of lessons on the Sun-Earth connection, simultaneously focusing on reading and writing skills. The program includes unique activities such as making a solar eclipse book and making a sundial. I encourage you to check it out. - Melissa

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Recently I discovered Sesame Workshop’s online video collection. It is absolutely fabulous and on top of that it is free!

Use the search bar to find videos that target key literacy skills, science concepts and more! For example, if you type the word “reading” in the search bar here, you’ll be directed to dozens of Sesame clips that have been created over the years to help young children learn basic literacy skills. I absolutely adore the clip titled Doug E. Doug and Elmo!

This site is definitely worth bookmarking and sharing! Enjoy!

Anna

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Reach out and Read is a national nonprofit organization that aims to put books into the wating rooms of peidatiric offices all over the country. In addition, they train doctors and nurses to discuss the importance of early literacy with parents.

Reach Out and Read trains doctors and nurses to advise parents about the importance of reading aloud and to give books to children at pediatric check-ups from six months to five years of age. A special focus is placed on children growing up in poverty. By building on the unique relationship between parents and medical providers, Reach Out and Read helps families and communities cultivate early literacy skills so that children enter school prepared to succeed at reading.

You can help this worthwhile organization by making a donation or signing up for a ROR Visa Card, which donates money for each new account. Attend an event and spread the word! - Melissa

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While walking to the gym recently, I saw an advertisement for the New York City Public Libraries’ Summer Reading 2008 website on an MTA bus. This evening, I finally got around to checking out the site and found it quite useful, in particular the libraries’ list of of “Great Websites for Families“.

On the list is a link to Colorín Colorado–Colorín Colorado is a free web-based service that provides information, activities and advice for educators and Spanish-speaking families of English language learners (ELLs).

Take a look at Colorín Colorado’s strategies for teaching ELL students reading (K-12) here. I particularly like the site’s suggested cooperative learning strategies to help students build literacy skills and content area knowledge. For example, have you ever tried having a class tea party or writearound?

• Tea Party: Students form two concentric circles or two lines facing each other. You ask a question (on any content) and students discuss the answer with the student facing them. After one minute, the outside circle or one line moves to the right so that students have new partners. Then pose a second question for them to discuss. Continue with five or more questions. For a little variation, students can write questions on cards to review for a test through this “Tea Party” method.

• Writearound: For creative writing or summarization, give a sentence starter (for example: If you give an elephant a cookie, he’s going to ask for…). Ask all students in each team to finish that sentence. Then, they pass their paper to the right, read the one they received, and add a sentence to that one. After a few rounds, four great stories or summaries emerge. Give children time to add a conclusion and/or edit their favorite one to share with the class.

Thanks WETA for sponsoring Colorín Colorado!

Anna

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Now that summer is in full swing, I know that we are all looking for ways to keep reading alive during the long summer months. The state of Michigan has a great program, Project Great Start, to help you do just that. Since many children can lose some of the skills they have learned during the school year, Project Great Start has come up with Family Fundamentals Learning Activities to keep children on the right track. Choose from Literacy Activities for Pre Kindergarten, Kindergarten, First Grade, or Second Grade. Make sure to also check out their links on the bottom of the page to other great learning resources on the web. - Melissa

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PBS KIDS Raising Readers is a great resource to share with parents of preschoolers and rising kindergarteners. The site states:

Kids love to learn. And with your help, they’ll learn to love reading with resources from PBS KIDS programs Between the Lions, Sesame Street, SUPER WHY, and WordWorld.

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Anna posted one of her recent presentations at the Midwest Tech Forum as a podcast, and I couldn’t help but think….what a great idea. I did a quick search for other free professional development podcasts and I found teacherspodcast.org. A product of Mark Gura and Dr. Kathy King, who are both teachers, ed tech experts, professors, and authors, they include this warning on their website:

Note that this is not your usual podcast, nor PD experience. Instead it includes fun, abundant resources and crisp insight from the perspective of what you can use today and tomorrow.

You’ll find everything from insight into Classroom 2.0 to podcast contests. Enjoy.

-Melissa

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I am excited to announce that FreeReading now has over 250 new and FREE K-3 vocabulary, comprehension and morphology activities and printables! In addition, we just added 60 new illustrated beginning readers that focus on advanced phonics (compound words, word families, etc.), fluency and comprehension skills!

Vocabulary lessons target tier 2 vocabulary words from ~150 popular children’s stories including books like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and Fancy Nancy. To see all of the Vocabulary graphic organizers and build mastery activities click here. You can also find vocabulary activities by common themes such as family and friends and my world here.

Comprehension lessons focus on important skills and strategies such as identifying a purpose for reading, story elements, prediction and more. For links to all of the comprehension printables click here.

Morphology lessons include activities for the most popular prefixes and suffixes K-3 student encounter in texts and everyday conversations. For links to all of the morphology printables click here.

Finally, you can find links to 60 new illustrated FreeReading beginning readers here. I particularly like A Firefighter’s Thanksgiving and Transportation.

Check the new FreeReading resources out and tell your friends about FreeReading by sending them a link to FreeReading here.

Enjoy!

Anna

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I always visit the chatboards at Teachers.net for innovative ideas from my colleagues. Even though I’ve been to this website a million times, it was not until this morning that I took a look at the Gazette. It is definitely worth checking out. It is a monthly newsletter with a variety of relevant topics for educators and parents. The June issues has articles that range from “Atrocious Advice from Supernanny” to “A Great Model of Differentiation”. I highly recommend reading this worthwhile newsletter. -Melissa

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Since summer holiday is right around the corner, I suspect that many of you are getting questions from parents about summer tutoring and/or resources that students can use at home to keep up their literacy skills. Today while browsing through my Google alerts, I learned about GlobalScholar. Quoting the site’s about page:

GlobalScholar.com offers a unique online tutoring platform, where parents and students can safely connect with trusted educators who provide one-on-one tutoring, homework help or self-paced learning. The GlobalScholar platform also can be used by schools and school districts to enable teachers and administrators to more efficiently and effectively create, manage and align content, assessments, curriculum, standards and supplemental learning to drive educational performance.

Having come from a school system in Japan where online tutoring was quite popular, I am always interested to see how companies and school districts in the States and abroad develop online learning courses and modules for children that want to study from home. GlobalScholar certainly seems to be creating a lot of buzz!

To learn more background about the development of GlobalScholar, check out this brief article in TechCruch. You can also watch a brief video tutorial about GlobalScholar here. One nice thing about GlobalScholar is that all tutors have 4 year college degrees and teaching experience. In addition, I was pleased to see that the company does background checks for all of its tutor employees (Education World, May 2008.)

While exploring the site, also take a look at GlobalScholar’s SchoolFinder (a site that enables users to search for general information, test scores and user discussions about elementary and secondary schools around the country) and CollegeFinder (the college-focused equivalent of SchoolFinder).

Enjoy browsing through GlobalScholar!

Anna

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Today, while on a flight to Florida en route to give a FreeReading presentation, I spent some time going through emails and resources I bookmarked over the last few months. While doing so, I came across an email from my friend Cynthia recommending that I look at Steck-Vaughn’s Professional Development Resources. Once I arrived at my hotel this evening, I took a look at the site and was quite impressed by the number of free and high quality research articles and classroom resources in the areas of phonics/phonological awareness, vocabulary, comprehension and fluency.

For example, take a look at:

• Goldilocks and the Three Bears (Readers Theater, found in the fluency section of the site)
• The story map chart (found in the comprehension resources)
• The Frayer Model worksheet (found in the vocabulary section of the site)
• The Amazing Alliteration worksheet (found in the phonological awareness resources)

This is definitely a resource to bookmark for use during summer school or next fall!

Signing off from Ft. Lauderdale, FL!

Anna

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Reading Rockets has a nice resource for parents, teachers and librarians titled Summer Reading. Take a look at the resources and tips the site provides to “prevent the summer slide.”

Resources for parents can be found here.

Resources for teachers and librarians can be found here.

Heading to the beach this summer? Here is a great list of children’s Books for the Beach!

I just got back from the beach where I spent my afternoons reading Eat, Pray, Love and The Unbearable Lightness of Being overlooking the San Juan sand!

Cheers to great summer reads!

Anna

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Last week my colleague Margaret forwarded me an email from the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST). As the website states, the mission of CAST is “to expand learning opportunities for all individuals, especially those with disabilities, through the research and development of innovative, technology-based educational resources and strategies.”

I am a big fan of the UDL Editions by CAST. Universal Design for Learning Editions are online stories that incorporate multimedia scaffolds to help budding readers develop important comprehension skills such as the ability to predict, understand metaphors, etc.

Take a look at the story How the Coyote Stole Fire. Notice how CAST has created animated animal reading coaches that pop up to help children read and understand various sections of the book. In addition, readers and teachers can determine the level of scaffolding appropriate before beginning the text. The following bullets describe the scaffold settings available for this story:

• Maximum support-“Stop and Think” prompts are multiple choice. Highlighting critical features, models, and hints available. Immediate feedback on responses.
• Moderate support- “Stop and Think” prompts elicit constructed responses and text revisions to explore author’s craft. Highlighting critical features, models, and hints available. Immediate feedback on text revisions only.
• Minimal support- “Stop and Think” prompts offer strategy choice and open responses. Students are guided to highlight and collect key elements in the text, thus actively highilghting critical features for themselves.

If you enjoy the UDL Editions by CAST, try exploring CAST’s UDL Lesson Builder and UDL Book Builder.

Anna

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