A new look has been launched for the FOR-PD website.
We’ve made some changes we know you’re going to like and we hope our site continues to be a favorite among teachers, administrators, and literacy coaches across the state of Florida and beyond.
We’d love to hear your feedback so post your thoughts here by leaving a comment.
National Family Literacy Day is officially celebrated on November 1st, but many events are held throughout the month of November. It’s never been more important to spread the word in your community and build awareness for the importance of families working together toward a better educated tomorrow.
Visit the following links to learn about ways you can increase family literacy in your schools and classrooms.
Those currently going through the FOR-PD course have recently completed lesson 6 on literacy motivation and engagement. Often considered a favorite among FOR-PD graduates, the authors of this lesson provide information on the importance of considering the quality of the content, the organization and format, and the text’s appeal to the students. One way to help students learn about new books is through the use of book talks. This simple way to hook kids on books offer teachers a way to “tell and sell” a book.
Recently, online book talks and book summaries have become available for students to watch on their own. Check out the following sites for more information on digital book talks.
How could use these at your school or in your classroom?
This document, a joint paper by the International Reading Association and National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, looks at key issues in reading and make recommendations to the field for further investigation with regard to English Language Learners.
Questions and thoughts from the authors suggest that key questions need to be answered with regard to the following:
- What is needed in addition to high-quality instruction?
- What adjustments must be made in order to produce ELL students who become successful readers and writers?
- What strategies will effectively enable teachers to differentiate instruction within classes?
- How can we best assess students, and how can we develop accessible assessments?
- Can we develop rapid on-the-run formative assessments for teachers to use to differentiate instruction?
- What roles do culture and home, school and community contexts play?
- How can we use technology successfully to accelerate the development of academic language and literacy?
What are your thoughts on these questions? Do you feel they could offer you assistance with gaining success with your ELLs? What other questions do you have?
This week many public and school libraries will be celebrating Teen Read Week. Teen Read Week is an adolescent literacy initiative of the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). Teen Read Week is a national literacy initiative aimed at teens, their parents, librarians, educators, booksellers and other concerned adults. It began in 1998 and is celebrated the third week in October.
Want to see who’s celebrating in your area? Check out a list of participating libraries.
For those working through the fall 2007 course, you have just completed lesson 4 on creating a print and language rich classroom. As you read, organizing your classroom for reading instruction is important. We want to remind all about some wonderful resources FOR-PD has published in previous newsletters that you may want to check out.
- What is Shared Reading?
- Shared Reading in the Content Area Classroom
- Benefits of Shared Reading
- Resources
- What Is Indepedent Reading?
- Matched Text: Right Book, Right Time
- Book Pass: Exposing Students to Text
- Resources
- What Are Read Alouds?
- The Role of the Student in the Read Aloud Process
- Choosing Materials for Read Alouds
- How to do a Successful Read Aloud
- Resources
Do you have any specific strategies or ideas for using these types of instruction in your classroom or school? We’d love to hear about them. Click on the “Leave a Comment” bubble to share.
Oh where, oh where has my KWL gone?
Ah, I’ve found it! It seems like it’s being used in every classroom and I am simply thrilled with that implication. Created by Donna Ogle as a way to organize instruction into “beforeâ€, “duringâ€, and “after†components, the KWL is often seen as one of the simplest graphic organizers used to activate prior knowledge and enhance comprehension for informational texts. It works well as a scaffold for young children and as an on-your-own organizer for older students.
Of course, there may be those of you who want to spice it up a bit and add in some different features in order to raise the level of this organizer. So, for you, here are a few ideas that seem to be popping up in different places. It’s simplicity at it’s best. ☺
KWL –What I Know, What I Want to Know, What I Learned
KWWL –What I Know, What I Want to Know, Where Do I Find What I Want to Know, What I Learned
KWLH — What I Know, What I Want to Know, What I Learned, How Can I Learn More
KWHL — What I Know, What I Want to Know, How will I find information, What I Learned,
KWLS — What I Know, What I Want to Know, What I Learned, What I Still Want to Know
Remember, you don’t want to add too many features to the KWL. Going beyond four columns may prove to be problematic, as students will concentrate too much on the chart and not enough time on their own learning of the information.
Do you have a special KWL you created? We’d love to hear about how you use the KWL.
For those going through the FOR-PD course right now, they should be wrapping up both lessons 2 and 3 this week. In lesson 3 we learned about the principles of exemplary reading programs and exemplary teachers of reading. For those of us that have taken the course, or have yet to take the course, it can be quite pleasant to think back to our own instruction in reading. Somewhere in those passages of our brain, we have memories of what worked for us and what made the difference in our literacy development.
For myself, I think back to my favorite of first grade teachers, Mrs. Barri. She was quite a lovely woman, with strawberry-blonde hair and rosy cheeks. She often wore red, which would sometimes clash with her hair color, but we loved her anyway. And Mrs. Barri loved us.
When I look over the list of exemplary teaching principles, I feel she covered many of them. I remember her enthusiasm, high expectations, and use of praise. She worked hard to not leave anyone out and to give everyone a chance to share the spotlight. She helped us with setting purpose for our learning and helped us with reading and learning to read authentic texts. The decoding skills she taught me shaped my learning for the rest of my life.
While Mrs. Barri did many things that I knew I wanted to do when I became a teacher, I can now reflect on the areas that I do not recall her doing. I know these are areas I find are important for my students. I know the importance of small group instruction, independent reading time, and the use of self-regulation. I look at students who read and read with great fluency, but lack comprehension due to lack of metacognition skills. I was that student and I know the importance of teaching it.
Thinking back to your own K-12 instruction, do you believe that you received exemplary reading instruction? What principles were in your reading program? What principles were missing? Describe your own reading instruction. How will your prior reading instruction and the principles of exemplary instruction influence your own teaching or promotion of literacy?
“If you can read this, thank a teacher.†- Anonymous teacher
For those of us that have been through the FOR-PD course, or are currently going through it now, lesson 2 provided us with an excellent review of the basic elements of reading and the factors that effect reading and learning to read. Referenced in the lesson 2 text, our authors provided a chart on the factors as predictors of success and failure in reading. Based on the writings of Snow, Burns, and Griffin (1998), they found the following to be factors:
1. Physical and Clinical Factors
2. Predictors of School Entry
3. Acquired Knowledge of Literacy
4. Family-based Risk Factors
5. Neighborhood, Community, and School-based Factors
While each of these factors represent areas that teachers must consider in order to gain perspective of the possible needs of their students, looking at recent research (National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 1996) the one factor that can make the most difference in improving student achievement is a “knowledgeable, skillful teacher” in the classroom. No matter what level, grade, or content a teacher covers, it is an informed, expert teacher who has a sound understanding of subject matter, how students learn, and how to motivate students to learn that can make a difference in the classroom.
What are some strategies or ideas that you use in your own classroom to assist struggling students who may have negative factors affecting their reading and learning development?
Are you looking for some ideas for dealing with family-based factors? Check out this link for ideas on family literacy. What do you think about the strategies? How will you use them?
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