Literacy is Priceless: A Blog for Reading Teachers

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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The Educational Research Newsletter is a site dedicated to keeping educators informed on the latest happenings in the research arena. Since 1988, Educational Research Newsletter has informed educators about the latest in education research in easy-to-read articles. Each month, ERN reports on some of the most relevant and useful research from leading journals and organizations.

If you don’t have a ton of extra time, like most teachers, then this site is worth checking out. You won’t have to spend hours combing through a complicated article to keep yourself informed. Make sure you check out this month’s article on Positive Behavior Reinforcement. - Melissa

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Primary Games is an excellent resource for teachers and parents. It can keep your child occupied for hours on a lazy summer day at home, or it can be a useful teaching tool in a computer center in the classroom. Language Arts Games include Hangman, Letter Blocks, Writer’s Block, See ‘N Spell, and many more. What a fun way to get children to practice basic phonics skills. All the games are free, but you may have to fight a few advertisements to get to them.- Melissa

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I just discovered the Worksheet Generator from Discovery Education. This handy tools lets you create your own worksheets - fill in the blank, mulitple choice, matching, scramble, word chop - in seconds. What a great time saver for the end of the school year! There are also a variety of pre-made worksheets to check out. –Melissa

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Last month Kellie Doubek and I presented a session titled “Supporting Reading and Literacy with Technology Tools” at Midwest Tech Forum. To listen to a podcast of the session, click here.

If you are interested in viewing the handouts from the session you can find them here. To see videos and podcasts from other presenters such as Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach click here.

Anna

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Last weekend I attended my sister’s college graduation at Virginia Tech. Since the drive to Tech is a bit long, my family had lots of time to catch up. While talking about FreeReading with my father, he mentioned that I should spend time on the website blurb.

Blurb is a website and service that allows you to turn your photos, text and artwork into beautiful and professionally bound books. For examples of the types of books you can make using this site, click here. My father’s good friend Andy Ilachinski uses blurb to create books of his photographs. Andy highly recommends the site, which in my mind is the equivalent of giving blurb a Michelin star!

Just imagine how much fun it would be for your students to create a professionally bound class book filled with student poetry, illustrations and more!

Have fun!

Anna

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While browsing through the Urban Education Exchange website, I came across a short article by Linda Darling-Hammond that was originally published in Time Magazine on February 14, 2008. The article is titled, “How they do it abroad” Darling-Hammond writes:

When school starts each year, the most important question on the minds of parents and children is, Who will my teacher be? The concern is well founded. Researchers have discovered that school’s deepest influence on learning depends on the quality of the teacher… Put simply, expert teachers are the most fundamental resource for improving education.

She goes onto discuss how countries with top international rankings (such as Finland, Singapore, Canada and Japan) prepare their teachers. A former MA student in comparative and international education and teacher in Japan, I find studying other school system’s a fascinating endeavor! There is so much we can learn as educators from our international peers. If you have 3 minutes, check our Darling-Hammond’s article here.

Anna

PS If you are interested in catching a glimpse of the education systems in India and China, you might enjoy the recent documentary 2 Million Minutes.

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