read & write

Help! what is Wrong With these Literature Circles and How Can We Fix Them?The article in Reading Teacher made me think about Literature Circles as I know them. I have mixed feelings about them but then realize that the term has many different meanings. I have seen where the roles of the group members outweighs the comprehension and discussion that supports comprehension. When the roles rise to that prominence, I think the circles are not as effective as they could be. However if the discussion is the emphasis and comprehension is the focus, the value is high. I have attached the article and encourage you to read it and comment on it.

I encourage you to join the Reading Association and receive the Journal Reading Teacher for many helpful articles and tons of help in understanding the reading process.

In reading Steve Dembo’s blog http://www.denblogs.com/digital_passports/2007/05/kartoo_map_out_.html  I found the Kartoo.com site.  It is interesting and provides yet another tool to help students navigate the ocean of information.  I always worry about the little storm clouds on the horizon when I send kids out on the WEB.  Do they have the skills they need?  Who knows where they will land if a storm suddenly appears.  Please take a few minutes and try this one.  It has potential. http://www.kartoo.com

As the first day of school is looming right around the corner, I become aware of the crunch on my available time to do all the things I would like to do before the official starting bell.  Hence when I was cleaning out files of the last 30 years and came across a list of 14 ways to Beat the time Trap listed by my administrator so long ago, I realized that they were valid today and I needed to review them.  I will share them with you as well and maybe one will help you find a few minutes each day that would be lost without the awareness.

1. Keep a “to do” list, updating daily and marking for priorities.

2. Plan for a week or several days work at one time with just daily reviews.

3. Set deadlines for yourself and monitor your successes.

4. Use wait time for mental planning, reading, updating your palm, calendar, or visioning.

5. Keep some kind of paper or electronic tool to jot down notes whenever and wherever you are.

6. Evaluate yourself – am I procrastinating and why?

7. Unpleasant tasks may be more acceptable if broken down into smaller step-tasks.

8. Immediately throw away what you don’t need. (this is my personal downfall and why I still have 30 years of accumulation to sort through).

9. Everything needs to have a home.  (Another major problem when I have so much stuff covering so much territory, I think I need a ten story building covering half a city block to begin to sort the piles.)

10.Listen carefully. Ask direct questions to clarify any confusion immediately.

11. Know thyself and do your most important work at your peak creative time.  And don’t forget to write it down or record it someplace so that you don’t have to recreate the thoughts.

12. Ask help from someone you consider an expert in the area you have a question.

13. Arrive at work early to take advantage of the quiet time needed to get ready for your day.

14. Read your email, answer your phone messages as soon as possible.  (This was my addition to the list because 30 years ago we did not have email to worry about.) 

Fairview has been using UnitedStreaming an awesome resource for videos for the last two years.  Now that UnitedStreaming is adding components and additional resources we need to help each other find ways to effectively use this resource.  At our in-service we went through some basics.  Part of our group investigated some additional features such as embedding videos in PowerPoints.  The comment area of this webpage will allow us to share some of our ideas. 

If you have difficulty using any part of UnitedStreaming, please let me know.  I may not have the answer but I do have resources to get an answer. 

I am looking for 15 comments by December 15th as to one thing you did as a follow-up to our workshop together.

Words-on-the-move #6

The strategy is Comparing word meaning as found in Intervention Strategies to Follow Informal Reading Inventory Assessment by JoAnne Schudt Caldwell and Lauren Leslie.

They stress the importance of helping students grow their vocabulary by keeping it grounded in what they are currently studying in context.   Understanding how things are alike is a basic way we as learners handle new words, new concepts and integrate it into our bank of understanding.  This is the basis for this strategy.

Choose two words from a discussion, a text, from a day’s work, wherever…

Write the two words on the board. Ask students how the words are alike and list those under the two words. 

An example of what we mean.

Place on the board hungry and heavy

Students add- Both have two syllables

                        Both start and end with the same letter

                        Both can describe something, maybe someone who likes to eat.

                        They go together.  If you’re always hungry you’ll get heavy.

                        You can be both.  You can be hungry and you can be heavy.

The Writing Strategy is straight from an article in The Writer November 2006.  The title is The Power of Personal Writing by Christina Baldwin.

The article advocates the idea of meaning and story telling in writing personal journals.  This is an activity that requires time away from the tv, gameboys, etc.  It requires reflection and creativity. 

I would like to quote a few lines from the article. 

            “Writing organizes the mind and the actions that lead from the mind.  Over time, the decisions and choices we make in the rush of the moment are informed by the self-knowledge our story gives us.  We learn that if we have practiced articulating our story, if we have honored the path to this moment by writing it down, the choices we make are congruent with who we say we are.  This is one of the primary promises of story: It was true in oral form and remains even more true in written form.  For in writing we live life twice: once in the experience, and again in recording and reflecting upon our experience.”

The poem for this  podcast is Thanksgiving from The Goof Who Invented Homework and Other School Poems by Kalli Dakos

The podcast I want to recommend is from the Dana Radio Series called Gray Matters.  You subscribe or give it a trial run from itunes

Time to sign off and give my thanks to The Discovery Educational Network for the support and encouragement that they provide me.  Sometimes I just need an extra push to keep going.

The music is from  Blake Emmy. 

podcast address.

http://podcasts.milwaukee.k12.wi.us

Go under the Fairview heading to find my podcasts.

“High-frequency words appear again and again for students.  What is critical is that Johnny has a ready paraphrase.  Students should carry a list of such words in their materials with corresponding paraphrases: “What’s another word for ‘select’?” the

teacher asks.  “Choose” or “pick” is the response.”

A critical and important task for classroom teachers to carry out is item analysis of test.  Look for the prompts to see if there are patterns of words that might be sending students in the wrong direction, not only as they complete tests but also as they carry out assignments.  It is important to remember that when students take tests, they are doing so as independent readers

Second grade: Explain – some students though that the prompt was asking them to choose shich directive was the correct response, explaining or showing in picture.

Third Grade : “draw conclusions about the type”.  Many students literally “drew” their conclusions.

Seventh Grade: “Distinguish the difference”   Many students thought distinguish meant extinguish.

Tenth Grade: “opine on the bias of the reviewers”  Opine is a verb that probably no high school in the history of the country has ever used voluntarily.

“ When students return with homework that indicates a misunderstanding of the directions, it is likely that their response to the task verb was a key reason for the misunderstanding.  It is easy to assume that students are not listening or paying attention; in fact, they may not clearly understand the words in the directions.  One reason students struggle with high-frequency words is that they do not use them in their own daily speech.

The point is that we understand the words we actually use.  If students do not use these words, then they will not understand them, especially in high-stress testing situations.  This is why students need to learn to translate from their vernacular speech to the academic register.   One characteristic of students who perform well on standardized or criteria-referenced tests is, in fact, their ability to assimilate high-frequency protocols with ease.”

The key strategy here is for teachers to ask students to keep a set of student-developed and personal translations for high-frequency words – words that they encounter in class, on the blackboard, on charts, and so on – in their notebooks.  The student paraphrase should be made in a different color of ink.  

Examples:

Select = pick

Determine = think about, then make the best choice

Reasons = the ideas that tell why something happened or why something should happen

Words-On-The-Move # 5

October 16^th , 2006.

The reading strategy shared is from Active Literacy Across the Curriculum : Strategies for reading, writing, speaking and listening by Heidi Hayes Jacobs

I chose this one because we are close to the testing window for the WKCE.  Barton reported in the NASSP Bulletin that 35% of all achievement test errors were fundamental reading errors.

Excerpts from handout.

The Writing strategy is from the Oshkosh conference from the session by Katherine Boldt on Marvelous Magazines. Katherine lists 88 ideas and we added more in small group discussions.  Let your mind explode with other possibilities.

Idea 1 = Magnetic poetry  use magnetic business cards (sticky-backed magnets) to create magnetic words for student-created poetry & creative stories.

Idea 2 = magnetic letters – cut out big & small letters and adhere to magnetic business cards for spelling, making sight words, & vocabulary study.

Idea 3 = Student authored magazines  – students use magazines to help them create their own or classroom created magazines.

Idea 4 = “All about me” collages  — great back to school activity!

Idea 5 = Favorites posters/ books  – Students find pictures of their favorite books, movies, foods, sports, hairstyles, fonts, etc.

Idea 6 = Desk nameplate – Students find letters to spell their names and or pictures to represent themselves.

Idea 7 = Alphabet fonts – To help students recognize different fonts.

Idea 8 = Class/student  alphabet books

Idea 9 = Class/student vowel books

Idea 10 = Flashcards – to help students learn concept in any subject area!

Idea 11= Sight Words – Word Hunts ; Students look for whole sight words in magazines

Idea 12= Sight Words – Collage : Student scut out magazine letters to spell their sight words

Idea 13= Spelling Words – Word Hunts: Students look for their spelling words in magazines

Idea 14=Spelling Word – Collage : Students cut out magazine letters to spell their weekly words

Idea 15= Phonics –Chunking: Students look for word chunks in magazine text

Idea 16=Punctuation Practice: Cut out magazine sentences (minus the punctuation), mount on index cards, and have students decide punctuation & mark on a recording sheet (or laminate & have students write directly on the card).

Idea 17= Antonyms Hunts/Books: Students can either make a poster page of antonyms or make their own mini-books including text & pictures from magazines.

Idea 18= Synonyms Hunts/ Books

Idea 19= Homonyms Hunts/Books

Idea 20=Contractions Hunts/Books

Idea 21= Plurals Hunts/ Books

Idea 22= Prepositions Hunts/Books

Idea 23= Word Family Hunts/Books: Students find the word family ending (i.e. –an) and then cut out letters to paste on flip book pages.

Idea 24=Grammar Hunts: many entences in magazines are actually just fragments/incomplete sentences – students can find & edit/revie these

Idea 25= Short Vowels Hunts/books

Poem “The Cow’s Complaint by Alice Schertle  from  A Kick in the Head : an Everyday Guide to Poetic Forms seleced by Paul B. Janeczko and illustrated by Chris Raschka.

The Grammar Girl podcast;  http://grammar.qdnow.com/.

Thanks to Dan Schmidt from KidCast for inspiring me to try this auditory venture and to Blake Emmy for sharing his music from www.podsafemusic.com

Words-on-the-move #4

October 2, 2006

Reading strategy – Compare and contrast

Writing strategy – Write Around

Poem – Please Bury Me in the Library by J. Patrick Lewis

Resources:

            Fire Prevention Week Oct 8-14

                        www.sparky.org

                        www.usfa.dhs.gov/kids/flash.shtm

            Brochure for parents on how to help their children write

                        www.familyhaven.com/parenting/helping/wwrite.html

            Magazine for parents and children

                        http://reading.indiana.edu/www/indexfr.html

            Becoming a Reader ( a government publication)

                        www.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/reader/part4.html