Bringing children to be fluent readers is a laudable goal for any school. However, the sad truth is that so few children actually get there. That’s not even news anymore. Is reading that odious an activity that we can’t get kids to be good at it? Well, no. We have just been trying to do […]
Parents and older siblings are the young child’s first teachers… but they are not school teachers. What they do for a child is much more important than what happens in school. There is a single critical role for family and friends to play in the joyful development of children, especially between birth and the beginning […]
If you eat the same breakfast cereal every morning, do you also read everything on the back of the same box every morning, too? I do. I’ve noticed myself doing that and I wondered WHY? I mean, I already KNOW what’s on the back of that box. I’ve seen it for nearly a week now. Sometimes […]
That’s depressing, isn’t it? …but actually it isn’t. No really, it’s not. This notion was spawned when I read an article about a teacher who gives students a “second chance” . It was a very uplifting argument by an excellent middle school teacher that understood children and childhood and academic standards for particular grades and […]
In a recent week’s National Center for Literacy Education Smartbrief I found, “Sharing Our Practices: Family / School Partnerships Web Event.” You may read this review of a panel discussion about involving families by clicking here. My first reaction was that nobody who understands children and learning would argue against family / school partnerships. They are an essential […]
There are two kinds of assessments that are pertinent to teachers of reading and their professional decision making about children and learning. We hear about “Summative” assessments through news outlets. These yearly tests of achievement also end up on the transcripts of our students / children. They are used to gather evidence of a child’s progress […]
Gotcha. Of course, just about everybody cares, for a range of reasons…but not everybody. A HUGE number of the KIDS don’t care. …and that’s a massive problem for us and an even bigger one for them. Proficient reading is a marvelous accomplishment of which children should not just be proud, but also be glad. It […]
At Unite for Literacy, we provide free narrated picture books online to children around the world. Aimed at children birth through about age eight (and their cuddling parents), our books are free, via mobile networks and the Internet. Wondrously Infinite Global Library The narrations of our books include 15 different languages, to date. Parents […]
Let’s call her Emma. Emma is a school counselor that blurted in a conversation with two literacy teacher / professors (I was one of them) that she hated to read. We were standing in the middle of a lovely elementary school library of all places! Dang, girl! When she said that, in full voice, my […]
Donalyn Miller has made a name for herself. She wrote a book called The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child. (2009. Jossey-Bass. San Francisco). Her undisputed claim to being The Book Whisperer is that she can turn any child coming into her sixth grade classroom in Texas into an avid reader no […]
