Archive for July 22, 2007 - July 28, 2007

 Each month, the ReadWriteThink.org Calendar offers quick classroom activities, lesson plans, Web links, and texts pertaining to various reading–related and general interest events. Here is a sampling of the links for August:

August 1: The prototype for the World Wide Web was created in 1990.
August 10: Walter Dean Myers, author of the Printz Award-winning novel, Monster, was born in 1937.
August 13: William Caxton, the first English printer, was born in 1422.
August 17: Davy Crockett was born in 1786.
August 21: Monarch butterflies begin their fall migration.
August 23: The tropical storm that became Katrina formed over the Bahamas.
August 26: The 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution gave women the right to vote in 1920.

There also are links relating to other noted authors and events, and more. For further information, visit the website. The ReadWriteThink.org is a nonprofit website maintained by the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English with support from the Verizon Foundation, and in association with the Thinkfinity consortium. The site provides free lesson plans, interactive student materials, Web resources, and standards for K-12 classroom teachers of reading and the English language arts. Visit the main site.

British teenagers should be forced to stay after school to take part in activities such as sports and drama clubs, the Institute for Public Policy Research said July 26. The leftwing thinktank wants to see a legal extension to the school day so that every child is required to do at least an hour a week of after-school activities, rather than simply being offered the chance to do them. This would prevent the disaffected teenagers most in need of constructive after-school activities from missing out, said the IPPR study. According to its research, regular participation in at least one extracurricular activity each week can radically improve life chances of young people. Read the story at Guardian Unlimited.

Children and teachers at the Okalunga Primary School near Oshigambo in the Oshikoto Region of Namibia are convinced that supernatural powers are at work in the school—girls lose concentration and start nodding uncontrollably. Principal Johannes Nehale told The Namibian that this “nodding” started last month and is affecting many schoolgirls. “It’s a very serious and strange phenomenon...” Nehale said. He said school officials told them to take the children to the Onandjokwe Lutheran Hospital. Several schools in northern Namibia also have reported outbreaks of mass hysteria in which pupils claim to be affected by supernatural powers. Read the article at allAfrica.com.

A group of foreign women who sell sex in London have turned their hand to teaching English—but the words they are imparting to their students are unlikely to be featured in tourist phrase books. The classes are aimed at migrants working in London’s sex industry. Alice (not her real name), a 25-year-old Australian studying for her masters in post-colonial theory, is the brainchild of the language classes. Alice also works as an escort and is involved in the International Union of Sex Workers. She formed a group with 14 other women—many of whom are working in the industry—to set up the classes. “Women are [working in the sex industry] for the money, not because they like meeting four or five strange men a day,” she says. Read the article at Guardian Unlimited.

Not being able to read doesn’t just make it harder to navigate each day. Low literacy impairs people’s ability to obtain critical information about their health and can dramatically shorten their lives. A new study from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine shows that older people with inadequate health literacy had a 50 percent higher mortality rate over five years than people with adequate reading skills. Inadequate or low health literacy is defined as the inability to read and comprehend basic health-related materials such as prescription bottles, doctor appointment slips and hospital forms. Read more about this study on the website of Northwestern University.

To promote reading, first lady Laura Bush brought Curious George for show and tell Tuesday at Driggs Elementary School in Connecticut. She left the other George at home. Bush and U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, who once clashed with Connecticut officials over President Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, used the school as a backdrop to announce $18 million in library grants awarded Tuesday to 300 schools in 28 states. Read more of this article from The Hartford Courant.

Bedtime stories are proving a struggle for many British parents who are not confident readers, says a survey from the adult learning agency Learndirect. More than 10% of the 1,000 parents asked had struggled to understand some words in the stories they had read to their 5- to 10-year-old children. Parents said that they made up words they could not read or missed out difficult passages, the survey said. Even more parents—a third—struggled with their children's math homework. Read about the dilemma at BBC News.

A policy shift to employ teachers on contract and allow them to teach in two different schools is seen by some in Kenya as the best way to alleviate staff shortages and improve performance. There is growing concern about the rising number of children who leave school without having attained literacy skills at primary level. Others who make a satisfactory start in primary school lag in secondary and eventually drop out of school altogether. More than ever before, authorities are aware that the quality of teaching influences pupil achievement, and now they want the school system to help low achievers. Read about the contract proposal at allAfrica.com.

 Almost half the nation’s school districts have significantly decreased the daily class time spent on subjects like science, art and history as a result of the federal No Child Left Behind law’s focus on annual tests in reading and math, according to a new report released yesterday. The report, by the Center on Education Policy, said that about 44 percent of districts have cut time from one or more subjects or activities in elementary schools to extend time for longer daily math and reading lessons. The report, based on a survey of nearly 350 of the nation’s 15,000 districts, said 62 percent of school districts had increased daily class time in reading and math since the law took effect. Read more of this article from The New York Times. In addition, read the report Making Every Moment Count: Maximizing Quality Instructional Time, a collaborative project of IRA and the American Association of School Librarians, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, the National Council for Geographic Education, the National Council for the Social Studies, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, the National Education Association, the National Geographic Education Foundation, and the National Science Teachers Association.

Winterthur Museum & Country Estate, located outside of Wilmington, Delaware, is hosting several events relating to literacy in the coming months. “K is for Kids,” a family-friendly exhibition that explores intriguing objects in the Winterthur collection and studies early methods of reading education, opens on September 15. In addition, “K is for Kids: A Family Day,” will take place from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on September 29, while “Family Literacy Day” takes place on October 12. For more information, visit Winterthur’s family programs website.

Dyslexic students were learning to use cameras to communicate during a summer program at Hindman Settlement School in eastern Kentucky. During the three-week program, students are given a one-time-use camera and told to photograph people in the community, one another and things that are important in their lives. Then they learn to write captions, and write a description of what they like about the photos they take. Read more of this article from the Lexington Herald-Leader.

The Academy for Educational Development (AED) is recruiting for an English Literacy Technical Advisor for an upcoming three-year program in Northern Nigeria (Sokoto State). The Advisor would be responsible for building capacity of the in-service teacher education system for primary schools (both government and Koranic) to better support teachers to teach English literacy in three states in Northern Nigeria. Essential: experience in working on similar programs in Africa. Preferred: doctorate (or master’s with experience); experience with USAID or similar donor-funded projects. AED is interested in U.S. and non-U.S. citizens from all developing regions. Please send a cover letter and resume to NigeriaCM@aed.org. Please respond by August 3, 2007. We thank all respondents; however, only those selected for an interview will be contacted. AA/EOE/M/F/D/V

An innovative program designed to build early literacy skills among Latino children will continue to expand and assist more families, thanks to a US$1 million grant from the Verizon Foundation. The award was announced Monday (July 23) during a luncheon at the National Council of La Raza’s annual conference in Miami, Florida. The program, Lee y seras, is a national early literacy initiative designed to foster literacy development in children from birth to 8 years old. The program and its accompanying Web site www.leeyseras.net, provide research-based, culturally sensitive resources to help parents in their role as their child's first teacher. Read more here.

Students in Australia next year wll take part in national literacy and numeracy testing following an agreement between the state and territory governments.
Education Minister John Della Bosca announced the agreement, saying 1.2 million students in years three, five, seven and nine will undertake the testing over three days, starting May 13, 2008. They will be tested in spelling, grammar, punctuation, writing, reading, and numeracy. Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop said she welcomed the “confirmation” that the states and territories would participate in the national testing program, which is required under the current schools funding agreement. Read about the testing at The Australian.

 Thousands of Central Florida students can switch schools this year, thanks to state and federal laws that allow transfers from struggling campuses. But most probably will stay put. Some 68,500 students from nearly 100 local schools can request transfers this summer under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. History has shown, however, that there will be few takers. Read more of this article from the Orlando Sentinel.

Education groups have convinced the State Board of Education to slow down a plan to revamp the way schools teach English and writing to the state’s 4.6 million public school children. Most experts agree that the current English language arts curriculum isn’t getting the job done. Nearly one-third of all Texas 8th graders scored “below basic” on the 2005 National Assessment of Educational Progress for reading, with 44 percent of African-American students, 41 percent of Hispanic students and 18 percent of white students not able to read well enough for high school course work. Read more of this article from the Houston Chronicle.

About 20,000 ethnic-minority students are attending preparatory courses in Mandarin in more than 100 Chinese universities, according to China's State Ethnic Affairs Commission (SEAC). Ethnic-minority students can choose one-year or two-year preparatory courses where they can raise their level of Chinese before entering the first year of university. The central government has adopted several policies to help ethnic-minority students, such as easier access to higher education, the SEAC said. Read the article at China Economic Net.

School was the last thing on Pascal Mwanchoka’s mind when he and his younger brother boarded a bus that would take them hundreds of miles from their mother and her alcohol-fueled rages. Pascal, 13, figured the boys’ schooldays were over for good. “My mother wasn't feeding us; she wasn’t taking us to school,” said Pascal, who came here from the coastal city of Mombasa looking for work but ended up living in the gutters of Nairobi, Kenya. Less than a year later, Pascal and Lenjo, 10, are off the streets and attending a free program in Nairobi for children too poor to afford even a meal of maize and beans. They are among millions of children who struggle against vast obstacles for the luxury of going to school on the poorest continent in the world. Read the story at StarTelegram.com.

As the seventh and final installment in J.K Rowling’s Harry Potter series hits bookstore shelves, Daniel Nexon of The New Republic writes that the series “functions something like a Rorschach Blot: In countries around the world, it captures various national anxieties about contemporary culture and international affairs.” Read more of Nexon’s column, available for free from the CBS News website.