Archive for May 11, 2008 - May 17, 2008

The IRA Annual Convention is all about choices, such as which sessions to attend, when to visit the Exhibit Hall, and which featured speakers to hear. You simply can’t be in two places at once. Maybe you missed some speakers you really wanted to hear. Maybe you couldn’t attend the convention at all.

CDs and MP3s of many convention sessions are now available from Dove Conference Services. For a complete list and for information about ordering, visit the IRA section of the Dove website and then click on the 2008 link.

Since its inception almost three years ago, the Reading First program for kindergarten through third grade in Crookston, Minnesota's public schools has pretty much received universal praise. The teachers who have altered their instructional strategies to meet the needs of individual students whether they struggle mightily to read or excel beyond their grade level have said repeatedly that Reading First's impact is clear.

At this week's Crookston School Board meeting, the impact of the program was spelled out clearly in numbers, as in a drastically reduced number of children at the lowest reading skill level, and a dramatically increased number of kids at the highest reading level. Read more in The Crookston Times online.

The Indiana Department of Education has released its suggested summer reading list, which educators hope will inspire students to keep reading even when school is out, according to The Associated Press. The list on the department's website contains 100 book titles for students of all ages and adults. Some books feature Abraham Lincoln in advance of the Lincoln bicentennial celebration in 2009. Others relate to current events like the Olympics.

State schools chief Suellen Reed says summer reading improves students' academic performance in several subjects. She also hopes adults read over the summer to serve as role models for their children. The list is available online.

Outside a small pharmacy in Quetta, the dusty capital of Pakistan’s vast southwestern Balochistan Province, Zaitoon Bibi, 25, clutches two bottles of medicine. “One is for the cough and one is for fever. I hope I can remember which is which,” she says, looking worried.

Zaitoon’s two children, girls ages 4 and 2, have been suffering from fever for over a week. “I was finally able to persuade my husband they needed medicine,” she said.

Like thousands of other women across Pakistan, Zaitoon finds her inability to read a significant handicap in her daily life. The lettering on the bottle makes no sense to her and she must depend on help from neighbors to read the instructions on dosage. Read more in this IRIN News article at One World South Asia online.

The Los Angeles Times editorial board said the Reading First program didn't work the way it was intended. I doubt if anyone with experience in urban education is surprised at the announcement. We're disappointed that, once again, a generation of public school kids didn't get whatever is needed in order to learn to read well. But we're not surprised. We've been barking up the wrong tree a long time.

It turns out that verbal development is not so much about IQ, parental love or socioeconomic status. These skills are related to how much a child is talked to and the tone of the communications. Literacy is founded on words heard and words used. What this means is that the critical place that literacy develops is the home, not the school, and that the crucial intervention period is very early in the life of a child. Read more of Esther Jantzen's opinion piece in The Los Angeles Times online.

Jantzen is a children's literacy advocate and writer with 25 years of experience in urban school districts.

Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) has announced the recipients of the third annual RIF Program Excellence Honors 2008, sponsored by MetLife Foundation. The 25 honored programs and their volunteers will be recognized by RIF during a celebration in Washington, D.C., June 16–18, for successfully partnering with outside organizations to advance children’s literacy in their communities.

The 25 programs were selected from a pool of approximately 3,500 RIF programs nationwide. Partners include public schools, Indian reservations, sororities, fraternities, libraries, television stations, corporations, and law firms, among others. Children in these programs benefit from having reading role models that included NBA players, teen tutors, and grandparents. Learn more about the award winners on the RIF website.

The arrival of a new generation of e-book readers in Canada, led by the Sony Reader PRS 505, is a story that suggests we’re nearing a peak of technological development. Does it mean e-book manufacturers will finally realize their dream of the past dozen years or so?

Technologically, perhaps. The Sony Reader PRS 505 is, compared to most of its competitors, small, capable of storing whole libraries, thin (15 mm, including its soft front and back leather-like covers), light enough (337 grams) to hold for a long period of time without fatigue, and ultimately really cool-looking. And the number of books being released is growing every day. Read more about the Sony eReader on the globeandmail.com website.

With National Ambassador of Young People's Literature Jon Scieszka as host, Al Roker of The Today Show as an honoree, and the announcement of five new children’s book awards chosen by children themselves, the Children's Choice Book Awards gala held on Tuesday, May 13, at the Times Center in New York City seemed destined for success. And indeed the event was a huge hit, drawing publishers, authors, and children to share in the celebration of the 89th Annual Children's Book Week, observed this year in May for the first time.

Scieszka celebrated the new as he introduced the event, which was organized by the Children's Book Council (CBC). "We have a new, improved CBC, a brand new Book Week, and these brand new Children's Choice Book Awards," he said. He spoke about his role as literature ambassador for 75 million children, saying, "The thing I love most about being ambassador is being the champion of the little guys."

Next came the presentation of the new Children's Choice Book Awards. More than 55,000 votes were cast, with the following winners being named from among five finalists in these categories:

Kindergarten to Second Grade Book of the Year—Frankie Stein by Lola M. Schaefer, illustrated by Kevan Atteberry, published by Marshall Cavendish
Third Grade to Fourth Grade Book of the Year—Big Cats by Elaine Landau, published by Enslow Publishers
Fifth to Sixth Grade Book of the Year—Encyclopedia Horrifica by Joshua Gee, published by Scholastic Paperbacks
Illustrator of the Year—Ian Falconer for Olivia Helps with Christmas, written by Ian Falconer and published by Simon & Schuster
Author of the Year—J.K. Rowling for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, published by Scholastic

Brian Selznick, winner of the 2008 Caldecott Medal for The Invention of Hugo Cabret, presented Al Roker of The Today Show with the 2008 Impact Award for "Al's Book Club for Kids," noting that The Invention of Hugo Cabret was the first book featured on the regularly occurring segment.

Robin Adelson, executive director of CBC, closed the evening, noting that Children's Book Week is the longest running literacy promotion event in the United States. She cited the International Reading Association, noting that the nominees and prize winners for the Children's Choice Book Awards all are drawn from the Children’s Choices booklist, which has been compiled annually by a joint committee of IRA and CBC for more than 30 years, based on the votes of children.

For further information about Children's Book Week and the other activities of the Children's Book Council, visit the CBC website. For further information about the Children's Choices booklist, visit the IRA website. Watch for the annotated Children's Choices list for this year to appear in the October issue of The Reading Teacher.

Backpacking in Europe? Nah, the dollar's too weak—and for some, the needs closer to home are too great. More than ever, graduating college seniors are signing up to spend two years in America's poorest communities as part of Teach for America, the nonprofit organization that recruits and trains top college students for teaching jobs.

The group saw applications jump by more than a third this year from about 18,000 to nearly 25,000. Of those, about 3,700 are expected to step up to the blackboard as new teachers this fall. That's up more than 25% from the 2,900 who did so last year.

Several studies have found Teach for America corps members are as effective or more effective than educators who come through traditional teacher preparation programs within colleges of education. Read more about the pros and cons of the program in this Associated Press article online.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Regional Conference in Support of Global Literacy began today (Wednesday, May 14, 2008) in Baku, Azerbaijan, under the auspices of Mehriban Aliyeva, president of Heydar Aliyev Foundation and Goodwill Ambassador of UNESCO and the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO).

Azerbaijani Minister of Education Misir Mardanov said the UNESCO Sub-Regional Conference formed part of a series of six regional or sub-regional conferences supporting global literacy. UNESCO organized the fifth conference in the series in Baku, which covers Europe and targets 31 countries of the region. The conference is focusing on various literacy issues, including adult learning in today’s world; assessment, measurement, and evaluation of literacy levels and basic competencies; as well as other pedagogical approaches. Read more at the Azeri Press website.

Teens write a lot, but they do not think of their emails, instant messages, and text messages as writing. This disconnect matters because teens believe good writing is an essential skill for success and that more writing instruction at school would help them. The Pew Internet & American Life Project released a report titled Writing, Technology, and Teens in April 2008. According to the report, 85 percent of teens ages 12-17 engage at least occasionally in some form of electronic personal communication. Teens generally do not believe that technology negatively influences the quality of their writing, but they do acknowledge that the informal styles of writing that mark the use of these text-based technologies for many teens do occasionally filter into their school work. View the entire report on The Pew Internet & American Life Project website.

The National Institute for Literacy is holding a Discussion on Reading and Adult English Language Learners from May 12-16. The institute has assembled practitioners who will explore strategies for assisting adult English language learners (or second language learners in general) with increasing their reading proficiency. Join guests Heide Spruck Wrigley, a senior researcher with the New Mexico-based Literacywork International, and a cadre of Texas practitioners who will share information, challenges, and outcomes of a professional development and classroom project called ESL Reading Institute. To learn more about this week’s topic and to be a part of the discussion, visit the institute’s website.

In an updated blast from the past, PBS will air a new version of the 1970s children's series "The Electric Company," according to The Associated Press. Production on the 21st century model of the PBS show for 6- to 9-year-olds was set to begin today (Tuesday, May 13, 2008) on the streets of New York City and in a New Jersey studio, according to producer Sesame Workshop.

The series, aimed at reducing the literacy gap between low- and middle-income families, will promote the idea that "reading is cool" with help from online and community-based activities, Sesame Workshop said in an announcement Monday.

"The literacy crisis today is as pervasive and alarming as it was in 1971 when we created the first version of `The Electric Company,'" said Scott Cameron, director of education and research for Sesame Workshop (which is the nonprofit educational organization behind "Sesame Street"). Weekly episodes of "The Electric Company" are scheduled to air nationally in January 2009 on PBS Kids.

Teachers can get some expert advice on how to keep kids reading over the summer in a new webcast by Reading Rockets.org.

The webcast features literacy experts Ron Fairchild, executive director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Summer Learning and a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University, School of Education; and Dr. Loriene Roy, president of the American Library Association, who discuss ways teachers can entice students to keep their reading skills sharp over the hot summer months. In a section devoted to articles and advice on summer reading strategies, Reading Rockets has also put together a new collection of resources, a virtual “Beach Bag,” that teachers can use to reach out to parents, libraries and other local community groups. View the webcast on the Reading Rockets website.

 Critics of the federal No Child Left Behind law, including Democratic presidential candidates vowing to overhaul or end it, have often accused it of being too harsh. It punishes weak schools instead of supporting them, as Senator Barack Obama puts it.

But when it comes to the worst-performing schools, the 2001 law hasn't shown much bite. The more-radical restructuring remedies put forth by the law have rarely been adopted by these schools, many of which aren't doing much to address their problems, according to a federal study last year.

The troubles in the restructuring arena reflect broader questions about whether NCLB is a strong enough tool to bring about the overhaul of American education. Read more in The Wall Street Journal online.

A Republican congressman who has sponsored legislation banning access to social-networking Web sites in schools and libraries has found a new target of displeasure: Second Life.

Rep. Mark Kirk, who is seeking re-election this year, staged a press conference at a library in his suburban Chicago district on Tuesday to highlight what he called the "dangers" of the virtual world to children. Flanked by local officials, he also released a letter asking Federal Trade Commission Chairman William E. Kovacic to "take action to warn parents of the similar dangers and sexually explicit content found on Second Life."

Kirk said he was appalled that Second Life has no age verification features built into its registration process, and he claimed that there are "countless locations" outside of the service's teen-designated area where virtual prostitution, drug deals, and "other wholly inappropriate activities" occur. Read more at News.com.

"Boring" sums up Josh Bullock's entire high school experience. The 17-year-old got in trouble and recalls spending time in in-school suspension, a practice he said confined him to a small room with no windows where he was supposed to do his schoolwork without any interaction.

He eventually dropped out.

"I'm intelligent," he said, leaning forward then slumping back again, tapping his foot and moving his hand. He can't sit still. Neither can state officials who want to find a way to keep kids in school.

Mississippi's dropout rate is 24.1%—similar to the rest of the nation. On average, only 70% of American students will graduate from high school. In Mississippi, only 63% will. State officials are determined to reduce the rate by 50% in five years. Read this article and several related articles in The Hattiesburg American online.