Literacy Log - Resources and Strategies for All Kinds of Teachers

Readings: Keeping It In Perspective

2010-06-24T11:39:00.003-05:00

I ... followed a golden rule that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once; for I had found by experience that such facts and thoughts were far more apt to escape from memory than favorable ones. Owing to this habit, very few objections were raised against my views that I had not at least noticed and attempted to answer.

Charles Darwin, 1958, quoted in Wiggins and McTighe's "Understanding By Design," 2005 p. 96.

Readings: The Vocabulary Window

2010-06-15T09:33:00.009-05:00

University of Chicago psychologist Janellen Huttenlocher has found that the frequency with which normal parents speak to and around their child during the child's second year significantly affects the size of the child's vocabulary for the rest of his or her life. The more words a child hears during this sensitive period, whether it's "cat" or "existentialism," the stronger the basic language connections.

From "A User's Guide to the Brain: Perception, Attention, and the Four Theaters of the Brain. John J. Ratey, M.D. 2001.

The Importance of a Book-Filled Home

2010-06-11T07:31:00.009-05:00

During my elementary school years, my bedroom was abutted by two walk-in closets. One of these was filled with clothes and other closet-type things. The other was chock-full of books. Our living room downstairs had bookshelves with perhaps a thousand books, but there was enough overflow that the book closet upstairs was piled high with reading material. I spent countless hours in that room, exploring these compelling, sometimes strange and often inscrutable texts.

It seems that I was predisposed to reading from day one, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that being surrounded as I was by books had a lot to do with my future literacy and might even account for the years I've spent in graduate school.

Salon's Laura Miller writes a compelling survey of recent evidence of the effects of a book-filled home on future literacy development. The impetus for the article was the release of a study by the journal Research in Social Stratification and Mobility with the following abstract:

Children growing up in homes with many books get 3 years more schooling than children from bookless homes, independent of their parents’ education, occupation, and class. This is as great an advantage as having university educated rather than unschooled parents, and twice the advantage of having a professional rather than an unskilled father. It holds equally in rich nations and in poor; in the past and in the present; under Communism, capitalism, and Apartheid; and most strongly in China. Data are from representative national samples in 27 nations, with over 70,000 cases, analyzed using multi-level linear and probit models with multiple imputation of missing data.

If you didn't find something like that compelling, you wouldn't have read this far. And you'll be happy to know that this study is only the latest in a long line of research into the importance of the print climate in a child's home. In "The Read-Aloud Handbook," Jim Trelease devotes an entire chapter to "The Print Climate in the Home, School, and Library." He cites a handful of studies going back to 1983 that connect the number of books in a child's home to that child's motivation to read and future success in school:

Lesley Mandel Morrow, "Home and School Correlates of Early Interest in Literature," Journal of Educational Research, vol. 76, March/April 1983, pp. 221-30.

Susan B. Neuman and Donna Celano, "Access to Print in Low-Income and Middle-Income Communities: An Ecological Study of Four Neighborhoods," Reading Research Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 1, January/February/March 2001, pp. 8-26.

Susan B. Neuman, Donna Celano, Albert N. Greco, and Pamela Shue, Access for All: Closing the Book Gap for Children in Early Education (Newark, DE: International Reading Association, 2001).

Nell K. Duke, "For the Rich It's Richer: Print Experiences and Environments Offers to Children in Very Low- and Very High-Socioeconomic Status First-Grade," American Educational Research Journal, vol. 37, no. 2, Summer 2000, pp. 441-78.

That's all for today. But as I've written before, the more I learn about how reading works, the luckier I feel.

Chapter Title and Quotes of the Week

2010-06-09T15:10:00.002-05:00

In my endeavor to design a course of study for my test-takers, I cracked open my heretofore pristine copy of "Understanding By Design" by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. It is a compelling -- if a bit intimidating -- text designed to inform the way teachers design curricula and other learning activities.

Chapter 2 is titled, rather awesomely, "Understanding Understanding." And if that isn't enough to draw you in, the authors feature these two quotations as hooks:

"The most characteristic thing about mental life, over and beyond the fact that one apprehends the events of the world around one, is that one constantly goes beyond the information given." Jerome Bruner, Beyond the Information Given, 1957, p. 218

"Education: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding." Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1881-1906

The first quote will be useful in my current project, as inferential reasoning is one of skills this test purports to assess. Perhaps I will have them use the context clues (another name for inferential reasoning) to figure out the meaning of apprehend.

The second quote, like all of the definitions in The Devil's Dictionary, delights me to no end.

Teaching Students How To Use Context Clues

2010-06-08T14:08:00.004-05:00

[Note: I am being vexed by formatting issues in Blogger. Please forgive the sudden font size changes.]

I have switched from teaching 1st graders basic reading skills to working with high school seniors who are trying to pass a reading exam which is required for graduation. Like most such tests, vocabulary questions play a leading role. We all know that one must use context clues to ascertain the meaning of an unfamiliar word, but how often do we think through exactly how that is done?

I recently ran across a line in my copy of Wiggins and McTighe's "Understanding by Design" that resonated with me in regard to how we teach a skill that we perform intuitively, like using context clues. In a different context, the authors write that when we achieve understanding, "something that once required a chain of reasoning to grasp hold of no longer does: We just 'see it.'"

Well, if I am to help my students start "seeing" context, I must first understand the chain of reasoning that lies behind that skill and devise a way to show my students how to apply it. I decided to try and find out if anyone had done this before.

My first impulse was to go to Curriki.org, which I featured in these pages a year ago. The first resource I found is this worksheet contributed by Robert Lucas and designed to make explicit the thought process students should use when confronted with a new word. It isn't exactly what I was looking for, but it might be a useful way to give learners plenty of "at bats" with using context. Here is the simple process Lucas has his students use:

MYSTERY WORD #1:
Sentence in the story:
My guess for what this word means:
Why I think my guess makes sense:
What the dictionary says:
Was the guess right or wrong?:
Explain:

Quite simple, to be sure, but it would help impress upon the students that the sentences containing the "mystery word" often will hold the key to deciphering its meaning. Also, it compels them to explain their rationale for their guess and provides an opportunity for metacognition at the end. All in all, I think it would be a decent way to introduce this strategy.

Unfortunately, that was the only context clue-specific resource yielded by Curriki. I have read about the use of "signal words," which are words that reveal the relationship between different parts of a sentence. Come to think of it, these are basically prepositions or prepositional phrases.

For example, signal words for comparison include also, both, than, too, resembling, akin to, etc. There are also signal words for contrast, definition, and examples.

Update 6/9/10: I posted a request for context clue teaching ideas to my Twitter list and BOTTURArodrigo, an ESL and Reading teacher in Sao Paolo, Brazil, kindly responded. His term "glue words" is a clever rebranding of the "signal words" concept. He says, "I like to use 'the glue is the clue.' [Students] infer the meaning my using words like 'and' or 'but.'"

BONUS QUESTION: What grammatical role does "for example" play in a sentence? Is it a prepositional phrase? Since I am saddled with a degree in the humanities, I have absolutely no idea. English geeks, can you help?

Update 6/9/10: See the comments below for an answer to the bonus question.

Replay: 826 Valencia

2010-02-16T09:52:00.001-06:00

[Originally Posted on April 7, 2009]

"What we really need is just more people, more bodies, more one-on-one attention, more hours, more expertise from people that have skills in English and can work with these students one-on-one."

This is what Dave Eggers kept hearing from his friends who were teachers. They could see that their efforts during the school day were not sufficient- they felt like they were fighting a losing battle.

But Eggers, whose novel A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize, realized his life was full of the kinds of people ("writers, editors, journalists, graduate students, assistant professors") who could help improve the literacy skills of students outside of school hours.

In the TED Talk featured below, Eggers tells the story of 826 Valencia, the tutoring center that arose from this insight. Eggers is not an educator, but he seems to have understood intuitively what educators know about the importance of building community, connecting with families, providing one-on-one attention, creating real products, and bringing together learners with various levels of expertise.

Check out Dave's talk, and let us know what you think!

Further Reading

Dave Eggers Makes His TED Prize Wish (Great comments and links about this talk.)
826 Valencia Hompage
Once Upon A School - The site that sprung from this TED wish.

Learning To Walk: Update

2010-01-28T12:47:00.005-06:00

I'm blogging in fits and starts lately, but it's for a good cause. My Internet was down on Monday and Tuesday, and I've been observing some grade school reading and writing classes. I'm sure next week will bring another outpouring of what I've learned.

I am also still in the process of reading and rereading The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease and Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf.

Back in September, I posted a powerful passage from Johnson and Louis's Literacy Through Literature that likened learning to read to learning to walk. In Proust and the Squid, author Maryanne Wolf includes a quote from Penelope Fitzgerald that reminded me of the Johnson and Louis passage:

Twice in your life you know you are approved of by everyone -- When you learn to walk and when you learn to read.

I am positively obsessed with giving my students the key to that kind of approval. Soon, I will tell you a bit about a sixth grader I'm working with who reads at a second grade level. This student is so sweet and earnest, and has devised ingenious strategies to make up for a lack of reading skill. I am determined to figure out how to help. Stay tuned and I'll tell you how I did it.

Why I Love This Job

2010-01-21T11:47:00.004-06:00

Yesterday was one of my most frustrating days at our after-school literacy program. Everyone was just a bit more squirrelly than normal, and I might have been a bit too tired. But this note from a 3rd grade student who left the program put me on cloud nine.

I would love to think I actually taught this child how to learn, but I have to remain humble. In all honesty, his parents probably forced him to write it. But I have it hanging up on my wall nonetheless.

Clippings: 1.21.10

2010-01-21T11:28:00.000-06:00

New research is shedding light on Broca's area, a center of reading activity in the brain.

Braille is being replaced by technology that many consider far superior.

Grow Up With Books offers Netflix-style children's book rentals.

Researchers in the UK argue that "textisms" such as LOL might bolster phonemic awareness, and thus general reading ability.

Numerous studies are decrying the death of recess in American primary schools.

Babelhut discusses the literacy benefits of learning to cook.

And Free.edu lists their 100 Best Education Blogs of 2009.

(Illustration by Flickr user Labguest. Thanks!)

Media Use By Young Americans Rises Sharply

2010-01-20T12:05:00.006-06:00

The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) just published Generation M²: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds, the third in a series of "large-scale, nationally representative surveys" about how young people use various forms of media. According to KFF, it is "among the largest and most comprehensive publicly available sources of information about media use among American youth." The survey reveals that 8-18 year-olds devote more than seven hours a day to various types of entertainment media, and that much of that time is spent using more than one type of media.

This short documentary produced by KFF provides a glimpse of the study's findings.

An article in the New York Times (If Your Kids Are Awake, They're Probably Online) reports that the study's authors, "who had concluded in 2005 that use could not possibly grow further," were "stunned" by the results.

I would encourage anyone with interest in these matters to read the study or the press release themselves. Below, I will paste some of the findings that caught my eye.

Mobile Media Usage
"over the past five years, there has been a huge increase in ownership [of mobile devices] among 8- to 18-year-olds: from 39% to 66% for cell phones, and from 18% to 76% for iPods and other MP3 players."

"...young people now spend more time listening to music, playing games, and watching TV on their cell phones (a total of :49 daily) than they spend talking on them (:33)."

Media in the Home
"About two-thirds (64%) of young people say the TV is usually on during meals, and just under half (45%) say the TV is left on 'most of the time' in their home..." "Seven in ten (71%) have a TV in their bedroom."

"The amount of time young people spend with media has grown to where it's even more than a full-time work week." -Drew Altman, Ph.D., President and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Effect on Grades
"About half (47%) of heavy media users say they usually get fair or poor grades (mostly Cs or lower), compared to about a quarter (23%) of light users. These differences may or may not be influenced by their media use patterns."

Types of Media Consumption
"Time spent with every medium other than movies and print increased over the past five years: :47 a day increase for music/audio, :38 for TV content, :27 for computers, and :24 for video games. TV remains the dominant type of media content consumed, at 4:29 a day, followed by music/audio at 2:31, computers at 1:29, video games at 1:13, print at :38, and movies at :25 a day."

Reading
"Over the past 5 years, time spent reading books remained steady at about :25 a day, but time with magazines and newspapers dropped (from :14 to :09 for magazines, and from :06 to :03 for newspapers). The proportion of young people who read a newspaper in a typical day dropped from 42% in 1999 to 23% in 2009. On the other hand, young people now spend an average of :02 a day reading magazines or newspapers online"

Texting
"7^th-12^th graders report spending an average of 1:35 a day sending or receiving texts. (Time spent texting is not counted as media use in this study.)"

"practically every waking minute -except for time in school - using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device..."

I am sure I'll write more about this as I get deeper into the study, but for now I'll leave you with a quote from the above-mentioned New York Times article:

Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Boston who directs the Center on Media and Child Health, said that with media use so ubiquitous, it was time to stop arguing over whether it was good or bad and accept it as part of children’s environment, “like the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat.”

James Geary: The Power of Metaphor

2010-01-19T21:56:00.003-06:00

Why did so many people take out mortages based on the assumption that housing prices would continue to climb? Professional aphorist James Geary argues that it may be due to the fact that "climb" in that sense is an "agent metaphor." Agent metaphors, which imply the deliberate action of a living thing pursuing a goal, are very seductive to the human mind.

If you are a lover of metaphor, you will love Geary's short TED talk, posted below.

And, a bonus metaphor from one of The Greats, John Prine:

Some humans ain't human. Some people ain't kind.
You open up their hearts and here's what you'll find:
A few frozen pizzas; some ice cubes with hair;
A broken popsicle; you don't want to go there.

Clippings: 1.14.10

2010-01-14T08:01:00.011-06:00

A National Literacy Trust (UK) survey showed that students' online technology use "drives their enthusiasm" for other kinds of writing.

Literacy Toolbox is a great place to find literacy games and activities. For example, here's a list of online literacy games for pre-readers.

ProProfs provides a free online flashcard-maker. Not perfect, but pretty cool.

The Economist reports that the Harry Potter books have been an economic stimulus package all by themselves. (Hat tip to Jen Robinson's Book Page and Omnivoracious.)

SEDL provides an interactive Cognitive Framework for learning to read. This is a stellar graphic - it would be perfect if people could embed it (hint).

And finally, the video of the week: Everything's Amazing And Nobody's Happy by comedian Louis C K.

(Picture courtesy of Flickr user Archigeek. Thanks!)

Notes: Dr. Ginger Campbell Interviews Dr. Maryanne Wolf

2010-01-13T12:28:00.009-06:00

As I mentioned the other day, I'm immersed (now in my second reading) in Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. The author, Dr. Maryanne Wolf is the director of The Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University.

Anyone who loves reading or is passionate about helping others learn to read will find this book riveting. Among other things, Wolf sets out to tell us about the development of different writing systems over time, how the human brain "rearranges itself" to make reading possible, and what happens in the brains of those who have difficulty learning to read.

A search for interviews of Dr. Wolf led me to the Brain Science Podcast, which is conducted by Dr. Ginger Campbell, an emergency physician who has been blogging about brain science since 2006. I first listened to Podcast #24 which, over the course of about an hour, concentrates on some of the main ideas of Proust and the Squid. I would recommend it for those who do not intend to read the book or who need a refresher.

This morning, I listened to Campbell's interview of Wolf. Both are quite engaging (Wolf's voice reminds me, in a way that reveals how much of a geek I am, of Barbara Kingsolver's voice).

As I said, if you have any interest in reading, you will find this compelling. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the interview. All are from Dr. Wolf.

“Language is what prepares a child to read.”

“Nothing is better in the very beginning than the simple act of reading and speaking to your child. That does not take money; it simply takes time and love.”
“Reading is a long, beautiful process that has many parts and can be arrested in many phases of development" "…it begins literally on the lap of the beloved who is first reading to us and we’re catching by hook and by crook all kinds of information from that loved one’s voice…”

Regarding children experiencing "word poverty," who upon arrival at Kindergarten have heard millions fewer words than their peers: “… that means their brain is literally processing language at a different level with a different level of sophistication and we who are determined to educate all our children to reach their potential have to be so serious about what those differences are at the Kindergarten door.”
Regarding the ever-more-common attempts to make children learn to read at early ages (3-5, say): “On the backs of three-year-olds are being visited the anxieties of parents.” These attempts are “pedagogically and physiologically premature and unnecessary.”
Dr. Wolf also refers to this article by Niel Swinney in the Boston Globe of October 28, 2007. The article, called "Rush, Little Baby" is about the aforementioned attempts by parents to hurry up the process of learning to read.
Also, Dr. Wolf makes reference to the book Leisure: The Basis of Culture, by Josef Pieper. She mentioned it in the context of her fears that the Digital Age is robbing us of the experience of deep, meaningful, enjoyable reading.

That's all for now, though I will certainly write about and refer to this fantastic book more in the future. I wholeheartedly recommend the summary and the interview by Dr. Ginger Campbell. In fact, a perusal of the Brain Science Podcast site is likely to yield something of interest to nearly "anyone with a brain," as she puts it.

Photograb Letter Recognition Game - Medium Difficulty

2010-01-12T08:00:00.002-06:00

A month ago, I posted a game that I created using Photograb, a very cool game-design tool available for free from ShuffleBrain. It's intended to let people make games using pictures on their Facebook or Flickr pages, but I thought it might be a good way to teach letters and words.

I set out this morning to create a very easy Alphabet game. As I mentioned the other day, I've been reading Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf. She tells me that the ability to recognize and name a letter is a very good predictor of future reading success. I thought a game like this might help burn these letter images into the brains of my young students.

As I said, this was supposed to be easy, but it is even moderately difficult to me. I'll try a very basic one later. For now, enjoy! (And a BIG thank you to ShuffleBrain for allowing me to embed this game!!)

Game: Erase The Face - CrossWord Edition

2010-01-11T07:40:00.015-06:00

All Ages

10-20 Minutes

Best in Small Groups

A month ago I told you about "Erase The Face," a variation of Hangman that my students love. It's a great game, but I found that my more-advanced students guessed the words too quickly, negating much of the benefit for them and for the younger students.

So, I invented a new version. I got the idea while doing last Tuesday's NYT crossword and I am calling it "Erase The Face - CrossWord Edition" until I think of a better name.

Materials

All you need is a writing utensil and a surface. Since I'm working with small groups of students, I use my whiteboard. This could easily be done with paper and pencil, of course.

Directions

First, you need to make your grid. I have found that grids containing six or seven words can be constructed

in five minutes or so. I try to use high-frequency words, or "sight words." I use a list in the back of "Word Matters" by Pinnell and Fountas, but you can find all kinds of lists online. Pick a long word to start, and then build off of that.

On the board, draw your grid, a box for wrong answers, a "Word Bank," the alphabet, and any kind of face you like. I started writing the alphabet on the board because it greatly reduced the amount of time it took my

students to guess a letter.

One by one, students guess letters. If they guess a letter that is in your grid, fill in the boxes. If not, write the letter in the Wrong Answers box and erase part of the face. If you want to really get them going, make them erase their own facial features at the same time. For example, erase the nose and say, "Everybody erase your nose!" Guaranteed giggles all around.

When a student completes a word, make sure everyone can see it and then write it into the Word Bank. I do this to make sure everyone gets a good impression of the word. Also, some students might have trouble seeing through all of the boxes or reading vertically, so this will help them get something out of it.

The game ends when the grid is filled in or when the face is erased, whichever comes first. I have played this game a hundred times and I have never let the students lose. What would be the point of that?

Benefits

I think this game has a lot going for it. It is a great way to reinforce vocabulary. I use it in conjunction with my "Word Wall," which has the 100 most frequently-used words Velcroed to it. My students have spent hours studying this board as a result. You could do this for new vocabulary from a textbook or a story just as easily.

Furthermore, I think that this game teaches some

essential word-solving skills. The students really want to know what that word is, and as they try to figure it out they are compelled to imagine what sounds and letter would fit with the ones already guessed. It's kind of like sounding out words in reverse.

The CrossWord Edition of this game is an attempt at differentiation. I can incorporate words of varying difficulties, and I have found that I can get students of many different reading levels (including adults) engaged simultaneously.

I would welcome suggested variations. Also, if you can think of a catchier name, feel free to suggest it in the comments.

Update 1/19/10: After trying it a few more times, I've decided to use 4-5 words in a puzzle instead for 6-8. If you have older students or especially engaged ones, you can use more, but I've found that I lose them towards the end.

Phoneme Breakdown - Woodchuck Twister

2010-01-09T14:16:00.007-06:00

Here's a breakdown of the phonemes present in a popular tongue twister. I am not a linguist, speech language pathologist, or anything else with an 'ist' on the end, so this should be considered a rather crude analysis. Still, I thought it might help me be more intentional about what sounds I'm strengthening in my classroom.

I am still learning about the phonetic alphabet. For this post, I am using this English phoneme chart. I am open to information and advice about how I might refine my knowledge. In this post, I will use my best approximation of the symbol on the chart and also provide a word that exemplifies the sound I'm referring to. /e/ means 'e as in pet', for example. The number behind the phoneme show us how many times it appeared in the passage.

OK, we'll start with a classic:

How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Breakdown

/h/ 'hat': 1

/au/ 'cow': 1

/m/ 'man': 1

/^/ 'luck' : 5

/tf/ 'chop': 5

/w/ 'wet': 4

/u/ 'good': 6

/d/ 'door': 6

/k/ 'cat': 6

/ago/ 'ago': 2

/I/ 'pit': 1

/f/ 'fan': 1

So there you have it! I don't expect this be a revelation to you, but I think that if we had many rhymes and tongue twisters broken down in this way, we would know where to turn when we encounter students struggling with certain sounds.

PhotoGrab High Frequency Word Game

2009-12-10T13:17:00.004-06:00

I watched a TED.com video by Scott Kim, a master puzzle designer. At the end of the video, he discusses Shufflebrain, an online tool that combines social networking with puzzles. It allows you to make your own puzzles out of pictures that you have on Facebook or Flickr.

I will include Kim's TED talk below, but I want to show you the puzzle I created first. (I am very excited about this!!)

How cool is that? I made pictures of some of the 100 most frequently-used words using Wordle.net, I uploaded them to Flickr, and I created the puzzle using Shufflebrain. The entire process took about a half hour, and this was just the first time.

I think this game could have tons of value for students. Anything that compels them to recall part of letters and words is useful. I will definitely be refining my technique and posting more puzzles in the future.

Here is Kim's TED talk:

Game: Erase The Face (AKA 'Hangman')

2009-12-10T10:36:00.012-06:00

All Ages

10-20 minutes

Best for individual students or small groups.

Hangman has been a go-to activity in any class I've led. I used it with middle schoolers and middle-aged housewives in Japan, it was invaluable in my one-on-one tutoring sessions with struggling sixth graders, and my current groups of seven and eight year olds can't get enough of it.

Come to think of it, I don't know anyone who isn't at least a little fond of Hangman. Heck, the US's longest-running game show is basically Hangman with a wheel.

I only have one problem: I think there might be something slightly wrong about drawing an execution scene step-by-step in front of groups of children. Read this guide to setting up the game from Wikipedia and tell me it doesn't creep you out a bit:

The exact nature of the diagram differs; some players draw the gallows before play and draw parts of the man's body (traditionally the head, then the torso, then the left arm, then the right arm, then the left leg, then the right leg). Some players begin with no diagram at all, and drawing the individual elements of the gallows as part of the game, effectively giving the guessing players more chances. The amount of detail on the man can also vary, affecting the number of chances. Many players include a face on the head, either all at once or one feature at a time.

In my classroom, I've replaced the body and gallows with an obnoxious smiley face. My kids literally beg me to play this game. I can put it on the agenda every and guarantee myself at least twenty minutes, of

happy, focused students. Here's how we play. (January '10 Update: Click Here for Erase the Face CrossWord Edition)

Materials

All you need is a writing utensil and surface. Since I'm working with small groups of students, I use my whiteboard. This could easily be done with paper and pencil, of course.

Directions

Draw a face on the board. Clumsy artists are welcome. Include as many facial features as you like; the more you include, the more guesses your students have.

I like to write the entire alphabet on the board. This way, the students have an easy letter bank to choose

from. I found that some students took forever to search their brains for a letter. This speeds up the process.

Technically, when the face is gone before the word has been solved, the game is over. But I never beat my students at this game; I will draw it out while they guess more letters. It's fun to watch them figure it out, and it gives them more practice.

When I erase part of the face, I ask my younger students to pretend like they are erasing theirs as well. Much giggling ensues.

Benefits

I think this game has a lot going for it. It is a great way to reinforce vocabulary. I use it in conjunction with my "Word Wall," which has the 100 most frequently-used words Velcroed to it. My students have spent hours studying this board as a result. You could do this for new vocabulary from a textbook or a story just as easily.

Furthermore, I think that this game teaches some essential word-solving skills. The students really want to know what that word is, and as they try to figure it out they are compelled to imagine what sounds and letter would fit with the ones already guessed. It's kind of like sounding out words in reverse.

As the year has gone on, students have become increasingly capable of running this game by themselves. They take turns picking a word, drawing a face, and eliciting guesses from their classmates. I can pull students out for one-on-one time or just sit back and enjoy the show.

Readings: 20 Sounds, 5 Letters

2009-11-21T07:32:00.008-06:00

From the fascinating (really)History of English by Jonathan Culpeper, an explanation of why English speakers have a particularly difficult phonemic system to wrestle with:

Why has the spelling system become less phonemic? Why is it now so complicated? History, as we shall see, can provide an explanation. Initially, English was written in a germanic alphabet - the Runic alphabet. Only a few Runic English texts survive, such as the inscriptions on the Ruthwell Cross, thought to date back to AD 700. Christian missionaries, arriving in Britain in 597 and spreading literacy, used forms of the 23-letter Roman alphabet: A B C D E F G H I K L M N O P Q R S T V X Y Z. And this is the first problem for English spelling: it adopted the Roman alphabet, in other words, the alphabet of another language -- Latin. Today, we have over 40 phonemes in English, but only 26 letters by which to represent those phonemes. In particular, note that we have about 20 vowel sounds in English, but only 5 vowel letters...

I have addressed the importance of conquering this phonemic dragon quite a few times, including games and activities to strengthen phonemic awareness.

Readings: A Dialect With an Army and a Navy

2009-11-17T12:55:00.009-06:00

I finally purchased Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. Pinker is by no means light reading; a professor at Harvard, he has the ability to write about almost any subject with a sophistication that puts me in way over my head. But in over my head is a place I love to be, and I've always enjoyed digging through Pinker's books.

At the beginning of The Language Instinct, Pinker is making his case that humans' ability to use language arises not out of experience but from the complex and intricate machinery of our brains. I was reminded of my urban public school students when he began to discuss the perception by some that the language of others is cruder or less complex:

"Actually, the people whose linguistic abilities are most badly underestimated are right here in our society. Linguists repeatedly run up against the myth that working-class people and the less educated members of the middle class speak a simpler or coarser language. This is a pernicious illusion arising from the effortlessness of conversation. Ordinary speech, like color vision or walking, is a paradigm of engineering excellence -- a technology that works so well that the user takes its outcome for granted, unaware of the complicated machinery hidden behind the panels. Behind such "simple" sentences as Where did he go? and or [sic] The guy I met just killed himself, used automatically by any English speaker, are dozens of subroutines that arrange the words to express the meaning. Despite decades of effort, no artificially engineered language system comes close to duplicating the person in the street, HAL and C3PO notwithstanding.

"But though the language engine is invisible to the human user, the trim packages and color schemes are attended to obsessively. Trifling differences between the dialect of the mainstream and the dialect of other groups, like isn't any versus ain't no, those books versus them books, and dragged him away versus drug him away, are dignified as badges of "proper grammar." but they have no more to do with grammatical sophistication than the fact that people in some regions of the United States refer to a certain insect as a dragonfly and people in other regions refer to it as a darning needle, or that English speakers call canines dogs whereas French speakers call them chiens. It is even a bit misleading to call standard English a "language" and these variations "dialects," as if there were some meaningful difference between them. The best definition comes from the linguist Max Weinreich: a language is a dialect with an army and a navy." (emphasis added)

Those of us who were privileged enough to acquire the style of speaking that happens to have the most value in our society often fall into the trap of interpreting differences in language as differences in intelligence. As anyone who has truly listened to a non-"standard" English speaker knows, nothing could be farther from the truth. Pinker continues with a discussion of the Black English Vernacular, or BEV. I won't quote the entire chapter for you, but if this is a subject that gets your motor running, you will definitely want to read The Language Instinct.

Bonus: You know I love TED.com. Here's a link to Pinkers's TED talk dispelling the myth of the "blank slate."

Game: Construct - A - Word

2009-11-05T09:23:00.011-06:00

All Ages

5-15 minutes

Best for individual students or small groups.

Construct-a-Word is meant to bolster phonemic awareness by way of Analogy Phonics, which the National Reading Panel defines as "teaching students unfamiliar words by analogy to known words." It also strengthens PA by giving students repeated opportunities to manipulate onset and rime.

Materials

Post-It Notes, marker or pen, notebook

I stole this idea from the online game that I featured here last spring. I was working with a 5th Grader who needed some help with her basics, but we did not have Internet access, so I converted the game to Post-its. It turned out quite well; the Post-its are colorful, inexpensive, portable, and good for use on almost any surface, be it a table top or a whiteboard. If you do not have Post-its at hand, you could substitute index cards.

Directions

On individual Post-its, write each letter of the alphabet and the phonemes "ch," "bl,""sl,""dr,""cl,"and "sh." Using a different color of Post-it, if possible, write the endings "ig,""ot,""ed,""et,""in,""un,""op,""an," and "at." You can add or substitute any other endings you like. When finished, the complete set should look something like this:

Your student should be intrigued about the colorful array of letters in front of her. Invite her to select an ending from on the yellow Post-its. Tell her that her challenge is to use the other Post-its to make as many real words as she can. When she finds one, invite her to set the onset letter aside and write the word in a notebook.

When there are real words left on the board that the student does not see, I suggest providing clues and, eventually, pointing out the new word and encouraging the student to practice and writing it down.

Benefits

This game bolsters phonemic awareness by compelling a student to practice joining sounds together to make new words. It will also introduce or solidify the concept that words have a beginning and an end, which is a bedrock concept in PA.

This is also a good game for basic vocabulary.

There will inevitably be errors made and a few words that the student does not know. Both the errors and the new words have as much or more value than the correct answers. Even erroneous answers compel our student to practice joining an onset and a rime, strengthening phonemic awareness.

Strategy: Book Tour

2009-11-04T08:59:00.005-06:00

A few months ago, I wrote about a presentation I gave to a class full of teachers in the Twin Cities area. They were mostly Math and Science teachers who were hoping to learn how to include literacy strategies in their classrooms. I invited them to share what they learned with Literacy Log, and got one great response. I highly recommend a look at Emily Kjesbo-Johnson's literacy strategies site for Math teachers. Today, I'll talk about just one of the strategies she includes.

Book Tour

10-30 minutes.

Any age level.

I have seen variations of this strategy before, but Emily describes it very well here. She includes a downloadable version of the handout she used.

Directions

The Book Tour is meant to introduce students to a textbook or any other new reading material. According to Emily, "it can be a worksheet that groups work on together, or a tour of the book's features led by the teacher."

Be sure to compel your students to find the most important sections of the book. For a textbook, this would include the Table of Contents, Chapter Review section, the Index, and nowadays a website.

Benefits

Think of this as part of an extended version of the KWL strategy. The Book Tour will help your students assess what they know and what they want to know about the subject matter covered in the book. It will also make the book much less intimidating.

Just before the school year began, Emily wrote about why she would start the year off with a Book Tour. "Our math textbooks are loaded with many helpful resources," she wrote, "but students are often so intimidated by the book that they never look past the practice problems."

Recently, I asked Emily how it went, and she was pleased with the results. "I think that as students went through it, they saw how the book wasn't just an intimidating giant book, but could be a valuable resource for their work during the year," she said.

Variations

The Alphabet Words game I featured yesterday could be used as a component of a Book Tour. It might be especially useful for introducing students to the Index or Glossary.

Photo: "Middle School Textbooks" by Flickr user "herzogbr." Thanks!

Game: Alphabet Words

2009-11-02T11:12:00.008-06:00

10-15 minutes

I found "Alphabet Words" in Peggy Kaye's fantastic Games For Reading: Playful Ways to Help Your Child Read. It is incredibly simple to implement and I have been pleasantly surprised by how much my students enjoy it.

Directions
Simply write each letter of the alphabet on the board and tell your student(s) that the goal of this game is to think of a word for every letter. When you have them all, invite the students to repeat the words after you to review. That's it. The final product will look something like this:

This was the result of our Dictionary Alphabet Words game. As you can see, students come up with some strange words. Since this was a group of first and second graders, we were not striving for comprehension of words such as "helenistic." Simply compelling the students to look through the dictionary and spell new words is enough for me.

This game can be done in small groups or with an individual student. With a group, I assign each student a letter, which maintains a bit of order and gives them time to think. With five students, for example, the first will have A and the last will have E. Once we've filled in those blanks, I assign F through J.

Variations
It is easy to think of variations for this game. The first time I used it, we just thought of any old word for each letter. A week later, I included it in my "Introduction to Dictionaries" lesson. With a dictionary in hand, students had to find an interesting word for each letter. I was delighted by the way this game motivated them to dig into their dictionaries and by how excited they were by the strange words they found.

Kaye recommends the use of categories for this game. For example, you might set out to find an animal name or a food that begins with each letter. This might also be useful as a review for a particular subject or book for older kids. For example, challenging your students to think of alphabet words related to Charlotte's Web or American History might help them review the material and provide cues for recall later on.

Benefits
This is a great way to build vocabulary. It also can help with phonemic awareness and strengthen skill with specific letter sounds. As I mentioned, it could also be a way to review material and build comprehension. Additionally, as mentioned, I have used it to introduce students to their dictionaries.

Readings: Johnson and Louis - Learning To Walk

2009-09-16T20:22:00.004-05:00

I began reading Literacy Through Literature by Terry D. Johnson and Daphne R. Louis today and was immediately struck by the their gentle but persuasive argument for a whole language approach. I will certainly be sharing what I learn as I get deeper into this book. Here's a particularly lovely paragraph to whet your appetite. Even if you have different views about how literacy should be achieved, this is a great example of argument by analogy.

"Children will not benefit from being told about language. What they do need is help in getting started, gentle feedback on their attempts to do so, and kind tolerance of their errors. Learning to walk offers a useful analogy. Very young children clutch at furniture for support, tire easily and fall down a lot. When all else fails, they regress to crawling. The role of the expert walkers around them is instructive. They act as if there is no doubt the children will eventually learn. Praise is given for effort, and support is rushed forward to eliminate the consequences of error. No one sneers at the first fumbling attempts. Perfection is never expected. No one imagines that explaining to a child how one walks will help her or him do so. Success, given adequate physical equipment, is essentially universal. Few children are sent to remedial walking schools!"

Readings: The Importance of Phonemic Awareness

2009-09-16T16:53:00.003-05:00

The concept of phonemic awareness has been discussed a few times on Literacy Log. The U of Oregon's Big Ideas in Beginning Reading page has a great rundown of what phonemic awareness is. Basically, phonemic awareness is the knowledge that words are made up of sounds and the ability to hear and manipulate those sounds.

This may seem pretty basic, but if students get off on the wrong foot with phonemic awareness, it can seriously hinder their journey toward literacy. In Word Matters: Teaching Phonics and Spelling in the Reading/Writing Classroom, Pinnell & Fountas make a great argument for the importance of phonemic awareness:

Why is knowing about the sounds in words so important for literacy learning? In English and in many other languages, there is a close relationship between the sounds we speak and the way in which they are represented in written symbols. The relationship is not a perfect one; but in an alphabetic written system, it is critical for the users of language to recognize this relationship and use it to write and read. Children who realize that words are made up of sequences of sounds, called phonemes by linguists, can more easily relate these sounds to the sequences of letters and to letter groups. As children learn to read and write, understanding the sound-letter relationship is key, and this understanding begins in oral language experiences.

I am in the process of designing an after-school literacy program for young readers, so phonemic awareness is going to come up again and again. Having established its importance, I hope to find a ton of good lessons, activities, and games to bolster phonemic awareness. I'll keep you posted, and I welcome your contributions!

Cross Words: Erose

2009-09-16T10:35:00.005-05:00

Erose

[i-rohs] adjective 1. uneven, as if gnawed away; 2. botany. having the margin irregularly incised, as if gnawed, as a leaf.

Etymology: L erosus, pp. of erodere. The dictionary tells me to see erode, which also comes from the Latin erodere. The prefix e- means "out" or "off" and rodere means "to gnaw." I'm surprised that the etymology for erode ends with "see RAT," but then I realize that "rodent" must be related as well! Sure enough, "rodent" comes from the Latin rodens, the prp. of rodere.

(Photo "Jagged, Yet Smooth" CC Flickr user Starfires. Thanks!)

Back to School! Who are the storytellers in your classroom?

2009-09-08T07:31:00.006-05:00

The Zebra Storyteller
by Spencer Holst

Once upon a time there was a Siamese cat who pretended to be a lion and spoke inappropriate Zebraic.

That language is whinnied by the race of striped horses in Africa.

Here now: An innocent zebra is walking in a jungle and approaching from another direction is the little cat; they meet.

"Hello there!" says the Siamese cat in perfectly pronounced Zebraic. "It certainly is a pleasant day, isn't it? The sun is shining, the birds are singing, isn't the world a lovely place to live today?"

The zebra is so astonished at hearing a Siamese cat speaking like a zebra, why --- he's just fit to be tied.

So the little cat quickly ties him up, kills him, and drags the better parts of the carcass back to his den.

The cat successfully hunted zebras many months in this manner, dining on filet mignon of zebra every night, and from the better hides he made bow neckties and wide belts after the fashion of the decadent princes of the Old Siamese court.

He began boasting to his friends he was a lion, and he gave them as proof the fact that he hunted zebras.

The delicate noses of the zebras told them there was really no lion in the neighborhood. The zebra deaths caused many to avoid the region. Superstitious, they decided the woods were haunted by the ghost of a lion.

One day the storyteller of the zebras was ambling, and though his mind ran plots for stories to amuse the other zebras, when suddenly his eyes brightened, and he said, "That's it! I'll tell a story about a Siamese cat who learns to speak our language! What an idea! That'll make 'em laugh!"

Just then the Siamese cat appeared before him, and said, "Hello there! Pleasant day today, isn't it!"

The zebra storyteller wasn't fit to be tied at hearing a cat speaking his language, because he'd been thinking about that very thing.

He took a good look at the cat, and he didn't know why, but there was something about his looks he didn't like, so he kicked him with a hoof and killed him.

That is the function of the storyteller.

Clippings: 7.29.09

2009-07-29T11:50:00.005-05:00

The seemingly moribund newspaper industry is saving space by cutting puzzles.

Speaking of which, baseball writer Joe Posnanski has a great blog on the future of newspapers.

In the latest edition of The Reading Teacher, Lisa Zawilinski makes a case for student blogging in elementary classrooms.

UCLA's slang dictionary makes me feel like a "didiot." Perhaps I'm just getting old.

Get in the Game - Read!! is a great compendium of sports books for kids.

And Deborah Ruf argues that gifted children learn to read much differently than others.

(Photo by Flickr user Gord McKenna. Thanks!)

Cross Words: Striae

2009-07-28T21:25:00.005-05:00

striae

[strahy-ee] noun 1. slight or narrow furrows, ridges, stripes, or streaks, esp. many in parallel arrangement: striae of muscle fiber. (Plural form of stria. See dictionary.com page for unadulterated definition.)

Etymology: From classical Latin stria, meaning "furrow, channel, flute of column." The etymology seems to be a bit complicated, and I would encourage you to check it out for yourself.

Found in Fearsomely Frightful Crosswords from The New York Times. Puzzle #102. "Narrow grooves."

(Photo by Flickr user Roger Smith. Thanks, Roger!)

Cross Words: Rime

2009-07-27T10:43:00.004-05:00

rime

[rahym] noun 1. Frost. "An opaque coating of tiny, white, granular ice particles, caused by the rapid freezing of supercooled water droplets on impact with an object." (Dictionary.com). verb 1. to cover with rime.

Etymology: Etymonline.com doesn't tell us much, but my trusty Webster's New World College Dictionary (4th Ed.) traces the word back to OE hrinan, meaning "to touch." Cool.

(Photo by Flickr user scottshephard, who is also my dad.)

New Feature: Cross Words

2009-07-27T10:13:00.004-05:00

I have become addicted to crossword puzzles. I am supposed to be doing classwork, planning a wedding, and paying attention to my fiance, but the only thing that seems to interest me these days is putting letters in little boxes.

In order to justify this behavior, I thought I should highlight crossword puzzles' vocabulary-building power. So, I am starting a new series called Cross Words. These will be posts highlighting words that I learned while attempting to solve these infernal little puzzles. They will include links to dictionary.com and etymonline.com, two essential vocabulary-building websites.

Entry #1, jape, can be found below. Enjoy!

(Photo by Flickr user Jessie Whittle. Thanks, Jessie!)

Cross Words: Jape

2009-07-27T09:58:00.003-05:00

jape

[jeyp] verb 1. to joke; jest 2. to play tricks. 3. to make fun of, mock (now rare). noun 1. a joke or jest. (Dictionary.com page)

Etymology: Possibly from O.Fr japer, meaning "to howl."

(Photo By Flickr user patries71, CC)

Kindersite: Kid-Friendly Educational Links

2009-07-21T09:52:00.005-05:00

Nick Peachey recommended Kindersite.org yesterday on his fantastic blog, so I thought I'd poke around a little bit. I did something similar with Curriki.org a month ago.

Kindersite's stated mission is twofold: first, the proprietors want to provide a portal to safe, educational content for children ages 2-8; second, they want to provide data to facilitate research on how children use such online content and how it affects their learning.

The first thing I find is a growing database of nursery rhymes in various languages. They have lyrics in the original language and in English. You can listen to some of them in mp3 form, and some of them have videos. I found myself a bit mesmerized by this Greek lullaby:

After a couple of dead ends, I find "Pictures as Words," a game from PBS's Sagwa the Chinese Siamese Cat page. This is a PBS series based on Amy Tan's childrens book of the same name. The game is very simple and would be a good way to introduce students to the idea that other alphabets are quite different (and perhaps more intuitive) than ours. Here's what it looks like:

Finally, I browse through Kindersite's treasure trove of story links. I end up having a story read to me about Mr. Happy and Mr. Stubborn, two characters created by Roger Hargreaves. This is a pretty exciting moment for me, as I had completely forgotten these books. Turns out there is now an animated Mr. Men series on Cartoon Network with a fun, kid-friendly website.

As you can see, my time on Kindersite led me to a lot of other places. Although I think their interface is a bit clunky, the proprietors of Kindersite are living up to the first part of their mission. Parents can feel completely secure turning their kids loose on this site. They will find a few time-wasters, to be sure, but they will be kid-friendly. A little more digging will turn up some serious educational gems. Happy hunting!

Book Reviews: "A Whole New Mind" and "A Short History of Nearly Everything"

2009-07-20T15:13:00.016-05:00

Six months ago, I attended the TIES conference in Minneapolis with my dad. There were a number of things we were eager to see, but none more than the keynote address by Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind. We heard him argue, as he does in the book, that the kind of abilities that society values are beginning to change. He lists six aptitudes, or "senses," that will become essential as this change occurs: Design, Symphony, Empathy, Play, Meaning, and Story.

Story, of course, is most pertinent to the denizens of Literacy Log. I found Pink's discussion of the importance of story useful when I spoke to a literacy class at Hamline University in St. Paul recently, and I thought I would extend that discussion to this blog.

I used this quote from A Whole New Mind to summarize the societal shift Pink sees, and why it makes Story more important than ever:

What's unsurprising today would have seemed preposterous just fifteen years ago: an English-speaking thirteen-year-old in Zaire who's connected to the Internet can find the current temperature in Brussels or the closing price of IBM stock or the name of Winston Churchill's second finance minister as quickly and easily as the head librarian at Cambridge University. That's glorious. But it has enormous consequences for how we work and live. When facts become so widely available and instantly accessible, each one becomes less valuable. What begins to matter more is the ability to place these facts in context and to deliver them with emotional impact (p. 102).

I am reminded of my former life as a high school debater. Every August, before the season began, our team piled into two school vans and made the five-hour trip to the University of Minnesota Library to conduct research. We spent three days photocopying thousands of pages of books and magazines. We then took them back to our room at the school and spent days with scissors and glue sticks in hand, compiling briefs on various aspects of the research topic.

Today, this kind of effort seems absurd. What fifteen of us could accomplish with a ten-hour round trip and weeks of cutting is now the easy task of two or three students with laptop computers. This kind of shift has taken place across our entire economy, and especially in those activities that require the retrieval and use of information.

At Hamline, I was speaking to a room full of Math and Science teachers who were learning about teaching literacy in their classrooms. I used Pink's view of things to stress the importance of Story in Math and Science. These are not the only subjects that tend to place undue value on the memorization of facts. As the world changes, workers will not just have to retrieve information; they will have to convey it as well. Teachers in all disciplines must nurture the storytellers in their students.

In search of an example of the power of Story in Math and Science, I remembered a brilliant book by Bill Bryson called A Short History of Nearly Everything. Bryson, of course, is a well-known teller of travel stories. Here, he strays from his home genre into the history of science.

I must note that I have spent my entire academic life avoiding science. I have thought of myself as a student of the humanities, greatful that others found the workings of the physical universe interesting enough to study. And so I was surprised to find myself absolutely enthralled by A Short History. Bryson's brings his considerable storytelling talent to bear on the people and events that shaped our understanding of the world, and the result is the most unexpected page-turner I have ever stumbled upon.

To demonstrate what Bryson accomplishes with this book, and to exemplify the shift from a knowledge-based economy to one that values Story, I turned to the book's discussion of the Richter Scale.

Students in Science classes encounter the Richter scale in this form:

(Technical Difficulties: Please click the picture to see it more clearly. And thanks to Wikipedia.org.)

The average student will attend to this chart only to the extent necessary for regurgitation on a quiz or test. And yet most instruction I recieved about the Richter Scale revolved around a chart such as this. Compare this knowledge-based tool to the story told by Bryson on page 211. It is too long to quote in its entirety, but I will share a bit with you and let you read the rest on your own.

The Richter scale has always been widely misunderstood by non-scientists, though perhaps a little less so now than in its early days when visitors to Richter's office often asked to see his celebrated scale, thinking it was some kind of machine. The scale is of course more an idea than an object, an arbitrary measure of Earth's tremblings based on surface measuremnts. It rises exponentially, so that a 7.3 quake is fifty times more powerful than a 6.3 earthquake and 2,500 times more powerful than a 5.3 earthquake.

Bryson spends the next few paragraphs telling stories about earthquakes of different levels of magnitude. He culminates with this one, on 212:

For pure, focused, devastation, however, probably the most intense earthquake in recorded history was one that struck - and essentially shook to pieces - Lisbon, Portugal, on All Saints Day (November 1), 1755. Just before ten in the morning, the city was hit by a sudden sideways lurch now estimated at magnitude 9.0 and shaken ferociously for seven full minutes. The convulsive force was so great that the water rushed out of the city's harbor and returned in a wave fifty feet high, adding to the destruction. When at last the motion ceased, survivors enjoyed just three minutes of calm before a second shock came, only slightly less severe than the first. A third and final schock followed two hours later. At the end of it all, sixty thousand people were dead and virtually every building for miles reduced to rubble. The San Francisco earthquake of 1906, for comparison, measured an estimated 7.8 on the Richter scale and lasted less than thirty seconds.

For a student like me, this description would lead to a better conception of the Richter Scale than any amount of hours staring at that chart. That is why I love A Short History of Nearly Everything and would recommended to anyone who wants to take an alternate route to an understanding of science. In addition, I think that Mr. Bryson provides a powerful example of the importance of Story in disciplines such as Math and Science. Some students have a natural affinity for such subjects, but others find them intimidating or dull. The excerpt above could catalyze an interest in Seismology or an understanding of magnitude in a student who might have forgotten the facts once the test was completed.

When I mentioned Bryson's book, a few of the science teachers in the room nodded their heads in approval. Any teacher of science will find it a great resource, and I defy the casual reader to find it anything less than engrossing. Likewise, I believe that A Whole New Mind has a lot to tell us about how the world is changing and how we should change what we teach accordingly.

Clippings: 6.8.09

2009-06-08T11:56:00.007-05:00

People are finding new uses for old card catalogs.

From the Online Etymology Dictionary, I learned that our "etymology" comes from the Greek etymologia, which combines etymon ("true sense") with logos ("word").

Chicago Public Library unveiled an archive of a historic black newspaper.

Some school districts are ditching textbooks for online curricula of their own design.

NPR detects some patterns in this season's commencement speeches.

And one student is running an underground library of banned books from an empty locker.

(Thanks to Read Street for the first link! Warning: textbook link involves math. Picture from Flickr: CC user bitsandbobbins.)

Spreading The Word With Twitter

2009-06-03T06:35:00.006-05:00

If you are wondering about the utility of Twitter, take a look at The Friday Project's Twitter feed here. The Friday Project is "the only publishing company that specialises (sic-Brits) in sourcing the brightest talent from the web and developing it into great books."

The started a Twitter account yesterday, offering a free book to their first ten followers. They had ten in less than an hour and now, fifteen hours later, they have 74.

What implications might this have for educators, you ask? Well, imagine a world where all of your students and their parents were hooked up to something like Twitter. This would be helpful in my native South Dakota where school cancellation is just a mid-April blizzard away. It makes phone trees look like smoke signals.

Or, let's say you are hooked up with hundreds of other teachers from all over the world. You need a good attention-getter for your second hour language class; first hour never really got on board with your lesson about how speakers of other languages make sounds we've never even thought of. Within minutes, you have found the perfect thing:

Watch Amazing Beat Box Girl on CollegeHumor

Pretty cool, eh? And The Friday Project has five more followers than it did when I started this post.

Oh, and you can follow Literacy Log on Twitter here.

Strategy: Morning Message

2009-06-02T13:13:00.010-05:00

Here's a little metacognition from Jack Woodson at Learn Me Good, who shares year-end "Five Ways To Improve My Class." The most interesting for our purposes here is #4:

Do the "Morning Message" more frequently
This was my first year (7 months, actually) of teaching language arts. So it took me a while to get my feet under me and find out what I was doing. OK, who am I kidding, I'm STILL trying to find out what I should be doing! But one of the things I would do about once a week or once every 2 weeks was the Morning Message. This was a short passage -- 2 or 3 sentences -- filled with grammatical and punctuational mistakes. The kids had to copy it down exactly as it appeared on the board and then make the necessary corrections. It was a fun exercise, it helped the kids recognize mistakes, and it showed them part of the editing process. Next year, maybe I'll up it to 2 or 3 times a week.

Sounds like a pretty good idea to me. We want our students to be able to recognize and correct their own mistakes. Peer editing and review teacher corrections are useful toward this end, but doing a bit of guided practice can't hurt.

(Photo from Flickr user, Nic's Events. "Editing a Paper- 19")

Web Resource: Using Twitter to Aid Disussion.

2009-06-02T12:43:00.005-05:00

Below, you'll find a video that may confuse, intrigue, excite, or anger you. Most people are unimpressed by the idea of Twitter at first, but it is clear that people are coming around. Twitter's popularity has exploded. I'm sure it is blocked in many schools, but I am of the opinion that this technology, like instant messaging and YouTube, has something to offer us.

This post by Marshall Kirckpatrick at ReadWriteWeb goes into more detail about how this teacher uses Twitter. Enjoy!

Success Story: Marius "Mimi" Kothor

2009-06-02T12:10:00.003-05:00

Via Mary Ann Zehr at Education Week, I came across the story of Marius "Mimi" Kothor, who arrived in the U.S. as a refugee from her native Togo at age 10 and is about to graduate with honors from high school. If you're looking for a pick-me-up, this should do the trick.

I like these comments from Zehr:

What's interesting to me about the story is how it took a very long time—until high school—for Kothor to find her educational stride. More than a year after her arrival, Ellingwood said she was shy and seemed depressed and some teachers suspected she had a learning disability. Over time, she was able to catch up with her peers and excelled as a student. She didn't have a learning disability.

What struck me was the influence of Lyne Ellingwood, an ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teacher assigned to Mimi. Ellingwood refused to believe that there was something wrong with Mimi that hindered her learning, as others asserted.

Ellingwood, meanwhile, took Mimi's education personally. She enrolled her in special weekend English clinics at Nazareth College, found a way to make payments and drove the little girl to her intensive lessons.

Mimi had two things that all struggling students need: a tireless advocate and plenty of time. You will enjoy the news story and Ms. Zehr's blog post, with a lengthy comment by Ellingwood herself.

The Scripps National Spelling Bee: You Are Dumber Than a Fifth Grader

2009-06-01T15:24:00.007-05:00

Kavya Shivshankar, a 13-year-old girl from Kansas, won the 2009 Scripps Spelling Bee last week, becoming the seventh Indian-American student to win the competition in the last ten years. CBS News won't let me embed their video of an interview with Ms. Shivshankar, but you can click here to watch it.

Balu Natarajan, the 1985 National Spelling Bee chamption, tells NPR that spelling competitors today seem far more "deliberate" and "scientific" than the competitors of his era. When asked why so many Americans of Indian descent seem to win the competition, he says it is mostly a matter of hard work, but adds:

"There certainly is some contribution from other entities. There is a foundation called the North South Foundation that serves the South Asian community and they have been holding spelling bees since 1993. It initially started as a means of raising funds for kids who needed education in India and that has turned into quite the training and breeding ground. There are a lot of kids who have done well in those contests who have then gone on to the national competition and some of them have gone on to win."

Let's hope the difficulty of Scripps Spelling Bee words can be taken as a sign of our society's overall literacy: Natarajan won in 1985 by spelling milieu; Shivshankar had to spell laodicean this year.

Bonus: My all-time favorite Scripps Spelling Bee Moment. A clutch performance if there ever was one!

(Picture: Spelling Bee Trophy by "litlnemo" on Flickr. CC This is not the Scripps trophy, but the Seattle Spelling Bee prize from 1979.)

Exploring Curriki

2009-06-01T14:00:00.006-05:00

Anna at Literacy is Priceless is urging her readers to try out the Curriki Scavenger Hunt.
That's a little too structured for me, but I have been meaning for some time to check this site out, so I thought I'd poke around the site for a few minutes and share what I found.

About Curriki
Curriki derives its name from the words "curriculum" and "wiki," the latter being the software that is changing the way the internet is used by allowing more "readers" to become "writers." Wikipedia is perhaps the archetypal wiki site. Curriki is a non-profit corporation started by Sun Microsystems with a stated goal of supporting "the development and free distribution of world-class educational materials to anyone who needs them."

My Mission
My goal is to find an activity I can use during my next lesson with Alexi, a strikingly bright and entirely uninterested student that I work with two days a week. I've been working with him on recognizing main ideas in pieces of writing. He will talk to me without end about how little he cares for school; I figure he might as well be able to construct a proper argument for it. (Alexi is pseudonym).

Results
It takes me less than five minutes to create a free account. I click the "Find" link on the left sidebar and choose the Advanced Search option, which allows you to specify the subject, grade level, language, etc. I type in "main idea" and check a few boxes and, within seconds, I am looking at this big unit on persuasive writing contributed by Andrea Chen.

On her profile page, I learn that Ms. Chen is a High School English teacher at the New Orleans Charter for Science and Math High School. This looks like a well-thought out unit plan. The massive block of text is a little daunting, though that isn't Ms. Chen's fault. Curriki ought to allow contributors to split these up into smaller segments.

But I have already found plenty of things I can use, such the "Vocabulary: Discussing the Art of Persuasion" lesson plan, which you can find by scrolling down about two screens into the unit. I can download the whole document and use it as I see fit. Thanks, Andrea!

Featured Resources
Curriki submissions can be rated and commented on by users, and some of the top rated materials are featured here. Just glancing at these, I find the following:

A great little poem to help students remember subtraction rules. By April Eckert
Mr. Harpine's Article Reaction Assignment. This looks like a good way to get students used to the process of writing about what they read. I might change a few things, so I download it to modify later.
A very thoughtfully-designed unit on Teaching Satire in High School designed by Sarah Lorntson from Mahtomedi, Minnesota.

Conclusion
I get the feeling I could get delightfully lost looking through Curriki lesson plans and units. This is already a phenomenal resource, and I am very hopeful about what sites like this will do for education as they evolve. Not long ago, lesson plans were shared only in books and seminars and by word of mouth. Curriki allows teachers to conduct searches for resources, keep and modify them, discuss them with others, and add their own. Hallelujah!

I will keep you posted on my use of Curriki as I learn more. Please let me know if you have had success with Curriki or another site of its kind.

If you like this, check out Read Write Think, another great online lesson plan finder.

TED Talks for Teachers

2009-05-27T13:37:00.008-05:00

A person can find their way to TED.com and stay for hours and hours. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, and it was started in 1984 as a conference that brought people in those fields together. In the years since, it has become a symposium for all kinds of great ideas. The site features hundreds of "talks," presentations by great thinkers and experts in all kinds of fields.

Take a look at three great examples, and let me know if you find other great ones (and you will).

Jay Walker on the world's English Mania
"Mathematics is the language of science, music is the language of emotion, and now English is becoming the language of problem solving."

David Merrill Demos Siftables
"One of the interesting things about this kind of application is that you don't have to give people instructions. All I have to say is, 'Make words' and they know exactly what to do."

Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity
"My contention is the creativity now in education is as important as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status."

Clippings:5.26.09

2009-05-26T17:28:00.011-05:00

The New York Times says the economic downturn is putting new stress on libraries.

Class sets of the comic book, "Barack the Barbarian: Quest for the Treasure of Stimuli #1" are available for pre-order.

Writing on the I.N.K. blog, children's writer David Elliott calls into question the line between fiction and nonfiction in this amusing memoir.

At the MacMillan Dictionary Blog, Gwyenth Fox says maybe we should just do away with apostrophes.

The English Business Letter Generator exemplifies the Internet's capacity for automation.

And David Warlick discusses The 21st Century Skills Incentive Fund Act.

(Picture: "Ann Arbor Library: Pittsfield Branch" by jhoweaa - CC.)

The Best So Far - 3 Months & 16 Days of Literacy Log

2009-05-26T16:11:00.003-05:00

Welcome to Literacy Log! I took a little break for finals week and memorial day, but I'm ready to resume the literacy-related awesomeness. This week, I'm going to be adding new strategies, web resources, and perhaps some of my own teaching stories. I thought I'd start off with some of Literacy Log's Highlights so far.

Wordle is Amazing . Pretty much everyone who knows me has heard me extoll the virtues of Wordle.net, a site that lets you make visualizations of text. Here's my favorite way to use it in the classroom so far.
826 Valencia - A Community-Based Literacy Solution. Pulitzer Prize-winner Dave Eggers shows off his ingenious strategy to provide opportunities for one-on-one writing help to students. If you don't love this video, I'll eat my hat!
Word Ahead Vocabulary Videos. This one seems to have gotten the best response so far. This is a great web resource for vocabulary building.
Clay Burell - Literacy Redefined. Burell writes a thought-provoking blog on the Change.org network. Here, I discuss a couple of his posts that call into question the conventional definition of literacy using the brilliant Muhammed Ali as an example.

Amazing Ads on Google: 5.26.09

2009-05-26T15:43:00.006-05:00

I am a Google addict, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Like millions of others, I started using using Google's search engine years ago, converted my email to Gmail in recent years, and have since become a regular user of Google Documents, Google Calendar, and Google Maps. Oh, and Google's Blogger, which I use to write this blog.

Google makes it's living off of advertisements, but I try to ignore them. Ads on Google pages are nondescript and small. They are also targeted specifically at the user. I find this a bit disconcerting, but the immense utility and coolness of Google's software makes it well worth the discomfort.

I have also discovered that these ads can be strange, hilarious, and revealing. So, this is the beginning of an untitled (for now) series wherein I will post the best ads I see as I'm using Gmail. This is not necessarily literacy-related in any way, but I think these ads can tell us a lot about ourselves. Or perhaps they say something about me, to whom they are targeted. I kind of hope not...

5.26.09

Pick Up Girls at Work
5 Things to do in 10 Minutes. Make Her Want You Instantly.
DavidDeAngelo.com/PickUpLines

What Is Your Self-Worth?
Learn to Connect With Your Inner Voice, Discover your Self-Worth? www.WhatisYourSelfWorth.com

Wake Up and Think
Take Your Life to The Next Level. Lessons from The American Monk.
www.TheAmericanMonk.com

Twitegy: Twitter Strategy
World's only Twitter-only Agency Social Media Marketing Done Right
www.Twitegy.com

And my personal favorite, which appeared beside an email from my fiance, Katie...
Katie Photos
Find Katie Couric Leg Photos at Great Prices.
www.Pronto.com

Web Resource: Word Ahead Vocabulary Videos

2009-04-30T13:33:00.003-05:00

"Vocabulary" is a term that can cause students to tune out immediately. My memories of vocabulary building in school involve worksheets, flashcards, and bold words with definitions at the end of the chapter. Most students fail to see the intrinsic value of new words, and building vocabulary becomes an exercise in failure for students and teachers alike.

Word Ahead Vocabulary Videos is a site that might be able to help. Opened to the public in January of 2009, the site features short videos with definitions, illustrations, and context for some six hundred words. You can use the widget above to see some examples of what the site offers.

Most of the videos seem to be aimed at high school-aged students, such as those trying to bone up for the SAT. (Click here for a complete word list.) Most videos are made by the folks at Word Ahead, though they also allow users to contribute by uploading their own videos.

Putting vocabulary words into videos will not make learning new words exciting for all students, but it might help, and it certainly beats worksheets. Word Ahead is a relatively new site, and thus should be expanding the ways teachers and students can interact with the videos. Stay tuned!

Words I Learned While Exploring Word Ahead:
Heterodoxy
Zoophagous
Lumen
Acidulous

Web Resource: Word Sift

2009-04-29T13:32:00.012-05:00

Word Sift (wordsift.com) is a web resource designed to help students interact with texts. In the words of its creators, Kenji Hakuta and Greg Wientjes, it is "a toy in a linguistic playground that is available to instantly capture and display the vocabulary structure of texts, and to help create an opportunity to talk and play with language."

The folks at Word Sift have combined the magic of word clouds with search engines and an online thesaurus. A student can enter a piece of text and instantly see the most frequently used words in a word cloud. Then, they can use an interactive dictionary/thesaurus (from Visual Thesaurus) to explore the meaning of those words. They can also see pictures generated by Google's image search engine and find out where the words are located in their text.

For example, let's say we want our students to analyze President Obama's Inaugural Address. We paste the text into Word Sift and we see a word cloud like this:

As in most word clouds, the bigger the word, the more times it was used in the text. We can click on any word to explore it further. Let's try "people." Below the word cloud, we see Google image search results like this:

To the right, we see an interactive thesaurus/dictionary with connections to related concepts:

And finally, we see our word in the context of our original text. We can click on any of these sentences to see where they are located in the text.

This site could be useful to teachers in lots of ways. I will let you know how it works when I try it out. For the time being, Word Sift's demo page has some ideas. Let me know if you do too!

Welcome!

2009-04-28T16:07:00.001-05:00

Welcome to Literacy Log! I'm Brian Shephard, and I would like this site to become a clearinghouse for ideas and strategies for teachers of all kinds of literacy. Click here to read more about this site.

Please comment whenever you feel the urge and send your suggestions/contributions to literacylog@gmail.com. Enjoy!

Every Test Is A Reading Test

2009-04-28T05:59:00.007-05:00

I was perusing Teacher Magazine's Blog Board and found a link to a great blog called Learn Me Good, written by "Mister Teacher," a 3rd Grade math teacher in Texas. He is preparing his students for their standardized tests and notes that after 3rd Grade, students may not ask for questions to be read or explained to them, even if they are English language learners. He notes:

So what it comes down to is that these kids are taking a series of reading tests. Some of them are ABOUT math or ABOUT science, but they don't strictly assess those subject areas as much as they assess whether or not the child can read the questions, some of which are highly complicated.

Mister Teacher is referring to the rules in Texas; I am sure they vary from state to state. In any event, his point has a lot to say about the importance of literacy and the pitfalls of assessing our students with standardized tests.

Again, Learn Me Good is a really good education blog; if you like math, funny t-shirts, or insights like the one above, check it out.

(Picture: "Testing" - CC)

Brainstorming with Wordle

2009-04-27T16:41:00.009-05:00

Here's another installment in what is becoming a series on the use of word clouds in the classroom.

I was delivering a practice lesson to a class of graduate students in secondary education about push and pull factors in Geography. Basically, a push factor is something that makes you want to leave a place and a pull factor is something that attracts you to someplace else.

After our warm-up and my initial introduction to the concepts, I thought it might be useful to ask my students to contribute examples. Since I have become obsessed with Wordle.net, I thought I'd try to use as a way for the class to visualize the results of our brainstorming. Here are the results:

In a Wordle graphic, a word gets bigger the more times it appears in the text you enter. So for push factors, I started by typing in "push" and "factors" many times to make them much larger than the other words. Then, I just typed in the students' examples as they shouted them out.

The result is a word cloud that depicts our brainstorming session. This can be used as a guide for further in-class discussion or for later review by the students. If I had a class website, I could put the word clouds up for test prep.

I have begun to use Wordle.net with all kinds of students, and they are uniformly fascinated by the results. When brainstorming is used in class, the results are typically either scribbled on the board or left to drift out the window. The students in this class were presented with an eye-catching, reusable picture of our discussion moments after it happened.

Here's a link to the results of my experimentation with Wordle.net. Let me know if you find new ways to use it in the classroom!

Web Resource: Storyline Online

2009-04-09T20:37:00.004-05:00

In my "Jumping Off" post featuring Jen Robinson's Book Page, I mentioned Storyline Online, where you can watch videos of SAG members reading children's books. SAG is The Screen Actors Guild, which runs the site in conjunction with its Book Pals program.

I don't know if watching Bradley Whitford (of West Wing fame) read a story would be as inspiring to a young reader as it was to me, but I got chills. Because of the site's layout, I can't provide links to individual stories. But I can list a few of the highlights for you. The URL is storylineonline.net. Here are some highlights:

James Earl Jones reading To Be A Drum, by Evelyn Coleman
Al Gore reading Brave Irene, by William Steig
Sean Astin reading A Bad Case of Stripes, by David Shannon
Elijah Wood reading Me And My Cat?, by Satoshi Kitamura
Camryn Manheim reading Enemy Pie, by Derek Munson
And.... Hillary Duff reading Romeow & Drooliet, by Nina Laden

Each video is accompanied by a long list of activities that can accompany reading/listening. You can also download a PDF "Activity Guide" with information about the book, a biography of the reader, and related internet resources.

826 Valencia - A Community-Based Literacy Solution

2009-04-07T11:13:00.002-05:00

"What we really need is just more people, more bodies, more one-on-one attention, more hours, more expertise from people that have skills in English and can work with these students one-on-one."

Dave Eggers Makes His TED Prize Wish (Great comments and links about this talk.)
826 Valencia Hompage
Once Upon A School - The site that sprung from this TED wish.

Jumping Off: Jen Robinson's Book Page

2009-04-06T13:22:00.000-05:00

Here we begin what will become a regular feature of Literacy Log. We'll start with a website or blog about literacy and follow their featured links to see what we find.

Today's featured site is Jen Robinson's Book Page. Jen focuses on children's books. She explores ways to get books into the hands of children and increase adult interest in childrens' books. Her blog is packed with book reviews and children's literacy news. This "Reviews That Made Me Want To Read The Book" entry is a good example of what Jen's up to.

Jen Robinson's Book Page - Graphic created at Wordle.com.

A few minutes exploring Jen's "Other Children's Literacy Links" section led me to the following places:

Beginning With Books - Best Books for Babies Archive. Nine years' worth of young children's book recommendations from children's lit experts Dr. Joan Brest Friedberg and Elizabeth Segel.
Book Pals. - Started in L.A. in 1993, this program aims to foster a love of reading in young children by having trained actors read to them. Their Storyline site is a fabulous resource. At the moment, it features a video of Evelyn Coleman's To Be A Drum being read by James Earl Jones. (BookPals has a Minnesota chapter, too!)
Inside Out Writers - A Los Angeles-based nonprofit that conducts writing classes withing the Los Angeles Country Juvenile Hall System. Their Writing From The Inside feature gives you a chance to read some amazing student work.
Literacy Launchpad - A blog run by Amy, an emerging literacy teacher and mother in Nashville, TN. Here, Amy and her readers discuss pre-reading skills that parents can teach their children from birth.
Mission: Making a Love of Reading Happen - In this his article, featured on Amy's blog, New York Times columnist Michael Winerip discusses the various methods he has used to foster a love of reading in his sometimes-resistent children.

That's it for today! A big thank you to Jen Robinson, who has no idea we're using her blog as a jumping off point. And, as always, tell us what you think about these links and others you stumble upon!

More Fun With Wordle - Submissions Needed!

2009-04-04T16:07:00.001-05:00

Wordle.net is place where users can create free, eye-catching word clouds. On Feb. 11, I wrote about how word clouds could be used as a literacy aid. I'd love to hear your ideas on how Wordle could be used in the classroom!

I recently introduced Literacy Log to a class full of future ESL teachers, and word clouds seemed to generate the most excitement. I thought it might be a good idea to feature them once again. So, here are some word clouds depicting documents in a few different languages.

Literacy Log officially guarantees that you will enjoy playing around on Wordle. Send me a link you your creation and I'll feature it here!

4/5/09 Update: Wade Roush at Xconomy interviews the creator of Wordle, John Feinberg.

...you get not only a picture of the relative frequency of words but you can get happy random juxtapositions of words that are conducive to associative thinking. It's generating ideas about something that otherwise wouldn't have occured to you. It's like a data toy. -John Feinberg

Brenda Dyck at Education World writes about potential classroom uses for Wordle. Highly recommended!

Web Resource: A Twist on Word Clouds by NYT

2009-04-02T15:57:00.000-05:00

A couple of months ago, we featured Word Clouds as a web resource. These are easy-to-create graphic representations of the main themes in a piece of text.

Take a look at this interactive graphic from The New York Times. It solicits input about how people are feeling about the economy and displays it in a form similar to a word cloud.

This is a pretty amazing tool. It allows you to sort by respondents' employment information and time of entry. And, it is constantly updated, even allowing the viewer to contribute.

Here's another one from the presidential election last fall.

When it comes to teaching literacy, this graphic would be very useful if you are working with adjectives, as all of the responses are of that part of speech. It would also be useful if you are talking about finding the mood or tone of a piece of writing.

Tongue Twisters As Phonemic Awareness Tools

2009-04-02T11:01:00.000-05:00

Kids love tongue twisters. They are catchy and giggle-inducing. Most importantly, they present a challenge. As a result, tongue twisters can be an easy way to help children learn various literacy skills.

Here, we'll talk about phonemic awareness. Any activity that encourages students to isolate or repeat small sound units can help with phonemic awareness. Tongue twisters, especially alliterative ones, can be an easy way to accomplish this.

For example, here's one I hadn't heard before from The Tongue Twister Database. Imagine using this to reinforce a student's concept of the "b" sound:

Betty Botter had some butter,
"But," she said. "this butter's bitter.
If I bake this bitter butter,
it would make my batter bitter.
But a bit of better butter--
that would make my batter better."

So she bought a bit of butter,
better than her bitter butter,
and she baked it in her batter,
and the batter was not bitter.
So 'twas better Betty Botter
bought a bit of better butter.

Tongue Twister Collections:

The Tongue Twister Database
Here's one from Hello Circle with audio recordings.
Spanish Tongue Twisters!

Here's a set of lesson plans from a group of elementary school teachers in West Virginia. Tongue twisters are only a small part of this unit; there's a lot to like here.

And I can't resist; here's Steve Martin showing off for Bernadette Peters.

Six Word Memoirs

2009-03-30T17:50:00.000-05:00

Online magazine SMITH has a great six-word memoir project. Click here to check them out and submit your own!

Clay Burell: Literacy Redefined

2009-03-30T16:49:00.000-05:00

Clay Burell writes a great education blog on the Change.org network. A couple of his recent posts urge us to change how we think about literacy.

First, take a look at Burell's thoughts on an interview with Muhammad Ali. If you've ever heard Ali speak, you know of his brilliance with language. After you watch the video, think about the questions Burell poses here:

And teachers - English teachers, especially, but any teacher using writing to assess understanding and merit in your classrooms - ask yourself, in this age of user-created video and audio, if it makes any sense to keep giving the Muhammed Ali's of our classrooms a D- because they can't write well, when they can speak well enough to be honored, like Ali was, at Harvard and Oxford. The English teacher in me is uncomfortable with this question, but the history teacher in me thinks it's justified: Writing is no longer supreme since the Digital Revolution. It's now on equal footing with Speaking and Graphic Communication. Isn't it?

In another post, Burell features the work of an AP Literature teacher from Pomona, CA. During a unit on The Great Gatsby, he realized the questions that the book posed about the nature of the American Dream might have relavence to his students, whose families have been hit hard by the current economic crisis. The result moved me to tears and earned the students a visit from President Obama.

Take a few minutes to read Burell's reaction to this video. In it, he posits that only anonymous writing can lead to authentic, moving results such as these. he also points out that the Internet, and YouTube specifically, ought to change the way we think about "language arts."

Schott's Vocab Blog - New York Times

2009-03-26T10:15:00.000-05:00

Lovers of words, especially newly-coined words, will love Schott's Vocab on the New York Times website. Ben Schott is an author living in London. He calls his blog a "repository of unconsidered lexicographical trifles. "

Schott's entry on the word "amortality" is a good example. Think about what it might mean before you check.

If you like this kind of thing, you'll enjoy Erin McKean's TED talk about the future of dictionaries.

If you're talking about dictionaries to students and getting blank stares in return, try talking about some of the word that are being added to dictionaries. People tend to find this stuff interesting. Here's a link to a good search for "added to the dictionary." Bling bling: in or out? Pick a side!

Strategy and Web Resource: Construct A Word

2009-03-18T15:50:00.000-05:00

Read Write Think offers a free, online game called Construct A Word. It is intended to bolster phonemic awareness by giving students practice with onset and rime. I found myself playing this game for about 15 minutes after I discovered it. Try it out!

This game could be adapted for environments where Internet access is not available. A teacher would simply need to write the onsets and rimes on 3x5 cards and ask students to match them up and say the words they have created.

Strategy: Word Sort

2009-03-04T19:50:00.000-06:00

This is a simple vocabulary strategy that can be used in any subject and at any grade level.

Gives students a list of vocabulary words. Provide three or four basic categories and ask students to place each word in one of them.

People like to find patterns in assortments of things; it's a basic part of how our minds work. As such, this activity is intrinsically rewarding. It is also a great way to help students solidify their understanding of important concepts.

Florida Online Reading and Professional Development featured word sorts as their Reading Strategy of the Month. Their page offers a few examples of how this strategy can be put to use.

Web Resource: Big Ideas in Beginning Reading

2009-03-04T19:41:00.000-06:00

Associated with the University of Oregon, Big Ideas in Beginning Reading is a great site for those who would teach young readers.

These are the Big Ideas:

Phonemic Awareness
Alphabetic Principle
Fluency With Text
Vocabulary
Comprehension

For each of these, the site provides definitions, teaching strategies, and videos of the strategies being used with young children.

Strategy: The Imposter

2009-02-18T12:26:00.000-06:00

The Imposter strategy engages students in text which contains contradictory statements or factual errors. It was created by Michael J. Curran and Elizabeth C. Smith and featured in The Journal Of Adolescent and Adult Literacy (subscription required.)

This strategy can be adapted to any subject for students of any reading level. It teaches students deep-reading skills as well as an awareness that text is not always factually sound.

Depending on the level of students involved, a teacher might prepare her own statements for scrutiny by students or ask students to craft their own imperfect statements to share with others.

The recently-featured site AllAboutExplorers.com is built on a very similar concept.

Web Resource: All About Explorers

2009-02-16T09:10:00.000-06:00

All About Explorers was set up to help elementary-aged students learn about the pitfalls of finding information on the Internet. It features biographies of major explorers which contain factual errors, both subtle and blatant. The site also contains lesson plans and worksheets intended to guide students through the site towards greater information literacy.

This lesson plan, for example, compels students to consider the publishing process; books and most printed materials undergo many stages of editing and fact-checking while information on the internet enjoys less rigorous editing, if any at all.

All About Explorers was mentioned in this New York Times piece about the changing role of school librarians.

Lit News: The Future of the School Librarian

2009-02-16T09:01:00.001-06:00

Stephanie Rosalia does not call herself a school librarian. She goes by "information literacy teacher," and she works at P.S. 225 in Brooklyn. She is featured in this great New York Times article about the changing role of school libraries.

Ms. Rosalia sees it as part of her job to help students learn how to navigate the internet safely and efficiently. She has found herself spending plenty of time educating teachers, as well.

The article also features a fascinating, if scary, discussion of the diminishing role libraries are playing in our schools. Funding is being cut and classroom teachers are compelled to work on test prep when they might have taken their kids to the library.

There is a companion video story about Ms. Rosalia on the site as well.

Lit News: Nicholas D. Kristoff Op-Ed

2009-02-15T13:04:00.000-06:00

In the New York Times, Kristoff argues that the stimulus bill is a tremendous chance for us to fix a broken education system. Here's my favorite part:

"Education Secretary Arne Duncan describes the stimulus as a 'staggering opportunity,' the kind that comes once in a lifetime. He argues: 'We have to educate our way to a better economy, that’s the only way long term to get there.'

Amen and Hallelujah!

Strategy: 100 Favorite Words

2009-02-12T13:06:00.000-06:00

This is a simple idea that can be implemented in any type of classroom. Challenge students to make a list of their 100 favorite words. It can be completed over the course of a quarter or a whole year, and students can be encouraged to include words they learned in your class.

100 Favorite Words is a simple way to incorporate literacy into any subject matter and to build vocabulary. In addition, it can encourage students to further explore key concepts. A student of history might add emancipation, defenestration, or inalienable to their list, for example.

If this sounds like fun to you, check out this list of people's favorite words. And this one.

Web Resource: Primary Sources at The Library of Congress

2009-02-12T12:23:00.000-06:00

Primary sources were once the province of learned historians with access to dusty archives. Younger students of history -and those who would teach them- had no such access and had to make do with secondary accounts in textbook and on film.

The internet has changed this. An ever-growing treasure-trove of primary documents is available online. Perhaps the best collection can be found at the Library of Congress's Digital Collections and Programs site.

It would be hard to overstate the vastness of this collection. Students can view the contents of Lincoln's pockets on the night of his assassination, watch 341 of the very first motion picture recordings by Thomas Edison, and read Walt Whitman's handwritten notebooks page-by-page.

The Teaching With Primary Sources Program from The Library Of Congress is a great resource for teachers who would like to put primary sources to use in their classrooms. One teacher highlighted on the site says that her students are "mesmerized" by audio recordings of slave narratives, for example.

Web Resource: Word Clouds

2009-02-11T14:23:00.001-06:00

A word cloud is a visual depiction of the main words and ideas of a text. Word clouds evolved from Tag Clouds, which are commonly used to depict the content of websites.

Wordle.net is a free (and addictive) way to create Word Clouds. A teacher or student simply needs to copy and paste text, select font and display preferences, and Wordle generates a word cloud. Here are some examples:

This fantastic interactive page from The New York Times uses world clouds to guide readers through every inaugural address by a U.S. President.

Word clouds are no substitute for the actual reading of a text, but they can provide a powerful visual preview of text and aid students in making predictions and forming questions.

Strategy: Making Predications

2009-02-11T13:45:00.000-06:00

If you've ever read to children, you've probably found yourself asking them before you turn the page, "What do you think is going to happen?" No doubt, the children were happy to respond with enthusiastic guesses about what was to come.

Dan Gilbert writes that the human brain is constantly making predictions about what is to come in the near and distant future. It is no surprise that nurturing this instinct in readers will help them gain a more complete understanding from the text in front of them.

This Education World page contains an example of using predictions for younger students. This site contains a treasure trove of links to other prediction lessons, including this one, a Directed Listening-Thinking Activity on Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart.

Strategy: KWL

2009-02-11T13:18:00.000-06:00

KWL is a simple literacy strategy that has quickly become a essential tool of literacy specialists. It stands for "Know, Want, Learn" and can be used to help students navigate a text.

Students start by brainstorming what they already know about the topic of the text. Then, they generate a list of things that they want to know. While reading, or while reflecting on the completed text, students make a list of things they learned.

This site from a University of Indiana course provides a good overview of KWL, as well as an example of what a completed KWL chart might look like.

KWL can easily be applied to Social Studies classes. It allows students to reflect on their understanding of an issue and focus their reading to fill gaps in understanding. Here are a few examples:

The site learnnc.org has a great 3-lesson plan involving KWL and state history.
The Alaska Department of Education and Early Development provides an example of a KWL chart for a lesson on the 1995 Kobe earthquake.
This teacher has a KWL chart available for download and has added an "H" to the chart, encouraging readers to think about how they will learn more about the subject.

Success Story: JEB Stuart HS, Falls Church, VA

2009-02-11T13:07:00.000-06:00

Click here for an article by Carol Guensburg of Edutopia.org about a school that sparked a turnaround in part by making literacy a priority in every subject. JEB Stuart High School "has boosted reading-proficiency scores on the Virginia Standards of Learning tests from 64 percent in 1998 to 94 percent in 2004."

All teachers at JEB Stuart have training in literacy; even math and music teachers have begun to weave literacy into their classes. K-W-L (Know, Want, Learn) is mentioned as one of the core strategies.

Strategy: Mad Libs Debate

2009-02-10T12:54:00.000-06:00

Mad Libs were first published in 1958 and have been popular with children ever since. Prompted by parts of speech, players fill in a template with words of their choosing and plug them into blanks in a story. The results are often humorous, and kids have a laugh while learning about parts of speech.

This activity can be altered to help students understand many aspects of literacy. This variation is intended to help students learn how to structure an argument and cite sources to support it. If desired, a teacher could provide students with editorials or opinion columns on two sides of one issue and stage a “debate” with the results.

Start by finding opinion pieces on two different sides of an important issue, such as American Idol. In this commentary , the author argues that the popular television talent show is an "integral part of the American landscape." Here, an author contends that Idol is a grotesque freak show.

Students will read one opinion or the other and, in groups, identify items A-F on our Answer Sheet. In order to do this, they will need to know how to identify an author's main argument, understand how that argument is supported, and be able to cogently offer their own opinion on the matter.

Once the answer sheet is completed, students need only plug items A-F into their corresponding spaces on the Argument Template.

A full answer sheet might look something like this. If you put those answers into the template, you have a rudimentary persuasive argument.

As you'll see, the activity did not create a perfectly-written argument. It does not flow all that well, and it is a bit redundant. But for our purposes, that might be a good thing. This activity gives students practice in identifying authors' key arguments and forming their own. Most importantly, it gives them an introduction to how those skills can be used to cite examples in persuasive writing.

Primary Source Scavenger Hunt

2009-02-10T12:40:00.000-06:00

This lesson is intended to strengthen students’ skills in finding and analyzing primary sources. It can be conducted over one or two class periods, depending on group size and the age of the students. It assumes that students have a basic knowledge of primary sources, including author bias.

Students choose a topic and use the internet to find the primary sources required. Using a template provided, they will analyze the point of view and possible biases of the author. Finally, student will write a brief account of the event using what they learned form their sources.
Here is an example of a scavenger hunt list:

Hurricane Katrina
o One interview of a victim of Katrina. Can be in print or video.
o Two videos of the Gulf Coast during or after the hurricane.
o A speech by a politician about the situation in New Orleans. Can be a transcript or a video.
o Five still pictures of the events of Katrina.
o Three primary sources expressing one person’s perspective on the events of Hurricane Katrina.

This exercise would be effective in strengthening basic literacy in students; it requires close readings of interviews and first-hand accounts. It is a great exercise for building historical and information literacy as well. Students will learn to examine documents critically and identify problems of bias and point of view.

Welcome!

2008-03-22T22:06:00.001-05:00

Welcome to Literacy Log! I'm Brian Shephard, and I would like this site to become a clearinghouse for ideas and strategies for teachers of all kinds of literacy.

I am working on Masters of Arts in Teaching at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. I also work at an after school literacy program for K-3 public school students.

My fellow Hamline students are frequently required to generate such strategies for assignments. Ideally, those strategies will be used in a classroom someday, but I fear that too many of them die on the page.

This blog is a living document. The strategies posted here will always be available to you. What's more, you will be able to comment on them, add to them, and discuss them with colleagues.

I am, to a large extent, learning as I go along. That applies to teaching literacy and maintaining a website. I welcome your suggestions and contributions. For now, you can navigate the site with the labels on the right. Here are some of the big categories so far:

Strategies: Techniques for teaching literacy. These may range from simple concepts to lesson designs.

Web Resources: The Internet is an increasingly rich source of literacy tools. These can be games, online software, other literacy sites, etc.