News You Can Use----An Instructional Approach Expands Its Reach

An Instructional Approach Expands Its Reach
What are your thoughts on the RTI process?

Shelfari---Motivate your students to read by creating personal libraries for each student

 Shelfari is a wonderful website where students and teachers can create/share their own personal library of books, write reviews about them, access other students' bookshelves, join groups to discuss books, and access discussions that people have read about books you're interested in.  You can organize your bookshelf according to books you've read, are currently reading, and want to read.  Students no longer need to keep a hard copy of the books they've, instead they import them into their shelfari bookshelf and can then print out their list.  What a wonderful way to motivate and engage your students in reading!  If you have any questions ask me.
I just started my shelfari bookshelf and you can see it on the right side bar of my blog page.  My current bookshelf is more of a professional development library.  It would be great for literacy coaches and curriculum directors to create a Shelfari Prof. Development Library for their teachers to access and discuss books.  I plan to create another bookshelf where I upload books for children and write personal reviews for my students to access.
If any of you are using shelfari please share any insights you might have in incorporating it into the classroom and leave your shelf name to add to my list of friends.
Check out the shelfari blog

Increasing Motivation and Comprehension

One of my favorite ways to motivate and engage my students in their independent novels is through creative and engaging book projects.  Book projects are a way to assess student comprehension and taught skills, while letting them be creative and have choice about how they share their insights and knowledge about what they've read.  My goal is to try and tap into student's higher level thinking skills, by having them take steps beyond just plot summaries and character development.  I've given my students options of things such as creating character scripts for play productions, commercials, webquests and foldables presentations (click link for awesome blog about foldables w/ examples).

I don't assign. book projects for every book my students read, but give them a heads up that they will choose one book over the next couple of months or so (depending on our schedule) to do a book project on.

Check out this book project idea:  Cereal Box Book Reports

How do you engage and motivate your students to read?

Choosing Books for Reading Instruction and Independent Reading

 Choosing Books in my Classroom:
I have spent quite a bit of time and money developing my library of picture books that I think are great resources for modeling and teaching reading comprehension strategies.  Picture books are wonderful resources for engaging children of all elementary grade levels and even for modeling specific strategies at the middle school level.  I also love to incorporate non-fiction picture books into all content areas as well.  I try to have a resource center of picture book texts available for each big umbrella topic we study.  I find that the kids get so much more out of reading and searching through these types of texts, rather than just assigning them pages in a textbook.  "Mentor texts" are also really great for modeling writing and teaching students about specific writing genres.  My students are encouraged to go to the "mentor text" area during their stages of writing to get ideas and refresh their memories about what we have discussed in mini-lessons.  Lucy Calkins gives a great list of mentor texts in her "Units of Study" series that I often refer to.  One of my favorite mentor text authors is Cynthia Rylant.

Comprehension Strategy Teaching/Independent Reading:

I came across a podcast from Sharon Taberski, author of On Solid Ground: Strategies for Teaching Reading, K-3, where she discusses Book Choice; how she chooses books for teaching comprehension strategies and guides her readers to independent book selections.  I like how Sharon said that she chooses a comprehension book not just because it is a good strategy book, but it is a book that she loves and knows the kids will love too.  She cites how important it is to engage the kids first and then look for how to incorporate strategy instruction, oral language and vocab., phrasing, and prior knowledge, etc.   For guiding independent selections she says that we need to be "a whole lot more careful about the books we put into our children's hands for independent reading."  In order to make the best use of students' independent reading time they need to be reading a book with 98-99% word accuracy.  Too often children are choosing books that they cannot read or are too easy because they've read them too many times.  She also discusses the benefits of "look books". 

How do you use picture books and mentor texts in your classroom?

iPad Evolving into K-12 Learning Tool

iPad Evolving into K-12 Learning Tool 
This Education Week article discusses multiple ways that iPads are being used in classrooms.

iPads, iPods, and iPhones can be really useful tools for teaching literacy in the k-12 classroom. I have been researching different educational apps that are available from apple and giving workshops for pre-service teachers and professors and am really impressed by what's available. The tricky thing to work out is synching all the iPads and not having to pay for the app Check out the links below for app ideas that I found. It's really helpful if you have a delicious account, as you can search for these websites and get some really quick and useful results from others.

http://www.iear.org/iear/tag/reading
This site gives reviews on educational apps. You can narrow your search by topic. One of my fav. reading apps is the "Learning A-Z Leveled Readers" where the kids can access a database of leveled books on their own on Ipads or Ipods.
http://www.onlineclasses.org/2010/06/16/40-amazingly-educational-ipad-apps-for-kids/
Here you’ll find apps for learning the alphabet, using the dictionary, reviewing grammar rules, and more. If you click on the app you can get details and reviews if you scroll down.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/24470331/iPhone-iPad-and-iPod-touch-Apps-for-Special-Education
This site is dedicated to Special Education Apps which are great, there are many that you can use with lower elementary students to develop their reading/writing skills. You can search by category as well. My fav. is "Sentence Builder" which was rated "2010 lEAR lang. arts app. of the year."

Share any apps that you like and give feedack on my posts!

RTI Podcast Resource

"Mary Howard, author of RTI from All Sides, talks with Heinemann consultant Judy Wallis about RTI and what it means for teaching. She shares 7 keys to success and emphasizes the importance of high-quality instruction, sensible assessment, professional development, and materials that support flexible implementation."
(http://www.heinemann.com/podcastDetail.aspx?id=5)

  

Response to Intervention is a Hot Topic right now in literacy education.  I thought this podcast was a great resource in explaining the purpose behind the RTI process and what it's benefits are.  Mary Howard makes some really good points about not using the RTI process as "a scripted program" and that we need to make informed instructional decisions as the expert.  She also talked about the importance of tier 1 saying, "What happens at Tier 1 will largely impact how many kids will need support in tiers 2 and 3...We need to provide quality instruction from the beginning and not just when children start to struggle." I think these are some good thoughts to ponder with this process as I think many teachers are feeling overwhelmed in implementing all tiers.  I think the important thing to keep in mind is that the ultimate goal is to improve the quality of instruction for all students.  What are your thoughts?