It is a well-accepted fact that if students do not read over summer vacation their reading level and reading skills will "slide" backward.  Read on for great ideas on how to keep your students reading this summer.

Websites

Looking for books to captivate your students and keep them reading this summer?

Check out kidsreads.com for kid-friendly reviews of the books that will keep your students reading all summer long.　 Teenreads.com focuses on young adult literature.

Perhaps, you need ideas for preparing to send your students off to summer reading.　 Don't miss these!　

 
Launching Summer Reading
The Book Whisperer
Posted April 22, 2012

  
Preparing Students for Summer Reading
Choice Literacy　  

Bright Ideas for Summer
ReadWriteThink

  
Articles
Of course, IRA has published many articles on the topic.  Check out these abstracts then use your IRA membership to read the entire article.  IRA membership is needed to read the full article.

  
Summer Reading Dilemma Solved!  

This article does not have an abstract. You will want to read it because Lawrence Elementary in Wichita, Kansas found a way to motivate their students to read over the summer.  The teachers mailed each student three or four paper books on the approproate level every two weeks from June through August.  They hoped that the novelty of getting a letter in the mail would motivate the students to read the books they received.  It worked!  In the fall, they found that 69% of the students maintained or improved their spring reading levels over summer. 

Summer Reading Loss　

  
Teacher and Parent Scaffolding of Voluntary Summer Reading

It should be the teacher’s aim to give every child a love of reading, a hunger for it that will stay with him through all the years of his life. If a child has that he will acquire the mechanical part without difficulty. (Mayne 1915)

1.  Do a flash mob with your students or school.  Watch these videos and use their music and choreography or create your own.

Elementary U-Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmrruNIYSJ4&feature=related

Middle School U-Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNpNfhpqDk4

Have you tried the following ideas from Stephen Layne in his book, Igniting the Passion?

 2.  BOOK CHATS

Layne is passionate about book chats.

“On my list of all-time best ways to stimulate a positive attitude, interest, motivation, and engagement in text with readers, providing book chats is at the top.”

This includes classroom teachers, reading specialists, librarians, and anyone else that you can wrangle into doing them. Why? They work. Layne contends, and I agree, that when you advertise a book, children want to read it. He has found that students giving book chats to the class are also successful.

3.  THE TEACHER'S HOT READ

This is another type of effective modeling. Motivate students to read by promoting what the teacher is reading. In other words, he posts the book he is currently reading (at the students’ reading level) on a book stand along with a sign that says – MR. LAYNE’S HOT READ. He reads it during SSR and takes it home a couple of nights a week. This promotes interest in the book. Students will want to read it when the teacher finishes it and/or will look for it in the library to check out. 

4. PICTURE BOOK OF THE MONTH

Each month Layne posts a picture book with a sign – Picture Book of the Month.

Students can read the book during SSR, if they finished work early, or other appropriate times. They can even check out the book to take home to read there or have someone read it to them, but only once each month. If they read the book, they were invited to join Layne for lunch toward the end of the month. (Everyone brought their own lunch – he provided brownies.) At lunch, they talked about the book. On the last day of each month, he would read the book aloud, explain why he selected it, and point out various features of the illustrations and the story line that he had hoped they had noticed. He has used this in elementary as well as middle school and always with great success.

5.  ELEMENTARY/YA CAFE

Here’s a great idea to reach your reluctant readers! There are three key components – teachers who want to promote reading, great books, and food! The Café can be scheduled before school, after school, or during lunch. The teacher begins by explaining why this book was chosen and gives enough background about the book to get readers interested. He/she reads aloud for approximately 30 minutes from the book. Then, there is time for questions, discussion, and/or check out in the library. You will want to feature a different teacher in every Café session.

6.  READ AROUNDS – A great addition to your day to celebrate MO Read-In Day.

This is a GREAT way to generate excitement about books! It will also expose every reader to a wide range of books quickly while allowing students to spend a few extra minutes with the books that appeal to them. Here’s how to get started.

· Begin with teaching students how to preview a book in advance of this activity.

· Start this activity by putting a book or magazine on every desk. (for grades 2 and above) Ask the younger students to sit in a circle on the floor.

· Remind students how to preview a book.

· Tell students that they will be given one minute and 30 seconds to preview the book in front of them. Everyone begins.

· When you say “pass” the students pass the book to the person on the right IF they want. Students may choose to keep the book and pass it on the next round. Students may keep a book for three “preview” sessions during this activity or keep three different books for a second “preview” session. You may want to use a colored card for students to place on the desk to signify that the book is being kept for an additional “preview” period.

· The teacher has only one job. The teacher calls out “pass” when it is time to pass the book to the next person. Vary the time for “previewing” to keep the activity fresh. In case traffic jams occur, keep a few extra books in your hands.

· Wrap up this activity by allowing the students to walk around and write the names of the books that interested them on a sheet for listing books that they want to read in the future.

Twice every year we have the opportunity for a fresh start. Obviously, one time in is August. But, we also have that opportunity when we begin a new semester in January. We reveiw assessment data from the end of the first semester and implement new ideas and strategies to meet each student's current needs.

  
I began the semester by reviewing December's assessment results. At the end of December, each student colored his/her personal bar graph to show personal results compared to the goal. We give both the STAR Reading Assessment as well as an Informal Reading Inventory, and each assessment has its own bar graph.

 We began January by reviewing our progress and looking at the reading level goals for third quarter, setting each student's goal for strategy use with the student, communicating it to all important parties, and tracking the use of that strategy on a daily basis. Even first graders are successfully self-assessing his/her strategy use when reading and then using this information to set a new goal for third quarter.

  
This process from Assessment for Learning has enabled us to achieve results that I have never seen before in my Reading Intervention classes over the course of my teaching career. This process also leads to implementing new strategies/ideas and is a part of the "begin anew" philosophy of a new year/new semester.

The following are a couple of the new ideas/strategies that I am implementing this semester:

Reader's Theater groups
to improve fluency and comprehension.
Check out the strong research base from a short compilation of the research or Tim Rasinski's website.

  
Independent reading partners
for students to capitalize on the social aspect of reading. In one fourth grade classroom, we have two or three students partnering to each read and chat about the same book for independent reading.

I wish you a productive and happy new semester!
 

The Dolly Gray Children’s Literature Award will be presented on January 19, 2012 at the Council for Exceptional Children’s Division on Autism and Developmental Disabilities (DADD) international conference in Miami Beach, Florida. The intermediate/young adult award will be presented to Kathryn Erskine, author of Mocking Bird and Beverley Brenna, author of Waiting for No One. In the picture book category, the awards go to Rebecca Elliott, author/illustrator of Just Because, and Holly Robinson Peete and Ryan Elizabeth Peete (authors) and Shane W. Evans (illustrator) for My Brother Charlie.

Dolly Gray Award – 2012 Award Winner

2012 Dolly Gray Award Winner

Mockingbird

by Kathryn Erskine

Presented at the CEC-DADD's biennial conference in Miami Beach, Florida, January, 2012.

Disability: Asperger Syndrome

Publisher: Penguin

Dolly Gray Award – 2012 Award Winner

2012 Dolly Gray Award Winner

Waiting for No One 

by Beverley Brenna

Presented at the CEC-DADD's biennial conference in Miami Beach, Florida, January, 2012.

Disability: Asperger Syndrome

Publisher: Red Deer Press

Dolly Gray Award – 2012 Award Winner

2012 Dolly Gray Award Winner

My Brother Charlie

by Holly Robinson Peete and Ryan Elizabeth Peete (authors) and Shane W. Evans (illustrator)

Presented at the CEC-DADD's biennial conference in Miami Beach, Florida, January, 2012.

Disability: Autism

Publisher: Scholastic

History of the Dolly Gray Award

Dolly Sharpe Gray was born September 20, 1971 in New York City with severe cerebral palsy. Not quite 18 years later she died in her sleep of a respiratory infection. Dolly's life was in many ways the life of any little girl and young woman. To an extent that one might not have anticipated, she participated in the world that we all share. Literature had a lot to do with it. Like many young people, she loved books. Perhaps because she could not walk and she could not speak, the messages of books about diverse people and places were all the more important to her. Books opened the world to her and promoted something called "awareness."  With the power of words and the realism of story, books tell us about the lives of others, including persons with disabilities. Throughout her life, Dolly was greeted with much acceptance, and benefited from that understanding for which literature is partly responsible. When we can identify with characters and stories we learn to know ourselves better and to become more accepting of those around us. Books offered Dolly something precious as she enjoyed stories showing figures with whom she could identify. The issue was that there were limited books with which she could relate. Without powerful and accurate depiction of persons with disabilities, literature itself is diminished. Today there are many more books for young people which give substance to "inclusion."

The Dolly Gray Award recognizes high quality fiction/biographical books for children, adolescents, and young adults that authentically portray individuals with developmental disabilities. The award was developed by the DADD in 2000 in response to a growing body of children’s literature that includes characters with developmental disabilities, and to assist in dispelling harmful myths and stereotypes portrayed in the media. Special Needs Project, a worldwide leader in the distribution of books related to disabilities, co-sponsors this award. 

A list of all books considered for the award, procedures, and submission guidelines are available on the DADD website:  http://daddcec.org/Awards/DollyGrayAwards.aspx.

At a recent staff meeting, our principal moved every teacher into a team of two and asked each person to write a personal goal that we would like to accomplish this year.  Our goal sheet included spaces for not only the goal, but also the steps that one would take to accomplish this goal and how specific people could help us. At future staff meetings, we will check in with our partner to share our progress towards meeting this goal.  Also, he challenged us to think of ways to track our progress towards completion.  The principal introduced this activity by saying that he wanted to model for us how we might include our students in goal setting.

 This activity was very timely.  Most teachers in our school are close to finishing their initial assessments of students.  For me, assessments are finished and my Reading Intervention classes are beginning.  Last year, my Reading Intervention team experienced great sucess in improving our students' reading due in part to implementing the specific Assessment for Learning practices of student self assessment and goal setting.  (This student involvement piece of Assessment for Learning is so often forgotten.)  Using the results of informal reading inventories shared with students, goals were chosen by students and communicated to parents and classroom teachers on goal sheets along with the steps to completing the goal.  Goal cards were created and posted on desks or in folders to remind students of his/her goal. Progress was tracked on generic graphs that were personalized for each student.

 
Listed below are the resources I have posted to help you implement the often forgotten student piece of Assessment for Learning.

Goal Setting and Tracking
Click here to see goal setting sheets, goal cards for posting on student desk, and goal tracking charts that you can personalize for the needs of your students. 

Thank you to Sarah Valter for sharing her goal card for the desk.  If you have resources that have worked well in your classroom for goal setting or tracking, please share them. I will post them in the next e-newsletter.

To  prepare your students for goal setting, read aloud Salt in His Shoes by Michael Jordan.

To read more about involving students in assessment for learning, google "assessment for learning stiggins."  Look for the article titled "Classroom Assessment for Learning" in the September 2002 edition of Educational Leadership by Chappuis and Stiggins.

To extent your learning, attend Sarah Valter's session on this topic at the MO Early Learning Conference on November 3-4 at Tan Tar A. Learn more about her session and other speakers at http://muconf.missouri.edu/moearlylearning.  Register for the conference at http://muconf.missouri.edu/moearlylearning/Registration.html.

BUILDING COMMUNITY!

A few of our members have shared the activities that they have found successful in their own classrooms for building community from the very first day of school! 

WHO AM I? (Gr 1 and Up)

By Wendy Bopp, Rockwood School District

Each student writes numerous T/F statement about self. Classmates try to answer. Student reveals true answers. Process begins with the teacher (click here for teacher example) and is repeated for each student. Class averages their score on how well they know their classmates. A clean copy of all questionnaires is kept. At the end of the year, all students answer all questionnaires again. Once again, the class average is computed and compared to the fall score. Then, students write a reflective essay about how they learned more about their classmates and how /why it impacted our classroom community.

For Gr 1-2 — Guess Who's Who? (Really Good Stuff #157716)

Same idea but involves more picture drawing. Students decorate the border of the paper and complete the information about themselves in each of the squares. Classmates read the information on the mats and guess who each belongs to, then open the mat to see if they were right! On the inside of the mat is a self-drawn portrait of the author.

POETRY AS A PROMPT FOR GETTING TO KNOW STUDENTS  (Gr 3 & Up)

By Alyssa Barker, Ritenour School District

On the first day of class, I will use the attached poem by Matt Fatchen. As students read it, they think they are reading about Halloween because of the scary events described in the poem. However, it is written about the night before the first day of a new school year. After reading it, I ask students to write how each felt the night before school started. (Now, I also have a writing sample from each student.)   Click here for this poem and others to use in the first few days of school.

Next, we do a Four Corners activity. I have the following words posted in each of four corners around the room: Scared, Worried, Ambivalent, Excited. (Of course, we talk about each of these words and their meanings, especially ambivalent.) I ask the students to stand in the corner that best describes their feelings about starting school today. The students in each corner share with others in the corner why they chose this word. Then, each corner shares out to the whole class as to why they chose this word to describe their feelings about starting school today.

Finally, I turn the Four Corners activity into a Human Continuum – a line of emotions with the word "Excited" at the far right and the word "Scared" at the far left. We discuss where "Worried" and "Ambivalent" might fall on the line. Then, each student goes to stand on the line at the place where his/her emotions would land between "Excited" and "Scared." The students share out with the person to the right then to the left.

Throughout these activities, we are looking for common feelings. Students always find that there are other students who feel similarly to them. In eight years, no one has ever chosen "excited" to show how they feel about the first day of school in middle school.

SUMMER PICTURE OF FUN (Gr K and Up)

By Marcia Strickland, Rockwood School District

Probably my most favorite thing I do to build community is that I send each student a postcard as soon as lists are posted and ask each one to bring a picture of something fun they did over the summer. They share what they did, and we do other activities with the picture. The picture gives them an easy way to share with the class and a focus for what to say when they share.

INCLUSION ACTIVITIES

By Courtney McAllister, Northwest R1 School District

This year we have an advisory group that meets everyday for the first 20 minuntes of the day. We will be doing inclusion activities like Stand If … Examples: Stand if you like to play sports. Stand if you are the oldest child in your family. This will enable students to see commonalities with other students.

We will also do an activity where students are asked to write about themselves from the point of view of what other people see of them on the outside and then what they know of themselves from the inside. We will share to show that what we think we know of others may not always to true. It will also enable students to learn what they have in common with others.

 Using Children’s Literature to Explore Social Class and Poverty in Times of Economic Crisis

Strains on the global economy and an economic recession in the U.S. offer a particularly ripe moment for literacy teachers to raise questions about the kinds of practices that prepare students for participation in dialogue about economic living and teaching in a new world order. Children’s literature, an artifact of cultural, social and economic values, provides a window into the ways in which children are socialized to think about social class. And, yet, there is often a silenced dialogue around matters of social class and poverty in society and schools. In this article, we attempt to break this silence through a critical analysis of how social class and poverty are articulated through a selection of children’s literature. We focus on three themes that arose across the books: the representation of social class, the representation of labor, and social action and agency. We share additional books, resources and questions that teachers might use when engaging young people in literature that addresses social class and poverty.

Carolyn L. Carlson

 Pizzas, Parties, and Pigs: The Use of Extrinsic Rewards to Motivate Students to Read

Extrinsic rewards are often used in schools to encourage students to read. However, are these rewards helping to develop a love of reading or are they merely a bribe sending the wrong message regarding reading? This article examines the use of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards to increase reading among students.

Sandra F. Matson

 Engaging Struggling Readers with Inquiry Projects

Engaging readers is perhaps one of the greatest challenges when working with struggling readers or students at the secondary level. Allowing choices that are relevant and interesting while using inquiry projects proved to be motivating even when they may find certain concepts challenging.

Miranda Snowden

 Increasing Exposure to Nonfiction through Book Talks for Fourth Graders

The purpose of this article is to help teachers successfully implement weekly nonfiction book talks in a fourth grade classroom. The article includes research supporting nonfiction exposure in the elementary grades. Specific strategies and guidelines are provided for teachers to effectively implement nonfiction book talks.

Xiaoming Liu and Elizabeth Dicembre

 Listen to Boys who Struggle with Reading: Self-Perceptions and Preferred Reading Materials

This article examines six male struggling readers’ self-perceptions, reading interests, and what they like to read vs. what are used by their teachers to teach reading. Instructional implications are also discussed.

Jordan Smith

 The View from Below: A Pre-Service Teacher’s Plan to Ignite Literacy in the Middle & High School Classroom

In this article, Jordan Smith describes strategies to engage middle- and high-school readers in classrooms that inspire students to read and write in ways that are meaningful to students. Pre-service teachers can develop the commitment to planning for ways to motivate classrooms in ways that benefit all students.

Kasie Ferguson

 Implementing Small Group Skill-Based Writing Instruction in First Grade

Using small skill based groups in first grade can be an efficient and effective approach to teaching writing. Meeting the needs of every child can be accomplished by knowing how to organize, manage and implement these groups within Writer’s Workshop.

Diane Pierce

 Reading Recovery Practices in Special Education Classrooms

Reading Recovery practices can be used in the special education classroom to help provide individualized instruction for multiple students. Special education teachers can use rereading, running records, word analysis, writing, cut-apart sentences, new book introduction, and new book attempted to give structured, individualized lessons that can be adapted as needed.

Valerie L. Zelenka

 Response to Intervention in Elementary Reading Requires Compassionate Classroom Communities

Perhaps you might think that administering universal screening assessment, regrouping students in tiered groups, and creating a tutorial period are all of the components necessary when implementing Response to Intervention….think again.　 Often disregarded and sometimes underestimated is the impact that classroom environments have on at-risk struggling readers.

Elizabeth A. Bax

Reading and writing are a huge part of everyday life—without these skills children will have insufficient knowledge for their future. This study utilized data from a second grade classroom that participated in student-led peer writing conferences to determine the effect on perception and awareness. The results implied that when student-led peer writing conferences are used as a supplement to writing workshop, students’ perceptions regarding their literary strategy use becomes more independent.

Learning occurs when we have the opportunity to think WITH others.  (Peter Brunn)  "Thinking with others" usually comes in the form of talk … talking to learn.   Want to make a big difference in student achievement with a subtle change in your instruction?  Maria Nichols offers us just that.  She encourages us to have our students "think and talk with others in purposeful ways as a means of generating ideas and constructing understanding."

While reading this, one may be thinking, "Hey, I do that."  But, let's clarify exactly what is meant by that statement.  Do you have your students share ideas with a peer?  Do you have your students talk to other students during a lesson to make one's thinking clear to others?  Well, that is simple communication.

The purposeful talk that is described in the first paragraph is also called "dialogue" by David Bohm (1996).  Bohm describes dialogue as "a coming to an intellectual exchange willing to see and hear something new in the exchange, and actually creating a newer, stronger understanding because of the exchange. … participants achieve a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts – ideas that are bigger and better thean any individual might have conceived on their own."  Nichols says "these learners depend on each other's thinking to enrich their understanding and construct meaning."

How do we create such an environment in our classroom?  Nichols points out several supports and strategies that will enable each teacher to accomplish this in his/her own classroom.

1. Change your wording when sending students off to talk with a partner.

Old:  "Tell your partner what you are thinking."

New instructions:  "Build a conversation with your partner about your thinking."

2. Teach with more small group and less whole class lessons.  This will offer more opportunities for dialogue.

3. Post charts around the room to support the student's use of language in their talk with the partner.  For example, these may be sentence starters that help students to disagree with another person's ideas or add on to another person's ideas.

4. Build a strong classroom community to enable students to take risks with sharing their thoughts and feelings.

5.  Value ideas more than right answers.  Allington and Johnson in their research into the classrooms of highly effective teachers found that dialogue includes "large amounts of "tentative talk" which they define as open-ended talk that proposes possibilities and allows others to build off the thinking, complete the ideas, or contribute in other ways." 

6.  Teach students to "say something meaningful" to advance the dialogue by referencing the text and pushing their construction of meaning.

7.  Keep lines of thinking alive by continuing to develop a topic to the full extent possible before moving off in a different direction.

8.  Teach students to "learn to listen to the ideas of others, value their thinking, be flexible and willing to let go of ideas in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary, and be interested in understanding other points of view even if, in the end, they are not swayed."

Talking to learn is a powerful strategy that can be used across the curriculum to increase student achievement.  Could it be the change to your instruction that will yield huge benefits for your students this year?

Elementary

  Making Connections: Color-Coded Chains from the book Interactive Think-Aloud Lessons by Lori Oczkus

Reciprocal Teaching in Whole-Class Sessions from the book, Reciprocal Teaching at Work by Lori D. Oczkus

Creating, Organizing, and Managing Comprehension Centers from the book, Guided Comprehension in the Primary Grades (Second Edition) by Maureen McLaughlin

Teacher-Directed Whole-Group Instruction from the book, Guided Comprehension in Grades 3 – 8 (Second Edition) by Maureen McLaughlin and Mary Beth Allen

Vocabulary from the book Creating Strategic Readers (Second Edition) by Valerie Ellery

Activities to Build Vocabulary Knowledge and Word Skills from the book Fun-tastic Activities for Differentiating Comprehension Instruction, Grades 2-6 by Sandra K. Athans and Denise Ashe Devine

Middle / Secondary

The Writing Workshop: A Predictable Structure from the book Marvelous Minilessons for Teaching Intermediate Writing, Grades 4–6 by Lori Jamison Rog

Basic Footwork: Learning Technique from the book Going Bohemian (Second Edition) by Lawrence Baines and Anthony Kunkel

Making Inferences and Predictions from the book Building Reading Comprehension Habits in Grades 6–12 (Second Edition) by Jeff Zwiers

Self-Questioning Taxonomy from the book Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning (Third Edition) by Doug Buehl

Alternative Texts and Practices to Engage Male Readers from the book To Be a Boy, To Be a Reader (Second Edition) by William G. Brozo

Successful Teachers Share Advice for Motivating Reluctant Adolescents by Cheryl Taliaferro and Sheri R. Parris from the book Adolescent Literacy, Field Tested edited by Sheri R. Parris, Douglas Fisher, and Kathy Headley