Teacher Book Wizard at Scholastic.com

As a teacher I find that while leveled libraries are a key element of any reading program, they can be difficult to accurately put together and maintain. In the past, I used the hard copy Fountas and Pinnell Leveled Book List. This list, while comprehensive, does not have texts that have been published since 2009. It is also time consuming to search through its 683 pages looking for a text or texts. Not to mention it's $47 price tag. This past year, I discovered the Fountas and Pinnell leveled books website. This was an improvement over the hard copy text since you could use a search engine to find a text in the database which saved time, however the price tag was roughly $1 per login. Not the best solution ever.

Well, hold the phone. The Teacher Book Wizard at Scholastic.com is a search engine which links to a database with the level information for over 50,000 texts. You can find out the Grade Level Equivalent, Lexile Measure, Guided Reading, or DRA level of a text, and you can also search for texts that are about a similar subject and/or on a similar reading level. That means that if I have a student who loves Key to the Treasure by Peggy Parish, I can search for similar books that are on his guided reading level. Alternatively, if I have another student who would love to read Key to the Treasure but hasn't reached that reading level yet, I can search for books that are similar but on a lower guided reading level as well. In addition, there is a forum for teachers to post text sets and reading lists of books they enjoy and read the posts that other teachers have put up.

But, wait, there's more! All of this comes to you for the low, low price of...FREE. That's right - FREE. You can't beat that. I totally recommend that you go and check it out today!

The Writing Workshop at Teachers College

The Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College is a well-known program and the creator of The Reading and Writing Workshop , a curriculum for the teaching of reading and writing. Many people possess strong opinions about the efficacy of the Workshop model, both positive and negative. Schools around the country have adopted the program and adhere to it strictly, while others use elements of the program as part of a larger curricular model.

This is a review of The August Writing Institute, the goal of which is to instruct teachers how to carry out the workshop model in their classrooms. The attendance fee for the workshop is $650, which was paid for by the school where I work. Our school does not currently use the Workshop model, however, we were interested in learning more about it.

Overall, I found the Writing Institute to be extremely valuable as a vehicle for learning student-centered techniques for the teaching of writing. The Institute was divided up into several parts. There were keynote speakers on each day, usually famous children's authors, a morning writer's workshop for adults, and an afternoon lectures on specific elements of the workshop format. There were also optional workshops at lunch and in the afternoon which focused on topics like Writing Partnerships and Essay Writing.

Over the course of the five day workshop, I learned many new techniques for the teaching of writing that I can use in my classroom even though we don't adhere to the workshop model. The additional workshops with focused topics were especially helpful, but the quality of presenters was strong across the board. As of right now, I can't be sure how all of these new techniques will play out in my classroom this year, but I know that I am very excited to find out!

http://rwproject.tc.columbia.edu/

Kids' Text: Indy Kids

Indy Kids is a fantastic, FREE newspaper appropriate for grades 3-8(depending on reading level). There are many amazing and unique things about Indy Kids that put it head and shoulders above other kids' newspapers. The newspaper is partially written by students from around NYC which already makes it a more authentic news source to share with your students. The articles in the newspaper delve deeply into topics that are current and thought provoking. Headlines over the past few months have included, "Choosing a New Justice," "Strugglng to Survive in Haiti," and "Climate Change Hits Alaska." This is vastly different from other kids' newspapers which often focus only superficially on important topics like the economy and healthcare. The newspaper also has a section which features a different student from around the world, one which focuses on a different country each issue, and another which asks kids a topical question and lists their answers.

Indy Kids is a very useful, kid-friendly way to introduce current events and journalism in the classroom. Best of all, it is free! Just go to their website and you can check out various issues online and order a free issue to look at. They also have other resources, including teachers' guides for every issue, classroom tips, and activities. Enjoy!

http://indykids.net/main/

Teacher Text: The Essential Conversation - What Parents and Teachers Can Learn From Each Other

The Essential Conversation - What Parents and Teachers Can Learn From Each Other by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot analyzes the relationship between a child's parent(s) and teacher and discusses how to make this relationship productive and collaborative. The backdrop of Lawrence-Lightfoot's argument is the theory that both teachers and parents have emotional baggage regarding their own schooling experiences and that they bring this baggage to the table during parent-teacher conferences. In addition, Lawrence-Lightfoot also stresses that society's view of school as an institution to cure all that ails Americans - racism, sexism, classism - also casts a shadow on interactions between parents and teachers. While Lawrence-Lightfoot discusses both of these influences extensively, the primary focus of the text is to answer the question, How can the teacher-parent relationship be one that provides the foundation and supports for the child's success? By profiling several teachers who have a record of positive feedback from parents, Lawrence-Lightfoot provides several important strategies for teachers and parents to use not just at the semiannual parent-teacher conference, but throughout the whole school year.

I found this text to be both inspiring and useful when considering how to structure one's parent-teacher conferences and other interactions throughout the year. Lawrence-Lightfoot does an excellent job of emphasizing what parents want to hear at a parent-teacher conference, what teachers need to say, and how to bridge the divide between these two perspectives. The strategies she suggests for connecting with parents are not laid out in 1, 2, 3 fashion but folded into the text instead. This does not mean, however, that they are few and far between. I found myself underlining, starring, and bracketing something on almost every page. One of the suggestions was to have a sit down interview with parents at the beginning of the year in which the teacher listens to the parents talk about their child. Another strategy was to open a conference with an anecdote (as opposed to the usual platitudes). Lawrence-Lightfoot also fervently, and convincingly, argues that the child should be present at and preferably lead the conference.

While the book does have its slow points, it is, overall, a very thought provoking and useful text for thinking about how to build meaningful relationships between parents and teachers in the interest of the student at the intersection of this bond.

Lawrence-Lightfoot, S., (2004). The Essential Conversation. Boston: Twayne Publishers.

Teacher Text: Literature-Based Reading Activities

Literature-Based Reading Activities by Ruth Helen Yopp and Hallie Kay Yopp (2009) is a wonderful collection of various ideas for teaching reading comprehension. The text is organized into sections on pre-reading activities, during reading activities, and post-reading activities. There is an additional section in the back that includes ideas for writing and bookmaking.

I was introduced to this text in a literacy course. I initially thought it looked dry, but I could not have been more incorrect. The many activities described in the text are creative and meaningful and, more importantly, they generate an abundance of student interest and aid in the teaching of comprehension. Each activity is described in detail. The authors then show multiple examples of how each activity would be used in conjunction with a certain text.

Some of my favorite activities in the text are:
Pre-reading - Book Box: Select objects that represent a new text unknown to the students. Pull objects out of the box one at a time and have students make predictions about the text based on the first object, and then revise their predictions as each new object is pulled out.
After-reading - Ten Important Words: After reading a text, have students independently come up with what they think the ten most important words from the text are. Then, create a bar graph of all of the students responses. Discuss and then have students revise and then use their ten most important words to summarize the text .
Bookmaking - Pop-out books: Explains how to make pop-out books. I recently used pop-out books as part of a lesson on verbs; students chose an especially evocative verb from the text, wrote it in a sentence, and then showed it in a pop-out card(verbs are action words, pop-outs are action cards).

There are many more fantastic ideas, but you don't have to take my word for it. Go check it out.

Yopp, R. H., & Yopp-Slowik, H. (2009). Literature-based activities (5th Edition) (5 ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Since Wordle is the website( http://www.wordle.net/) that originally inspired me with the idea of this blog, it is only fitting that it be the subject of my first post.

Wordle is a program which takes any amount of text that you put into it, tallies how often each major word (so, not words like "the," "for," "it") appears, and then creates a "cloud" of the words in the text. The words are displayed so that the size of the word correlates to how often it appears. You can change the colors, fonts, and other appearances of your cloud.

You may be asking yourself, what educational applications does this awesomeness have? The teacher who first showed me Wordle used it as a social emotional exercise for her students. Each student in her class chose an adjective from a list to describe each of their other classmates. A word cloud was created from the adjectives used to describe each student. The students predicted what adjectives would be used to describe them and then compared their predictions to their word cloud.

Another potential application would be to input the text from a book into Wordle and then use the word cloud to generate student predictions about the text based on the most frequent words. Here is the word cloud for a rendition of The Lion and the Mouse:

http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/1880354/Lion_and_the_Mouse

As I'm sure you're beginning to see, the possibilities are ENDLESS. Enjoy!

Inaugural Post

Hello, World! I'm starting this blog at 10:28 on a school night because I have a strong sense of purpose - to create a place where teachers can share fantabulous texts, websites, workshops, and other resources that they have found to be especially amazing.

A little about me - I am a first grade teacher with a passion for curriculum. I love to read about, write about, and think about what we teach, how we teach, and why we teach. I've happened upon several great resources in the past month or so which has led me to think - what are the great resources that are out there that I DON'T already know about? Seriously, it's been keeping me up nights.

And so, on that note, I'll be hitting the hay. But, keep on the lookout for postings to begin tomorrow!