Reading Rockets Newsletter October 2010

If you are having problems viewing images in this e-mail, click here to view it in your Web browser. October 2010 Newsletter In Focus: Looking at writing Books & Authors: Interview with Charles R. Smith, Jr. | Writers talk about writing | Down on the farm booklist Ideas for Educators: Writing family stories | A-Z rhymes | Early childhood PD | Teaching kids with LD conference Ideas for Parents: 10 ways to celebrate Family History Month | Scribble | Practice makes perfect: keyboarding sites for kids Research & News: Forget what you know about good study habits | 'Reading' in the digital age In Focus Looking at Writing: Pre-K to Grade 3 Writing is a process. Writing with kids can be incredibly rewarding but it can also be painstaking and frustrating, for the writer and for the adult. For most writers, it's somewhere in-between. In this interactive tool — featuring writing samples from real kids — you'll find advice about instruction, guidance on assessment, classroom strategies, video, and more. Go to interactive tool > How Writing Develops Almost every interaction in a child's world is preparing them to become a reader and writer. This article outlines the stages of writing development, and tips for adults to help along the way. Read article > Featured Strategy: Transition Words Teaching transition words helps young writers learn to build a coherent story line, bridge the gap between ideas, and signal their readers about what's coming next in the writing. Instructional examples include effective use of mentor texts. See strategy > Download and print our Transition Words & Phrases handout > Eli's Story "Writing is definitely the worst task of all. It's just way too hard to remember all the things I need, like periods and capital letters. Then, it's almost impossible to think about how to spell words when I'm busy trying to think about the story…" Eli has dysgraphia, a learning disability that affects written expression. For him, writing is a tough daily challenge. Regina Richards, a well-known expert on dysgraphia (and Eli's mom), explains how to help children like Eli who struggle with writing. Read article > Handwriting: What's Normal, What's Not From a preschooler's scribbles to a third grader's careful cursive, here are milestones to watch for as well as common signs of dysgraphia. (In English and Spanish) Read one-page article > See all of our writing resources here > Books & Authors My People: Our Interview with Charles R. Smith, Jr. Award-winning writer, poet, and photographer Smith finds his stories in music (Dance with Me), poetry (My People), sports (Let's Play Baseball), and the lives of remarkable people (Black Jack). Books and reading were important to him as a child. He says, "I just loved the storytelling, I just loved everything about the book itself. And the education I was getting that was taking me beyond the place I currently was…" Watch interview > Writers Talk About Writing  From writer Jane Yolen's thoughts on introducing kids to big, delicious words like "lavaliere" to poet Mary Ann Hoberman's love of word play to Christopher Paul Curtis' four rules for young writers, listen in as acclaimed children's authors talk about how to craft beautiful writing. Watch video > Down on the Farm Seeds, soil, and a very busy barnyard! In this collection of picture books, you'll join a passel of pigs on a rescue mission, solve the mystery of the haunted henhouse, and spend a year in the life of a small local farm. See booklist > Ideas for Educators Writing Family Stories October is Family History Month. Children can learn about family heritage at the same time they are improving their literacy skills. Using family-based writing projects, you can build a connection with parents, and help children see the value in their own heritage and in the diversity around them. Read article > Create a family timeline and graph family memories in this lesson plan from ReadWriteThink. Go to lesson plan > A to Z Rhymes Looking for poems and nursery rhymes to match the alphabet letters you're teaching this week? Head on over to this easy-to-use website. It's organized alphabetically — just browse, select, and print. Go to website > Connect to Early Childhood Professional Development CONNECT is a free web-based professional development resource for early childhood practitioners who work with young children with disabilities and their families. Real-life situations are at the center of each multimedia module; a 5-step process helps educators learn to make evidence-based decisions. Currently, three modules are available: Embedded Interventions, Transition, and Communication for Collaboration. Go to website > Teaching Kids with LD: Annual Conference It's not too late to register for Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice, a conference for teachers of students with learning disabilities (October 29-30 in Baltimore, MD). The conference includes sessions on decoding, vocabulary, comprehension, writing, RTI, ELLs, Universal Design for Learning, math, and more. Sponsored by the Division for Learning Disabilities (DLD) of the Council for Exceptional Children (CEC). Go to website > Ideas for Parents 10 Ways to Celebrate Family History Trace your family tree, create a family cookbook, record family stories, scrapbook your family heritage, or take a trip back in time. Go to website > Scribble In this fast-paced online game, the goal is to scribble down as many words as you can using the 10 randomly generated letters provided. A great brain teaser to play alone or as a family challenge! Go to website > Practice Makes Perfect: Keyboarding Sites for Kids No more hunt and peck — kids are learning "home row" in classrooms at a very early age. Many kids could use extra practice at home to reinforce what they're learning. Our research director, Dr. Joanne Meier, wanted to see what was out there to develop skills in a fun way. See blog post > Research & News Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits In recent years, cognitive scientists have shown that a few simple techniques — such as alternating study environments, spacing study sessions, self testing, and mixing content — can reliably improve how much a student learns from studying. The research suggests that "forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding." If the context changes, the information is enriched, and forgetting slows down. Read article > "Make multiple associations with the same material…" Sounds like what we know about good reading instruction! As teachers, we need to make sure we're providing enough mixed practice for our kids. Practically speaking, it means finding time during the week for different types of reading — including silent and oral reading, nonfiction and poetry, navigating texts with various structures, and choral reading. Read full post > 'Reading' in the Digital Age "Kids' definition of reading is changing… one in four kids think texting with friends counts as reading." A recent survey by Scholastic of more than 2,000 children ages 6 to 17 and their parents revealed that kids want to read books on digital devices and would read for fun more frequently if they could obtain e-books. And, despite growing concern about the amount of time kids spend texting and gaming, both parents and educators see e-books as a potentially powerful motivator to increase quality reading time. See 2010 Kids & Family Reading Report > "If you want to write, you should pay attention to people — everybody has a story — and listen to people when they talk." — Newbery winner Kate DiCamillo   Advertisement All the best from Reading Rockets Noel Gunther Executive Director Christian Lindstrom Director, Learning Media Shalini Anand Technical Web Manager Tina Chovanec Director, Reading Rockets Kelly Deckert Associate Manager, Online Media Ashley Gilleland Producer Joanne Meier, Ph.D. Research Consultant Laura Schreiber Project Associate Rachael Walker Outreach Consultant Newsletter editor: Tina Chovanec About Reading Rockets Reading Rockets is a national educational service of WETA, the flagship public television and radio station in the nation's capital. The goal of the project is to provide information on how young kids learn to read, why so many struggle, and how caring adults can help. Learn about easy ways you can link to us to let others know about the many free resources available from Reading Rockets. Reading Rockets is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs. Send your questions, comments, or suggestions to readingrockets@weta.org. Our mailing address is WETA/Reading Rockets, 2775 S. Quincy St., Arlington, VA 22206. We look forward to hearing from you! Tell a friend about Reading Rockets News. If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up here to receive Reading Rockets News. This message was sent to aliatasbpp.disorder@blogger.com. Visit your User Login page to modify your email communication preferences or update your personal profile. To stop receiving Reading Rockets News, click to remove yourself from our subscribers list (or reply via email with "Unsubscribe Reading Rockets News" in the subject line).