Reading Rockets Newsletter November 2010

If you are having problems viewing images in this e-mail, click here to view it in your Web browser. November 2010 Newsletter In Focus: Fluency: assessment, instruction, strategies Books & Authors: Interview with Timothy Basil Ering | Bedtime stories | American Indian/Alaskan Native Heritage Month For Educators: Teaching handwriting is not old school | Community stories | Smories For Parents: What is a school psychologist? | Military families bonding through books | Comics creator Research & News: Effective early childhood education programs | Mother's reading skill critical to children's achievement In Focus: Fluency Our PBS Show: Fluent Reading  Hosted by Deborah Norville, Fluent Reading explores how to help kids learn to decode quickly and become confident, fluent readers. This is a crucial skill. A child who reads haltingly will work so hard at the mechanics of the task that there's little mental energy left to understand the meaning. Visit an afterschool program that helps struggling readers build fluency, watch a skilled teacher help her first graders recognize common spelling patterns, and sit in on an innovative community volunteer program called Book Buddies. Watch online > Cutting Through the Buzz About Fluency In this overview, you'll learn more about what reading fluency is, why it is essential to ensure that our students have sufficient fluency, and how fluency should be assessed. Read article > What should fluency instruction look like? And, what can teachers do to help students whose fluency is far behind their peers'? This article can help educators select effective instructional practices. Read article > Classroom Strategies to Build Speed, Accuracy, and Expression Timed repeated readings improve reading speed and accuracy, two important aspects of fluency that help kids strengthen their comprehension skills. See timed repeated readings strategy > Reader's theater gives children a chance to practice oral reading with proper expression and phrasing (also called "prosody"). The best reader's theater scripts include lots of dialogue. See reader's theater strategy > Mog. Fim. Phum. Sote. Pagbo. Nonsense? Learn more about the value of nonsense word fluency in measuring a student's ability to decode individual phonemes and blend them together to read. Read blog post > "I Hate Reading!" "Reading through this book takes so much of my energy, I can't even think about what it means." With our Target the Problem interactive tool, find out how you can help your child become a more fluent reader — critical for supporting their reading comprehension. A fluent reader is usually a more motivated reader, too, ready to dive into new books. See Target the Problem tool > See all of our fluency resources here > Books & Authors Necks Out for Adventure: An Interview with Timothy Basil Ering  Timothy Basil Ering may be best known as the illustrator of Kate DiCamillo's Newbery-winning book The Tale of Despereaux, but he has also authored several popular children's books including The Story of Frog Belly Rat Bone and Necks Out for Adventure — where he reveals his love of wordplay (hornly scratchers and scrintalberry leaves, anyone?) and fresh, expressive illustration style. Watch interview > Our Newest Booklist: Good Night, Sleep Tight As the autumn days get shorter, the longer evenings are perfect for curling up together with a good bedtime book, or two. In these charming, calming picture books, meet a mom who tries all the typical tricks to resist her daughter's attempts to get her to sleep, a little red chicken with new ideas for fairy tale endings, a drowsy dragon, and other delightful characters. See booklist > Listen! I Have a Story to Tell… Legends, pourquoi stories, and trickster tales — Native American tradition is rich in storytelling. For book recommendations as well as links to classroom activities and other web resources, visit our sister site Colorín Colorado. Browse American Indian/Alaska Native Heritage Month resources > For Educators Teaching Handwriting Is Not Old School Literacy experts Richard Gentry and Steve Graham reaffirm the research about the importance of spelling and handwriting instruction in a new white paper, "Creating Better Readers and Writers." Teaching kids to write upper and lower-case letters helps them master letters and punctuation marks, the same ones they decode while learning to read. Because most children's books use upper and lowercase letters, Gentry and Graham suggest that effective instruction begins with teaching the manuscript (i.e., print) alphabet. The authors go on to support the teaching of cursive by Grade 3. Read blog post > Community Stories Literacy activities can take on a new meaning when students are reading and writing about their own community. While engaging in a "real-life project," students can develop their oral and written language skills; explore the use of technology, such as tape recorders and digital cameras; and bridge gaps between school and communities. Read article > Find out more about integrating oral history into the curriculum on our sister site AdLit.org. Learn about the interdisciplinary approach to the study of World War II at Rocky Run Middle School, including their annual Oral History Day. Go to AdLit.org > Smories Smories are original stories for kids, read by kids. The simply produced videos are then posted online. Why not use this nifty idea as a springboard for a school or community literacy project? For a sampling, take a look at the story entitled "Blue." Watch video > For Parents What Is a School Psychologist? School psychologists are highly trained in both psychology and education to help children be successful academically, socially, and emotionally. Learn more about their role and the kinds of support and services they can offer you and your child. Read article > Bonding Through Books Separation from a parent is one of life's most stressful events for children, affecting their sense of security and sometimes their ability to learn. Today, more than one million American children are separated from one or both parents due to military deployment. The United Through Reading program helps ease the stress of separation by giving the deployed parent a chance to share, via video recording, an intimate read aloud experience with their kids back home. If you know a family where a parent is serving overseas, consider sharing this link. Visit United Through Reading website > Comics Creator Here's a fun activity for kids: make your own comic strip! Make Beliefs Comix provides the characters and thought balloons and kids provide the imagination, storyline, and text. Write in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or Latin (yes, Latin!). Go to website > Research & News Early Childhood Education Programs: 6 That Work A new report published on the Best Evidence Encyclopedia (BEE) website provides an extensive review of the research on the outcomes of 27 early childhood programs. Six of the programs produced strong evidence of effectiveness in language, literacy, and/or phonological awareness. All of the effective programs had explicit academic content, a balance of teacher-led and child-initiated activity, and significant training and follow-up support. See full report > Mother's Reading Skill Critical to Children's Achievement Researchers funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development concluded that programs to boost the academic achievement of children from low income neighborhoods might be more successful if they also provided adult literacy education to parents. The researchers found that a mother's reading skill is the greatest determinant of her children's future academic success, outweighing other factors, such as neighborhood and family income. See press release > "If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive." — writer Barry Lopez 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).