Why Reading by the end of third grade matters.

Graduation can be predicted at grade three!

Missouri Book Awards

Out of the 112,728 votes cast by Missouri students, the following titles have been selected as the winners of MASL’s 2010-2011 Readers Awards.

Gateway Readers Award (Grades 9-12)

1st Place: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. Scholastic Press.

2nd Place: Graceling, by Kristin Cashore. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

3rd Place: Wake, by Lisa McMann. Simon & Schuster’s Children’s Publishers.



Truman Readers Award (Grades 6-8)

1st Place: The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins.

2nd Place: Gone, by Michael Grant.

3rd Place: Jump the Cracks, by Stacy DeKeyser.



Mark Twain Readers Award (Grades 4-6)

1st Place: Stolen Children, by Peg Kehret.

2nd Place: Found, by Margaret Peterson Haddix. .

3rd Place: Go Big or Go Home, by Will Hobbs.



Show Me Readers Award (Grades 1-3)

1st Place: Two Bobbies, A True Story, by Kirby Larson and Mary Nethery, illustrated by Jean Cassels. .

2nd Place: For the Love of Autumn, by Patricia Polacco.
3rd Place: Titanicat, by Marty Crisp, illustrated by Marty Papp.

How to Steal A Dog

How To Steal a Dog by Barbara O'Connor
This is a great book. It deals with homelessness head-on. It really makes you think what happens to kids as they leave school. This books hooks even the most reluctant reader and gives you plently to talk about. Great vocabulary, and lots of opportunity for students to gain knowledge and experience to add to their schema.

How to teach processing that takes place in the brain?

I am reading the Fountas & Pinnell book: Teaching for Comprehending and Fluency, Thinking, Talking and Writing About Reading, K-8. Fountas & Pinnell make the statement that

"in an attempt to make students more aware of processing, we may have sometimes required students to name the strategies they are using. We do not see this practice as helpful. "Practicing" simple reading strategies such as "making inferences" or "calling visual images to mind" one skill at a time and labeling them can become an exercise that takes away from effective processing. In any reading lesson, even though our ultimate goal is to teach for effective processing strategies, we want to keep students actively thinking about the full meaning of the text rather than "practicing" a skill. A reader needs to engage a variety of complex strategic actions simultaneously to process a text well."

This quote makes perfect sense, however it is not that simple. This statement makes me think of the book Reading with Meaning by Debbie Miller, where she talks about introducing the strategies used for effective processing through mini lessons and scaffolding control and use of the processing from the teacher to the students. This also makes sense. Vygotsky makes sense. I have always belived the statement that you have to make what invisisible visible to understand it. How much do you make students aware of these processes? How much new language and vocabulary do you require them to use? Fountas & Pinnell talk about practicing a skill vs having a natural conversation about the text. Are we trying to drill in too much vocabulary into our students and making reading boring and too complicated. Is it sucking the enjoyment out of reading? I am a firm believer that some students do not need explicit teaching of comprehension strategies. It slows them down and takes away from there natural flow. Some simple modeling and prompting works wonders when needed. How does this thinking effect reading teachers who try to break reading down for struggling readers in grades 2nd on up? Our ultimate goal is for students to be able to talk about, writing about and carry on a conversation about a text and apply to their own thinking, others thinking to their daily lives and enrich their lives. F&P's statement makes sense does it not?
I know there is a common ground here and we all know teaching anything completely in isolation is not effective, and reading is not a step by step process like math.
Let me know your thinking! Please remember that F&P go on to say and explain so much more in the book. I just want to hear from some different people and their thinking.

Kansas City Missouri School District

Some of you may have heard in the news about Kansas City Missouri School District closing 26 schools and lays off over 100 staff members. It is scary stuff to be a teacher in the Kansas City area right now. Most other districts in the metropolitan area are laying off teachers, or not hiring also. I work at a charter school that is backed by the University of Missouri Kansas City and has a very nice group of wealthy supporters. We are given bonuses based on our test score and a few other factor that can reach up to 3,000 extra dollars. Teachers bonuses in state tested grades are based on our state MAP test and on SAT10 testing. In others grades they look at SAT10 scores alone. There is lots of pressure to be successful however and you never really feel safe with you job. I am very glad to have my job however. With a new superintendent taking over last year all returning teachers who were not making what they should have been like me were given huge raises. You see we did not have a pay scale, but salaries were offered based on experience, who you knew and how much you impressed people. Salaries are more even now but there is still no schedule and no check and balance system. The Kansas City Missouri School district is moving slowly towards ideas like in play at my school and more schools across the country. They fired all principals and just recently announced who the new principals would be. Some principals were rehired back. I am wanting to know what the national take is on Kansas City in education.

Finding Teaching Jobs

How hard is it to find a teaching job right now. In certain areas it is very tough. Major metropolitan areas like Kansas City are letting teacher go because of budget cuts. Let me know what experiences you are having.

How many of you think the popularity of RTI will now bring back an over emphasis of phonics. With RTI and specialized phonics instruction you have to remember on average it should only be 10% of your school population. If it is more than that then you have other problems to worry about, that over emphasizing phonics will not cure. Phonics is important don't get me wrong, and often the reason why struggling readers struggle, but you cannot forget the complete reading process.