This is the archive edition of the Children’s Literacy and Reading News Roundup for the Beginning of July 2011. You can see the original at Carol Rasco’s blog Rasco from RIF.
Hello reading friends! This end of June Children’s Literacy and Reading News Roundup is brought to you by Jen Robinson’s Book Page, The Family Bookshelf, and Rasco from RIF. Over the month of June, Jen Robinson, Terry Doherty, and I have collected content for you about literacy & reading-related events; literacy and reading programs and research; and suggestions for growing bookworms.
Literacy & Reading-Related Events
In London, Waterstone’s Books is backing the Evening Standard’s Get London Reading event. According to a news story by David Cohen, “The company has transformed its flagship Piccadilly branch into an advertisement for our Get London Reading campaign, with a giant banner in the window and another in the store, and there are tables promoting the literacy drive on each of the five floors. More than 400 staff have been told to encourage children’s book sales”. Thanks to Jenny Schwartzberg for the link.
The Book Chook thought that this was kind of neat. Der Spiegel had an interview with Aussie illustrator and recent Lindgren Award Winner, Shaun Tan, and he answered the questions by drawing pictures. Seems totally appropriate to us, and well worth a look!
Wherever you find avid readers and library lovers today the discussion often focuses in part on how libraries will operate in the future, how e-books will be handled. You might want to read about “Freading” as presented by Library Ideas, LLC at the recent American Library Association’s annual conference.
Get Caught Reading is a nationwide campaign to remind people of all ages how much fun it is to read, launched in 1999 and supported by the Association of American Publishers. The site recently featured a video plea from our friend @MrsPStorytime on Why Libraries Matter. See other participating authors here.
Literacy Programs and Research
Here is a literacy initiative that we love. According to the Book Patrol blog, “Egyptians on the whole are not big readers. So what’s a bookstore to do to try and help shift the cultural attitudes toward books and get people reading?” Last year the ALEF Bookstores in Cairo came up with a brilliant idea. Since the streets of Cairo are in an almost continuous state of gridlock why not put books in the back of taxis so people can pass the time reading. The initiative, called “Taxi of Knowledge,” launched with 50 cabs, each carrying 5 books, is now up to 200 cabs, and expects to continue to grow. Thanks again to Jenny Schwartzberg for the link.
When we talk about helping kids become strong readers, we often don’t think about how moves might affect them. A recent Education Week article about School-Picked Reading Programs explores how family mobility affects learning. Rebecca Harris’ article focuses on Chicago, but the environment she described can be replicated around the country – particularly with military families. Also addressing mobility of students, last week The Tribune of Ames, Iowa featured Valerie Donnell of the Ames Public Library who notes the role reading for pleasure can play in alleviating the stresses of moving. She offers suggested books for various age levels to help parents and teachers discuss upcoming moves with children. It is usually the emotional upheaval of the move that parents and teachers seek assistance in addressing with the children; USA Today recently had an article on several books, apps and other tools which are focused on helping children improve their emotional literacy. Magination Press which is an imprint of the American Psychological Association is the source for these new materials.
Canadian University Press has an interesting article about reading comprehension vis-a-vis smartphones … not compared to print, but to desktop monitors. The emphasis of the study was on privacy policies that you read on smartphones, but the ramifications go further. “All of the international newspapers are there now, but if you look at many sites on the Internet, people are still just copying paper,” he said. “That’s not going to work on a web browser, and it’s certainly not going to work on a smartphone.” (via @literarytrustees)
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
As June ended, the U. S. Department of Education released proposed rules for the $500 million Race to the Top initiative focusing on early childhood. Immediately the headlines focused on the “assessment” statements in these proposed rules, and the “comments” are flying fast and furious, pro and con. The competition is on a fast track and comments on these proposed rules are due to the Department of Education by July 11.
While not exactly a new idea, US News Health Report recently shared the outcome of a new study that found increased reading with mom can boost kindergarten readiness for low-income children. “Differences in the children’s home learning environment predicted their readiness to start school, according to the study in the current issue of the journal Child Development. For example, children whose home learning environment scores were consistently low were much more likely to have delays in language and literacy skills at pre-kindergarten than children who had high home learning scores.” Link via NCTE Inbox.
State budget cuts already made or looming are of concern to longtime advocates for early childhood education and the early grade focus deemed necessary on reading. Susan Ochshorn had a recent posting in the HUFFPOST Education section “Prioritizing Early Childhood Education: We Can’t Afford to Wait” and an overview of some current state and local literacy activity focusing on the early years is published online at Education Week by Catherine Gewertz: States Target Early Years to Reach 3rd Grade Reading Goals.
Suggestions for Growing Bookworms
Reading advocate Pam Allyn (who has been especially focused on boys and reading of late) has an interesting Education Week commentary advocating for the elimination of whole class novels. She says “Teachers, we have two choices: We can continue as we have been and appear completely disconnected from our students’ lives outside the classroom, where they live as readers and writers in a technological world and where we ignore the impact the common-core standards will have on our classrooms, or we can seize this transformational moment and allow these two “disruptions” to energize our own teaching”. Via the Education Week Teacher newsletter.
Speaking of reading requirements and lists, there was a recent U. S. Supreme Court decision that addressed the sale of violent content videos in California; but did you note the references to reading lists cited in the opinion? Lord of the Flies, The Odyssey, and The Inferno were all cited in the majority opinion.
There’s a nice piece about encouraging teen boys to read in the Times Union. Kathy Ceceri interviews Colleen Mondor, founder of Guys Lit Wire, among others. Among the suggestions are reading aloud the first couple of chapters of a book, and forming a banned book club. Link via @RileyCarney.
Speaking of boys and reading, our own Jen Robinson has been doing a guest expert stint at PBS Parents, talking about summer reading. After sharing five general tips for encouraging kids to read over the summer, she followed up with a some boy-specific tips and book recommendations.
Meg Medina and Gigi Amateau have put together a great blog titled GIRLS OF SUMMER: This is not your school’s summer reading list. Do check it out and refer girls to this great contribution to the summer reading field. Thank you, Meg and Gigi! And thank you Kathy Erskine for alerting us to the site; you will also find interesting Kathy’s current series of posts on this year’s Crystal Kite Award winners.
Our friend Read Aloud Dad has a must-read piece on the #1 way to excite children about reading. Citing the 10,000 hour rule (it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become the best of the best at something), he says that parents need to really and truly start loving children’s books (no pretending allowed). He has a series of questions for parents to ask themselves, and proposes that if you can’t answer yes to questions like “Do your kids see YOU enjoying books?” then you can probably do more to help your kids to want to clock the reading hours that they need.
Communities must come together to address issues and support parents in growing bookworms. Each year the National Civic League names recipients of their All-America City awards with different criteria/issue area(s) stressed each year. This year the awards will be made to places best addressing three barriers to ensuring that our children learn to read well by the end of the third grade: the school readiness gap, summer learning loss and chronic absence. There is a toolkit developed by Attendance Works for helping to improve school attendance, a great starting point. Contact your community/city and school officials to make sure this opportunity is one to use the application “process for progress”!
Recently, the National Commission on Civic Investment in Public Education co-chaired by Linda Darling-Hammond and former U. S. Secretary of Education The Honorable Richard W. Riley released a report calling upon all of us in the United States to bolster public will in the service of policies and resources that support educational opportunities for all young people—not just their own. It is well worth your time to read this report.
A very serious issue almost every community must address in reading is the continuing disparity in educational opportunities and resources for low-income and minority children. This past week the first installment of the biennial survey results known as the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) was released by the U. S. Department of Education. Also released this month by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was a report Achievement Gaps: How Hispanic and White Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress; thank you Andres Henriquez of the Carnegie Corporation for quickly calling attention to the report on Twitter. We are reminded Hispanics are the fastest-growing segment of the U. S. population; this growing size as well as the high percentage of fourth-and eighth-grade Hispanic students that are English Language Learners underlie the continued achievement gap in reading which has not changed for fourth- or eighth-graders when comparing 1992 to 2009. We all have much work to do.
