Hello everyone,
I have just returned from MRA where keynote speakers: Stephanie Harvey, Lois Lowry, Catherine Snow and Tim Shanahan reminded us how critical adolescent literacy is and motivated us to work harder to understand how to help adolescents be successful. A few key facts that struck me are:
1. The personal connection with students is still critical to motivate adolescents to do the hard work of reading.
2. Students should have the opportunity at least once a week to read something THEY choose.
3. Students need to read and TALK about that reading to develop their own understanding.
4. Reading comprehension involves MORE than strategies and the research community is looking to educators to develop successful programs.
5. We have many talented secondary literacy specialists out there doing great work.
I am proud to say that 21 secondary literacy specialists attended the Symposium on The Many Roles of the Secondary Literacy Specialist. I hope to organize a networking meeting so that we have opportunities to continue to share our work. Till then, I hope people will feel comfortable commenting on this blog and I will do my best to answer questions and post resources.
2 comments:
I love that student choice in reading material was mentioned at the conference. I'd love to know if anyone has ideas for how to build that into an already full curriculum. Free reading was something I always made time for in years' past, but I recently realized that it has been pushed aside for other things. Do others still try to make time for free reading during the school day?
Great comment Mrs. Sullivan! I have just finished a book called,
The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child by Donalyn Miller. She also hosted a book talk on Jim Burke's blog, the English Companion.
She talks about the importance of student's reading books of their choice and how critical it is that they have conversations about these books. Her students all score proficient on her state test..I highly recommend this book to everyone.
Donalyn Miller will be appearing at the Massachusetts Reading Association Conference in Sturbridge, April 8 and 9, 2010. You can register for the conference at massreading.org!
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