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Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!  Happy Reading Celebration Sts. Peter & Paul School!  The big day is  here and we will join students across America to celebrate reading. This is NEA’s 16th year sponsoring Read Across America.  Once again we have more than 40 parent volunteer readers coming to school to share their love of reading and read aloud to small groups of students, from Pre-K to Eighth Grade.

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
― Dr. Seuss, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut!

Our Pre-K  kicked off the festivities with a Dr. Seuss Birthday Parade at Morning Assembly on Monday, February 25.  A free raffle of Cat in the Hat hats on February 28, one for each class, fed the growing excitement.  On our big day, Friday, March 1, parent volunteer readers join us at School, read aloud to our small groups, then at lunch, all the students sing Happy Birthday to Dr. Seuss and are treated to birthday cake.  Here are some reading links of recommended books. So, grab your hat and read with the Cat!

• Teachers’ Top 100 Books
• Kids’ Top 100 Books
• 50 Multicultural Books Every Child Should Read
• Youth Leaders for Literacy Book List
• Find A Book here on SSPP Reads Lifelong Learning Page

Copyrighted logo courtesy of  TM & © 1997 Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. and NEA. Cat in the Hat image TM & © 1957 Dr. Seuss Enterprises, L.P. All Rights Reserved.

Well, here we are, midway through August and time to get our heads ready for back to school. One item to check off your list might be that summer reading assignment you have been putting off.  Go on, dig in and read!  But,  parents/guardians and teachers have to get ready too, so here are a few of my favorite resource links with some great ideas:

• Back-to-School Transitions: Tips for Parents from the National Association of School Psychologists (NASP)–make sure your child is healthy.  Get your medical and dental appointments scheduled before school begins, and don’t forget the  pertussis (Tdap) vaccination requirement for Grade 7 – 12 students.
• Back to School: Tips for Parents of Children with Special Needs also need to organize.  LD Online shares eight helpful tips to ease the jitters.
• Scholastic Books has a special planning guide for teachers full of resources, tips, and free material. Don’t forget to update your classroom library too and level your books; get help at Teacher Book Wizard.

Enjoy your last few days.  Then, be ready to hit the books, reconnect with friends, meet new friends, and have a great school year.

Graphic from Flickr Creative Commons License by stevendepolo.

Beat the Summer Slide with ReadWriteThink, a partnership of the International Reading Association,  National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE),and Verizon Thinkfinity. Summer slide is the term used to describe the academic loss that kids suffer as they take a break from school during the summer months. Check out the Bright Ideas for Summer campaign for more information, to see the activities, and to print out an informational sheet.

Here’s a preview of the activities:

• Poetry writing: Using the popular poetry interactives–Acrostic Poems, Diamante Poems, and Theme Poems–write a poem about a summer topic.
• Prewriting: Use Cube Creator to organize a super story about a hero with summer-specific powers.
• Character writing: Explore the qualities of characters from your favorite summer books and create Trading Cards to share with your friends.
• Persuasive writing: Craft a convincing argument for a summertime treat or special privilege using the online Persuasion Map.

Check it out, you’ll have some fun, and might even beat the slide!

Graphic from Santa Clara City Library

In a recent issue of Educational Leadership (Vol 69 No 6), a publication of ASCD, the focus was on reading, the core skill.  Richard L. Allington and Rachael E. Gabriel, in their article “Every Child, Every Day”, outlined six research based elements for effective reading instruction.  Allington, a member of the Reading Hall of Fame, researches and writes about reading difficulties. ”Despite good intentions, educators often make decisions about instruction that compromise or supplant the kind of experiences all children need to become engaged, successful readers.” Here are six elements of instruction Allington and Gabriel outline that children should experience daily:

1. Every child reads something he or she chooses.  The research base on student-selected reading is robust and conclusive: Students read more, understand more, and are more likely to continue reading when they have they choose what they read.
2. Every child reads accurately. Research shows reading at 98% or higher accuracy is essential for reading acceleration, below 90% accuracy doesn’t improve reading ability at all.
3. Every child reads something he or she understands. Research shows here too, that remediation that emphasizes comprehension can change the structure of struggling students’ brains. It takes lots of reading and rereading of text that students find engaging and comprehensible to enable the brain to develop the ability to read.
4. Every child writes about something personally meaningful.  Writing provides a different modality within which to practice the skills and strategies of reading for an authentic purpose.
5. Every child talks with peers about reading and writing. Research has demonstrated that conversation with peers improves comprehension and engagement with texts in a variety of settings. Even small amounts of such conversations can improve standardized test scores.
6. Every child listens to a fluent adult read aloud. Listening to an adult model fluent reading increases students’ own fluency and comprehension skills, as well as expanding their vocabulary, background knowledge, sense of story, awareness of genre and text structure, and comprehension of the texts read.  Teachers should spend a few minutes a day reading to their students.

So, how to do this?  Allington and Gabriel give us two easy suggestions: First, eliminate almost all worksheets and workbooks.  Second, ban test-preparation activities and materials from the school day. Eliminating both provides time and money to spend on the things that really matter in developing readers.