I was thrilled when my copy of IRA's The Reading Teacher came in the mail yesterday. If any of you are members of the International Reading Association, this journal is one of the best in terms of practical ideas.
This month Tim Rasinski (as he does so often) pairs with a classroom teacher. This time the two discuss how reader's theater can create an academic pathway to grow students' fluency. I hope that those of you with experience with reader's theater review this article's abstract as well as the article itself if possible. On the online version, there is even an idea for using Jan Brett's book Hedgie's Surprise in a reader's theater environment from Read Write Think. If you have not used reader's theater in your classroom, now is a great time to try it, especially with the detailed approach outlined. Tim's website also provides a great list of sources for reader's theater scripts. You can even have your students create their own as part of a writer's workshop or groupwriting experience.
One point of the referenced article is particularly important in today's classroom with an increased focus on fluency. The purpose of improving fluency is increased comprehension. I fear that in the past few years, many schools have swung the pendulum too far in the direction of focusing purely on speed and the result, as Tim and Chase talk about in this article, is children that can read like a house afire but have little understanding of what the meaning behind the text is. That can be terribly damaging to their ability to read increasingly complex text as they move forward in their schooling.
I saw this first hand as I conducted a research study on fluency and the influence of family reading on first graders' growing fluency. In a study conducted in schools in GA, AL, TX and TN, about 80% of the students we asked to read a leveled piece which included inference could not identify what the children in the story were doing (building a snowman). Many students immediately upon finishing the one minute reading (timed so we evaluate all the students within a reasonable time) asked, "how many words did I read?". It seemed they had nearly been "programmed" to ask that, even when there was no direct evidence that this is what our assessment was attending to. In fact, I recommended this response to our evaluators who heard that comment: "I wasn't paying any attention to that; I wanted to listen and see if you sounded like you were talking when you were reading and whether you understand what the story was about." Although this was not the focus on the study, it was indeed a wakeup call.
Educators must be very careful as we work with students to improve their fluency that we do not minimize or sacrifice expressiveness, pacing, automaticity in word recognition, and decoding. Worst still, if speed is our primary focus, children get the mistaken idea that fast word calling is reading. That is simply not what makes a good reader. Whether we are working with beginning readers in kindergarten or first grade, or older students still struggling with reading, we must be sure that we are sending the messages that fluency is a tool, that reading is squeezing the juice of meaning out of text. If we do not send that message loud and clear, we may see children benchmark on fluency assessments but their comprehension (tested more frequently that speed of reading and much more important) will suffer.
Certainly we want our young and maturing readers to be fluent, but we also want them to be able to think deeply and widely, analyzing and evaluating what they read, rather than simply regurgitating facts. That takes excellent, engaged teaching, giving some time to fluency, but always going back to the focus and purpose of reading, to gain meaning from that text.
I'd love to hear about your experiences with reader's theater and how you are using it in your classroom. How are you putting fluency in its correct perspective with your students?
We’re at the International Reading Association’s national conference in Atlanta this week! Stop by the Red Brick Learning booth (#2817) to see the new products we’re working on with Red Brick Learning.
We’re launching our new Reader’s Theater at IRA. We are also doing a special punch card. Attendees can hear about our four featured products (one of which is Reader’s Theater) and enter to win a complete set of products of their choosing. We hope we’ll see you there!
Reader’s Theater continues to be a huge buzz. The session on the subject was packed at PLA, and as more and more teachers and librarians become familiar with this great way to improve kids’ fluency, it’s only getting more popular.
Educators know that the leveled play scripts from Stone Arch Books’ Reader’s Theater help build oral fluency for individual readers. The scripts also support confidence as kids learn public speaking. They promote listening skills, build student cooperation, and most importantly, add another way to make reading fun! Stone Arch has always made Reader’s Theater easy for educators by leveling our scripts so that assigning roles by reading level is simple.
Now we’re making it even easier by selling Reader’s Theater kits on our website. Each kit contains a teacher’s version of the script (complete with leveling information), enough scripts for each character in the play, six copies of the paperback book, and a handy storage bag. It’s never been so simple to help your students bring books to life!
For more information on Reader’s Theater, check out the Educator Resources tab on our website.
Dear Diary,
I sent off the Guardian article on Fairy Tales around midnight last night. Assuming they like it, it'll be in the Saturday review next week.
This morning I went off to Shepherd's Bush for the read-through of the BBC World Service ANANSI BOYS adaptation, with Lenny Henry (as Spider and Fat Charlie), Matt Lucas (as Graham Coats and Tiger), Rudolph Walker as Anansi, Dona Croll as Mrs Noah and the Bird Woman, Tameka Empson as Mrs Higgler, Petra Letang as Rosie, Jocelyn Jee Esien as Daisy, and Ben Crowe as Cabbies and extra voices. As you can see from the cast list, it's a very compressed sort of drama, but Mike Walker did a heroic job in shrinking the novel down to an hour's length, and the excellent Anne Edyvean is directing (we first worked together on the BBC Radio 3 version of Signal To Noise in 1996). I was able to offer a few suggestions that were useful, so felt like it was a good thing that I was there.
It will broadcast on the World Service on 17 November 2007.
Then I went to Headline books to sign 300 copies of the Stardust paperback.
Now back at the hotel.
In my not-much-actually free time I've been reading Ekaterina Sedia's THE SECRET HISTORY OF MOSCOW, a lovely, disconcerting book that does for Moscow what I hope my own Neverwhere may have done to London. It's part of the genre I think of as Magic City books, and in this one all of Russian myth does gloomy duty in a sort of Moscow Beneath that is a reflection and refuge from of Moscow above. In 1990s Moscow people are turning into birds, and each night the birds are flying out of reflected windows. The prose and the atmosphere is beautiful and decaying, and everything's grey with astonishing little bursts of unforgettable colour. It reminds me a little of a more pagan The Master and Margerita, but that may be because I haven't read enough Russian fantasy to compare it to something more apt. Deep, dark, remarkable stuff.
There are about 150 tickets left to the Criterion event tomorrow (6.00 pm, Tuesday the 2nd), which should cover the people who turn up at the door, unless there's a lot of them. (http://www.hayfestival.com/wales/browse.aspx?type=date&value=02-Oct-2007 is the link to get tickets if you want to be sure of getting in).
And here's the last word on the "Me and You" posts...
Dear Neil,
I know I come late to the "me and you and me" party (having spent all of yesterday at the National Book Festival, which was a whole lot of dusty fun!), but I thought you might be interested to know what my mother, an American Advanced Placement English teacher at a very good public high school, has to say.
According to my mother, "and Suzanna Clarke" is a participial phrase modifying "me," and, for your intended purpose, works just fine. Because you are notifying people who want to hear YOU, chatting with Suzanna, know where they can do so, your construction of the sentence is more clear. Technically, it IS considered more correct to say, "so and so and I..." but it is a matter of personal preference, and, for the purposes of your sentence, your phrasing is more direct and to the point.
So that's the 2 cents of an American English teacher with over 20 years experience and a more-than-usual insistence on proper grammar.
Cheers!
Emily
The event with Susanna Clarke was lovely, except for the, oh, 45 minutes or thereabouts that all 250 of us spent standing outside on the pavement in the cold, waiting for the fire brigade to establish that the problems in the nanotech lab next door were a false alarm.
I was asked tonight who'd win in a fight -- probably a no holds barred cage match, I suspect -- between me and Bill Gibson. I said me, but my daughter Holly, who was there, just laughed at me afterwards and said she couldn't imagine me fighting anyone. Holly says that Me vs Bill Gibson would be like a fight between a baby bunny and a duckling, and she is probably right.
I'm still really jet-lagged. I feel as if the going-to-Japan and the coming-back-from-Japan crash came at the same time -- just had a completely failed conversation with my agent, who soon figured out that the communication things simply wasn't happening, and told me to call him back tomorrow.
...
If you're in the UK, remember that next Tuesday, Oct 2nd is the big event at the Criterion:
Tuesday 02 October 07 Event 422 at 18:00
Neil Gaiman in conversation
Featuring: Neil Gaiman
Exclusive event-only book signing afterwards, at Waterstone's Piccadilly
Don't miss this one-off London appearance by one of the world’s greatest imaginative minds, and author of many bestselling novels, including American Gods, Anansi Boys, and the cult novel Stardust . The film of Stardust, directed by Matthew Vaughan and starring Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, Sienna Miller, Ricky Gervais, Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert De Niro, premieres in London on Wednesday 3 October at Odeon Leicester Square. We have a pair of tickets to the premiere: all ticket-holders to the event will be entered into a draw and the winner will be announced after the performance.
Price: £5.00
Venue: Criterion Theatre, Piccadilly http://www.criterion-theatre.co.uk/
http://www.hayfestival.com/wales/browse.aspx?type=date&value=02-Oct-2007
I think I'll probably do a reading from
Stardust as part of it. If you want to come, it's always wisest to order tickets early -- there will probably be seats on the night, but you can never be too sure.
(Also the Bath Children's Literary Festival event is this Saturday at 6.00pm --
http://www.bathkidslitfest.co.uk/event_J19.htm for details.)
Mr. Gaiman,I live in Beijing and your CCTV interview just aired (Sept. 25). I was really impressed that you could follow her random questions. I was disappointed that you were not deemed important enough to get the male reporter who usually interviews heads of state. I wanted you to know that the piece had aired and may air again Sept. 26. Thanks, Kade
Not to worry. I'm not a head of state.
Neil, Neil, Neil, Neil! Reading your blog can be so bloodly frustrating! What was your opinion of that Lolita restaurant? What do you, as a father of a young teenage daugther on the threshold of her maidenhood thinks of those young women exploiting the idea of pedophilia?I'm not comfortable enough with the by-roads of Japanese pop culture to be able to say what exactly
was going on in that place, but it didn't seem to be about paedophilia, not in any way I understand the term. It seemed to be about a whole set of cultural cues that I wasn't really able to read -- the clientele were about 60/40 male to female, most of the men were the same age as the girls working there (early 20s), and I got the impression it was much more about the girls getting to exercise their fantasies of being maids, whatever maids were in this context, and the customers of both genders seemed to enjoy playing rock, paper, scissors with them. My opinion was one of, mostly, complete bafflement and bemusement, and I was there because the guide felt that, like the fish market and the Meiji Shrine and the modern art museum, going to one of the maid cafes was one of the unique things about Tokyo.
Hi Neil, I have a quick question about agents and the submission process...Months ago, shortly after completing my first novel (YA fantasy), I drew up a list of agencies that I thought might be a match. Several envelopes were dispatched to said agents. Fingers were crossed.I waited.Three weeks later, the replies began trickeling in. A few were form rejections; others had some decent comments, but were rejections all the same.Then an unfamiliar envelope fell through the letterbox. It turns out that this was the reply from my Dream Agency (why not aim high?). The gist of the letter was this: Your writing shows great promise, but this is not yet ready for representation. Send us your next project.Here is my question:My second novel, which I think is a stark improvement on the first, is almost ready. Should I send it exclusively to my new contact at The Literary Agency Of My Dreams? Or should I treat the process exactly as I did first time round, and send out simultaneous submissions? Many thanks for your time.I don't think there are any rules. If it was me, I'd send it to the new contact who thought you had potential, with a letter saying,
you said to send you my next project and this is it, and I'm not showing it to anyone else until you've seen it, because they were nice, and deserve something for that, and if they feel they grew you from a bean they will work harder for you. But there aren't any rules. And if it was me I'd be sending my book to editors and not to agents anyway.
...
Why am I typing? Why aren't I sleeping?
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