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?

As teachers, whether we are in kindergarten or high school, we tell our class, "you need to make sure you have a strong introduction" when we encourage them to write. But such a broad statement isn't instructional and, if the students don't already have the tools to do that, they are lost.

Over my years of teaching children to write (ages 7 through 18) and 46 years of personal experience with the craft, I've discovered that there are lots of methods for creating effective introductions. Here's a few "tools" students can add to their toolbox to help their introductions (in essays, papers, narratives -- really any writing -- zing!

1. Always use the active voice and active verbs.
2. Avoid dull, predictable sentence structure.
3. Begin with one of these:

a surprising fact or statistic

a question"

a direct quotation (even a controversial one) to give a hint of perspective

a statement that leads into the piece, changing the routine perspective

purposeful repetition of a key phrase or term

an engaging anecdote or story, can include humor.

After your students have written their draft (including the introduction), ask them to switch with a partner. Have that partner answer this question:

When I read just the introduction, can I tell what the paper is about (the topic)?

Have the pair work together to either identify strong specific elements that make the introduction a good one or help one another revise to improve the introduction by incorporating some of these ideas. Make sure you follow through with multiple opportunities to practice writing strong introductions AND ask your students to seek out actual examples of writing and use these tools to evaluate the quality of others' introductions. Make sure you include great examples in a mini-lesson read aloud (great informal way to do a book talk). After reading the introduction, ask students "Is this a good introduction?" Follow-up, most importantly, after they voice their opinion, with the question, "Why?"

For more help with writing, visit the archive for Educationworld.com's Reading Coach (not just for reading coaches but for every teacher).

How do you help your students write great introductions?

Do your students have that "deer in the headlights" look, lost because they haven't a hook to hang this new content chapter in history, science or social studies? We've probably all been there at one time or another. You feel for them but when you read the content with them or ask them questions, you just get a blank stare. Most often, the real reason behind that is that the student has no place to begin, no frame of reference to connect to. They have no "background knowledge" or "schema". Without a place to start ("oh, I know this information already, so I can understand the new information better"), students may not be able to make sense of it.

Think of what would happen if you were thrown into the middle of an engineering project with no training in that area. It would be impossible to be successful or to learn more without a foundation. It's the same when it comes to understanding writing, historical events and times, science, math, music, art, most anything -- we all need a starting place.

To find that starting place, enter the world of today's picture books. They are more colorful than ever with exquisite art created by true talents such as Jerry Pinkney and Jan Brett. They sometimes contain complex ideas in a simple format (like Patricia McKissack's Goin' Someplace Special).

Want to find more treasures to help your students learn content-related facts and information? Start with my Amazon List to find more suggested titles that all teach music concepts (from Native American and African roots to classical and jazz legends). Share this with your music teacher if you have one. Educationworld.com also gives you some tips for using picture books to teach standards.

Because I recognize this is an issue that impacts comprehension (and we know how important comprehension is; it is the reason we read in the first placle), I've created a new environmentally friendly resource to help you find even more fantastic subject-matter picture books (the new e-book is entitled Powerful Picture Books: 180 Ideas for Promoting Content Learning available at Inspiring Teachers. Nearly half of the picture books listed can be used with middle and high school students as an introduction to more complex text. Powerful Picture Books will soon be featured at Cool Book of the Day where you can find a new cool book for you posted there every day.

Maybe you have other content areas you need help with. My friend, Vicki Cobb and a group of over 25 of her fellow nonfiction writers have started a new blog at I.N.K.. It highlights interesting Non-fiction for Kids and is a fantastic source for finding even more great non-fiction books for kids of all ages. Non-fiction is the heart of fact-finding and most reading beyond 3rd grade is content area or nonfiction reading. Whether you are looking for science books, books about famous people, language, painting or whatever, you're likely to find a sampling there.

With these tools, you have an easy way to support your students' learning. Tap into the world of picture books (fiction and non-fiction) to use as a fun, interactive way to help your child gain the basics. You'll help them gain a position where they can soar. The great news is that picture books, chosen carefully, can even be used with students who are in middle and high school.

Even if you have students who are doing well in school, search out a picture book or two that relates to a time in history or a subject that they may not study very much in school. Put those picture books in your classroom library for those students who finish their work early or those students in your class who have been identified as gifted. The more your students grow their background knowledge, the better prepared they will be to succeed in school, on standardized tests and in life.

Happy Reading!

Engaged Interactive Read Aloud is the best way to connect with Facebook savvy, blogging, and texting students because it mirrors that same quick, back and forth interaction, while embedding strong examples of what our brains do when we as mature readers read. I've been developing the technique for years, based on research from great thinkers like John H. Guthrie, Catherine Snow, Marilyn Adams, and S.J. Barrentine.

It takes enthusiasm, familiarity with the text, and a willingness to expose your thinking process to your students but the great news is it works with K-12th graders. And it doesn't take much time but a daily dose of even 5 minutes can make a tremendous difference in the comprehension skills of your students. That will bring a return in higher test scores, stronger reading skills and thinking students.

There's not space here to explain the entire process but here's a taste.

Step 1: Share a purpose for reading this text aloud with students. It doesn't have to be your entire purpose because your focus for them is engagement, hooking them in. However, you do want to set the stage.

Step 2: Have students predict, talk about what they know about the subject matter, prime the pump for the new information they will gain. Make sure that you do this, not in a strictly instructional way, but conversationally. Remember that you want them hungry for read aloud so you have to be a great commercial for it.

Step 3: Read from the text, explaining out loud (and using whiteboards and other tools ready at hand to illustrate) what your brain is doing as you read the first line or two. It might be an explanation of how you decoded a difficult word (make that a joint exercise - "how did I figure that out?"), it might be an illustration of how you took what you already knew to make sense of the author's statement. It might be raising a question that you want to remember as you continue to read. It might be just a wondering, pondering moment in which you think about the meaning behind the text, in many layers.

Get the idea? Remember you have to be as much a teacher as an entertainer as an enthusiastic and passionate deliverer. Try this new version of read aloud in your classroom tomorrow and let me know how it goes!

My in-service trainings this year will be concentrating on this technique which can be taught to not only professional educators but also librarians, paraprofessionals and parents. We all need to be on the literacy team.

With school just beginning (or around the corner) for most of us, I want to be sure you are equipped and pampered. With all the overload of curriculum, standards, getting settled, it can be easy to get overwhelmed. Here are a few resources sure to help you survive and thrive!

Educationworld.com's Reading Room: http://tiny.cc/wYUw6. Here you'll find reading and writing lesson plans, Reader's Theater scripts, professional development articles by yours truly and more. Educationworld.com is one of the most trusted friends of teachers online and it remains subscription free!

The IRA - International Reading Association's RTEACHER listserv. Over the past five years or so (can it have been that long?), I've been priviledged to interact with a marvelously eclectic group of teachers and learners through this listserv. You can join the listserv, contribute as much or as little as threads develop by sending an email to [email protected]. If you aren't a member of this incredible group, you need to join. It's well worth it! I'll be presenting as a featured speaker at the Alabama Reading Association (state affiliate) conference in November AND in a session at the SE Regional IRA Conference in New Orleans that same month. Check out my travels on Linkedin at my profile http://tiny.cc/5PZMf (see My Travel powered by TripIt).

The National Council of Teachers of English. This is also an excellent professional organization with a bit narrower but very complementary focus. What I love best is that the IRA and NCTE often write joint position statements. As national organizations, they want to hear from their members and influence education in a positive way. This year, they are sponsoring the National Gallery of Writing (http://tiny.cc/fC95P), a place where you can write and where you can share your students' writing. October 20 has been designated the National Day of Writing!

> I hope these resources help you. Let's start a dialogue about others you may want to share with the rest of us. Stay tuned!

Some of you are getting ready to go back to school next week for in-service and making your nests before students come in. Others have a few weeks before the rush. Now is a great time to get recharged and enthused about the new year.

Let me suggest a few "start off on the right foot" ideas for any age:

Have your children write a "writer's autobiography one of the first days of school. Right away you get an idea of their writing abilities and you learn something about your students' attitudes and experiences with writing.

Create a new bulletin board that gives students a chance to highlight a book that was new to them this summer. Let them be creative (a TV guide summary/review, a conventional book review, a pictorial recommendation). Be sure to put your own picks up there and make sure there are a few copies of at least one of those in your classroom library.

Kiss your media specialist. She/he can be a great resource and help while you are focusing on reading and writing skills. After all, the aim of education has got to be to create lifelong readers if they are doing to do more than pass the test.

Visit again soon!

Do you realize the power you have to influence and engage learners of any age with conversation? Whether it's a book or content area discussion, a debate about current events, a prediction, a sympathetic ear, or a "heart-to-heart" with a student everyone else has given up on -- you are in a position of great power.

I've been thinking a lot about what conversations look like in classrooms and would love to hear from real teachers. Here are a few thoughts of mine:

In his book, Life in a Crowded Place: Making a Learning Community, author and researcher Dr. Ralph Peterson points out that “in everyday life, talk is the primary medium for learning, and for that reason, talk is an essential part of a learning community’s life.” For it is when we move beyond the rudimentary layers of thinking, from knowledge to comprehension, to application, analysis, evaluation, and synthesizing (Bloom, 1956). If you want to do more than shuffle papers, record test scores, and push kids on to the next level, you must make space (both literally and figuratively) for conversation in your classroom.

Are you talking at students or talking with them? The distinction reflects on your abilities as a teacher. Yes, we must all "correct and direct" but strong, interesting conversations raise the percentage of time students are actively engaged in learning. Carefully crafted words can open doors for students in understanding and peer conversations can build background knowledge.

A big part of effective conversations is vocabulary. Do you use the same dull, everyday words when you talk with students or are your conversations purposefully embedded with key vocabulary from content area learning, new words introduced in writing, spelling or read aloud times? A version of Reader's Digest's Word Power is a quick way to reinforce and grow your students volume of words. Did you know that only 10-17% of students' vocabulary comes from direct instruction. The rest comes from incidental learning and conversations are a great place to accomplish that.

I'll be back next week after visiting the AL Kindergarten Conference. Steven Layne is keynote speaker. If any of you are close to Huntsville, AL, I believe there is still time to register. This is a great regional conference (we had Mem Fox last year!).

With all the competition with TV, video games, DVDs, texting, and the whirlwind of life in general, it is more important than ever that teachers are commercials for reading. When you read aloud (and I hope all of you use this terrific teaching tool no matter what age you teach), use your voice, speed up at the intense parts, building to a climax, slow down and even pause when you hit the parts that need to be savored.

Think aloud while you read (so you show students how expert readers do it). Being conversational with interjections and questions occasionally does not impact the story line or detract from it. In fact, the more you do this, the better you get at it. When I read picture books to teachers, modeling this approach which I call "engaged reading", I ask them at the end if they lost the storyline and they always say "no". Because they were engaged in the story and the conversation surrounding it.

I'd love it if every one of you added a title you can do this with to the blog this week. Include the interest level!

I'll start: I'm beginning to read "The Desperado Who Saved Baseball" by John H. Ritter. I'd recommend anything John has written (great for upper elementary and middle school, on into high school).

Here's my list of the benefits of reading aloud. No other instructional activity I know touches so many levels:

Purposes for Read Aloud for 3rd Grade and Up


Pure enjoyment of great stories
Taking students to a different level of understanding of the story (Bloom’s
Taxonomy concepts)
Discussion and reinforcement of story elements
Reflecting on the text and searching for multiple meanings
Exploring the elements and format of print and story
Practicing and modeling specific comprehension strategies such as questioning,
predicting, clarifying
Building and activating background knowledge
Using inference
Understanding of the writing process, use of grammar, point of view,
writer’s voice, word choice and other writing-related skills.
Introducing and reinforcing vocabulary
Reinforcing content area learning and building background knowledge
Modeling and Practicing “think-aloud” and visualization
Introducing and/or reinforcing summarizing
skills
Targeting a specific grade-level standard:_________________________

As we develop our list of books, I encourage you to pick one up and read it yourself. Just dive in and enjoy it. Later, after you've finished (and when you are closer to school beginning), go back and identify what you can teach by exploring this book with your students.

Happy Reading!

Building background knowledge is essential as our curricula and our students become more diverse. Look for every resource you can find to help you do that. It's more than just about the textbook.

If you teach history, historical fiction can be a more palatable way for students to gain some basic understanding of people and places from a certain time. You don't have to read an entire novel; choose selections that highlight the background knowledge your students need and read those aloud. Have a classroom library with selections relating to all the major periods/topics you'll be talking about during the year.

If you teach math, check out Bridget Hadley's article on Literacyconnections.com: http://www.literacyconnections.com/StrongReadingComprehensionSkills.php. It outlines how comprehension strategies traditionally taught in English or Language Arts classes also apply in mathematical thinking.

If you teach science, search out biographies on Michelangelo, Marie Currie, Albert Einstein, Dr. Ben Carson and many others. Again, select excerpts that highlight the scientific accomplishments and theories of individuals. Do you have a classroom library? It's one of the best ways to get students engaged in a subject.

If you teach art or music, many of the same ideas apply.

To help you find texts to build those connections, consider picture books. Even if your students are in high school, picture books can be great tools to introduce them to subject areas that they know little about. Check out my newest E Book from Inspiringteachers.com (http://www.inspiringteachers.com/catalog/ebooks/powerful_picture_books.html) where you'll find over 180 picture books referenced that can be used in art, music, history, geography, math, science and language arts instruction.

As the end of the school year closes, I start a brand new blog for teachers. There are all kinds of places you can go to learn about the newest research, techniques, and strategies for teaching the mechanics of reading. I do believe strongly in the importance of teaching those mechanics but it cannot be everything we teach. What we will do here is talk about "lighting the spark of literacy (reading, writing, listening, communicating and viewing) with children of all ages.

Why is that even important? I think the best way to answer this is to quote Jim Trelease. He says, "What we teach children to love and desire will always outweigh what we teach them to do." Now I know there are a few teachers who are just in the profession to do what is minimally required, just meet the standards and be done with it. But I also believe that most of you who are teachers are in it for more.

NCLB has been frustrating and curriculum driven instruction has become so often restrictive. My aim here is to talk about how to go beyond what is required and light a fire that will serve your students long after you are dust.

So, here's my question for you: Are you interested? Do you want to start a quiet (or maybe not so quiet) revolution? Do you want to learn what it takes to get kids fired up about using reading and writing as tools for life? Then you've come to the right place.

Feel free to post questions, comments, wisdom and ponderings.