Thank you! Reading is Fundamental As part of Share a Story ~ Shape a Future, Reading is Fundamental is donating
two full sets of its Multicultural book collection for our It Takes a Village giveaways! There are 50 books in each set. Wow! Thank you! muchas gracias, merci beaucoup, danka shen ... there aren't enough ways to say thank you!
You can read the
complete list of titles here (pdf), or you can watch the slideshow here. We'll also keep a widget with the slideshow over on the right-hand side during the event.
Our theme for Share a Story 2010 is "It takes a village," and we wanted our giveaways toc benefit as many communities and readers as possible. Given the budget crunches schools and libraries are facing, it seems only logical that they be the beneficiaries of these collections. The Giveaway is tied to our Writing on Reading initiative, and here is how it will work.
1. Select one of the Writing on Reading questions.
2. Put together your thoughts and post them on your blog.
3. Come back to the daily Writing on Reading post and add your link to Inlinkz box AND add a comment with the name of the school or public library you would like to see receive the books.
Each day, RIF staff will be reading your posts and will select their favorite posts.They will pick three from Monday and Tuesday and three from Wednesday and Thursday. We'll announce the first three here on Wednesday and the next three Friday morning.
On Friday morning (12 March 2010)I will have a ballot with the six finalists and open the voting. We will use a Survey Monkey poll to collect votes of the "fan favorite" of the six. The voting will remain open until 12:00 noon, (EST) on Saturday, 13 March 2010. The two bloggers/writers with the most votes will be the winners. The winners will be announced on Monday, 15 March 2010 on the Share a Story blog.
Here is the fine print:
1. There is only one entry per person. RIF staff will select only one post per blogger. If you are a finalist from the Monday/Tuesday posts, additional posts on Wednesday/Thursday will not be considered for the contest.
2. Guest or ghost posts will not be eligible; neither will be additional posts published by the same author on more than one blog.
3. Communities in the United States are eligible. There is no international shipping.
This morning on her Parents and Children Reading Together blog, Cathy Miller has a handy list of literacy terms with family-friendly definitions.
Some terms, like sight words, you may recognize, but others are a little more technical. That said, they are words you're likely to hear during parent-teacher conferences and see when reading the results of standardized tests for reading. As you read Cathy's list, it becomes clear that some words make the concepts sound harder than they are ... try metacognition for example: thinking about how you think. C'mon.
Cathy is doing a radio show with award-winning author Stacey Kannenberg that will be available on the Get Ready to Learn Mom website. She'll also be continuing her series about ways to help independent readers at Parents and Children Reading Together.
Disclosure notice: Cathy serves as a member of the Reading Tub Board of Directors. She offers counsel and is a sounding board for me in framing literacy programs, building outreach, and educating families about reading with kids.
September is back to school time and National Literacy Month. We wanted to provide you with some free resources to help in nurturing literacy for the kids in your life:
Last April, we published a post called: Commentary on Literacy, Raising a Book Lover. And then did another at the beginning of the summer called Make [...]
Last week, we talked about some of the Reading Tips we gathered during Share a Story-Shape a Future 2009. This week, I’ve rounded up the resources and ideas related to reading aloud.
Reading aloud is crucial to our development as readers and communicators. As Donalyn Miller pointed out in her post, you’re never to old to enjoy having a story read aloud. Still not sure? Then visit The Reading Zone, where you can follow along as Sarah shares the reactions and excitement of her middle school students.
These are posts from the week, as well as links and posts mentioned in the comments. Sarah wrote a post in early April about her process for reading aloud. Although it wasn’t directly part of Share a Story, it goes to the heart of what we hope this event will do. So we’ve included it below.
Understanding Read Aloud with Young Children
Thoughts and Tips for Reading Aloud with Independent Readers
Read Aloud Resources for Adults
Next Week: Books and Booklists. There were so many recommendations, we’re going to break this into a series.
In today's edition, I've pulled together the full week's agenda in one post. It is still sorted by day, but it includes all of the hyperlinks from the main posts, as well as other bloggers who added to the discussion.
Thanks to the outstanding work and dedication of our bloggers, this is an incredible resource as a place to start thinking about ways to engage kids in writing. To make it even handier, we have created a downloadable version, too.
Event Takeaways
Day 1: Raising Readershost: Terry Doherty @
Scrub-a-Dub-TubDay 2: Selecting Reading Materialhosted by Sarah Mulhern at
The Reading ZoneDay 3: Reading Aloud - It's Fun, It's Easyhosted by Susan Stephenson at the
Book Chook blog
Day 5: Share a Story-Shape a Future: What the Future Holdshosted by Elizabeth O. Dulemba at
Dulemba.comMy thanks (again) to everyone who participated in Share a Story-Shape a Future 2009!
One of the most commented upon aspects of this year’s Literacy Blog Tour was the collection of reading tips and ideas. In this post we’ve pulled together blog posts, references to websites, and some creative ideas offered by participants and their visitors. There were tons of ideas, but the list below focuses on ways to help you “sneak” reading into your day.
We welcome more ideas, so if you leave a link in the comments, I’ll come back and add it here.
2:00PM: updated to fix the list snafu
Websites with Reading Ideas
Reading Tips – a one-page set of easy-to-use ideas courtesy of Reach Out and Read
14 Fantastic Hints on Reading Aloud by Mem Fox – a post by Susan Stephenson (The Book Chook)
20 Ways to Incorporate Literacy Into Your Own Kids' Lives - Valerie Baartz (The Almost Librarian) offered these in an interview at The Book Chook.
Tif Talks Books has posts about Sorting and Roaming Around the Known – Tif says these are two tools she learned about in a Parents as Teachers workshop.
Ideas for Mixing Reading into Your Day
Bathtub Fun - One of our favorite "pre-reading" activities was playing with foam letters in the bathtub. William would line them up from A to Z and then hide his eyes. I would remove a letter and he would try to guess which one was missing. Sometimes instead of removing a letter I would rearrange them. As he got older, we would spell words for each other and then read them. (Tricia Stohr-Hunt, post at The Miss Rumphius Effect)
Letter Art - Kids love to make art using all kinds of media. I invested in alphabet rubber stamps so that William's art could be adorned with letters and words. In the beginning, the artwork contained his just his name stamped on the page. Then, the objects in the scenes were labeled. Now, the art is fully described or sometimes forms the pages of a story. (Tricia Stohr-Hunt, post at The Miss Rumphius Effect)
Write Stories - When you find a book or character your child loves, try to imagine together what the next adventure might be. (Tricia Stohr-Hunt, post at The Miss Rumphius Effect)
Sign Poetry - Travel is actually a very good time to practice reading skills. We keep a pen and paper in the car and often play a game where we collect words and phrases for poetry. We read and write (not me silly, I’m driving!) words we find on signs, billboards, bumper stickers, license plates, etc. Once we have a decent list, we make up silly poems using the words. (Tricia Stohr-Hunt, post at The Miss Rumphius Effect)
Never Leave Home Without It - Anytime we leave the house for errands we carry a bag that holds plain paper, crayons or colored pencils, and a few books that William has selected. Now the mantra before heading out is "Go to the bathroom and then grab a book." There always seems to be time to read in the car, the doctor's office, the restaurant, you name it. (Tricia Stohr-Hunt, post at The Miss Rumphius Effect)
Light Up the Night - Buy your child a flashlight or book light and let him/her read under the covers. William will actually go to bed early if I tell him he can have time reading AFTER lights out. Reading undercover is fun and helps build independence. (Tricia Stohr-Hunt, post at The Miss Rumphius Effect)
Make a List - Keep a running list of favorite books or authors in a spreadsheet or table or use an online service like Goodreads.com. Before you head out to the library or to the bookstore, bring a print out. This list lays out your groundwork. You have information to provide those librarians when they ask what you've liked in the past and you've got solid sources to go back to in case you aren't able to find anything new during that trip. (recommended by Valerie Baartz)
Next post: Literacy Resources
Surprise! We have just launched the new Share a Story - Shape a Future blog. If you're using a reader, you're missing the fun, so click on through!
When we created Share a Story-Shape a Future 2009, we pushed ourselves to take advantage of the momentum and discussions generated by Jen Robinson’s question: How do we encourage reading aloud? We pretty much did everything on the fly. But now ... because y'all want to do this again next year, we decided to give it a little more spiff and polish. I was going to hold the big reveal until I had finished with announcement #2 (bel0w) but I.just.couldn't.do.it.
Do you like the new look? Pretty snazzy, no? Don't you just LOVE the RSS feed logo?
So here's the other shoe: We are creating a one-stop place for you to find the the links and resources that everyone chatted about on the Tour. Whether you wrote a post or put something in a comment, we have pulled your ideas together - and linked them - in a single post. Here are the themes:
2009 Schedule of Events – The full week's agenda with links to host, guest and related posts all in one place.
Popular Reading Tips – Annotated descriptions of your ideas for incorporating reading into your daily routine
Literacy Resources and Tools – Other Internet resources for encouraging reading and helping young readers
Books and Booklists – Individual titles (children’s and adult), themed lists, and Read Alike Lists
There are so many books and booklist/read-alike recommendations that it will take three posts to gather them. One post is just too much.
There may still be a little bit of construction dust while
LadyJava finishes up ... but look for new posts in the coming weeks.
As we were gearing up for Share a Story-Shape a Future, we were collecting lots of information. We were visiting lots of our favorite spots, identifying new resources and links, and thinking about what people had suggested in the comments to Jen Robinson's post about Encouraging Read-Aloud.
The more we collected, the more we realized that this was turning into a cohesive resource. And since the value of information is in the sharing, it only seemed logical to put everything together in one place and make it accessible to anyone who might want it. Hence, the Literacy Resource Kit.
We had links to it yesterday, but it really does deserve it's own spot in the sun. Depending on the results of
the survey, we may try to go back through the tour and collect posts, links, and booklists.
Thank you! Reading is Fundamental 
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I'm curious . . . can the schools be little private schools or must the recipients be large and/or public?