The
Quill
Serving
Gloucester,
Newport News,
Poquoson, and York County
February - March 2009
President’s
Message
Dear
Colleagues,
In February, our affiliate, the
Virginia State Reading Association (VSRA), sponsored their 42nd Annual
Conference, held in Crystal City, Arlington. Our council received
awards in several areas. We received an award for our board displaying
our mission, goals, and programs supporting literacy locally and
internationally. Additionally, Elizabeth Coppage was awarded the
Student Scholarship Award, Sherry Edbauer won the Young Writer’s Grant,
and our Teacher of the Year, Marilyn Schempf, was recognized at the
annual banquet.
Similarly, the
International Reading Association (IRA) is recognizing our local and
international advocacy efforts. We have been notified by IRA that our
Council has satisfied all of the requirements for exemplary reading
council and will be given the Honor Council Award at the awards
ceremony on May 4, 2008, during the 54th Annual Convention North
Central in Minneapolis.
The month of March seemed
as busy as February. On March 11, we hosted our Spring Conference at
Palmer Elementary School in Newport News. Sessions on the following
topics were presented: PALS Quick Checks, Word Callers, vocabulary
strategies, fluency, and Think.com. Not only did the participants leave
the conference with valuable, practical information; many of them left
with one of twenty-two door prizes. Using our Reading/Writing Round-up
parent workshops as springboards, we sponsored our fourth annual Young
Writer’s Contest. An awards ceremony was held on March 25, at 6:00 P.
M. at the Main Street Library in Newport News. Sue Corbett, author of
Free Baseball and 13 again, was the keynote speaker. The winners
received an anthology of their writings and an autographed copy of the
book of their choice.
I look forward to seeing
all of you on May 13, at our annual awards banquet, which will be held
at the Newport News Waterworks Building in City Center. Featured
speakers will be Delegate Glen Oder, Sylvia Babcock, and Deborah
Wesley. More information will be posted as details are finalized. Visit
our web site to view pictures of past events, the Research Corner, the
Quill, as well as other awards and programs.
We are currently accepting
nominations for Reading Teacher of the Year, Administrator of the Year,
Volunteer of the Year, and Paraprofessional of the Year. Please
consider nominating a dedicated volunteer or dedicated literacy
professional for one of these awards. The deadline for submitting names
is Monday, April 27, 2009 unless noted otherwise. The ballot for the
2009-2010 Board will be sent under other cover.
Chynita Turner
Pryor
NNRC
President
2008-2009
NNRC
Executive
Board
Chynita
Turner
-
President
Ken Schmidt – Treasurer, Membership Chair
Sherry Edbauer - Vice President
Marilyn Schempf - Legislative
Chair Kelly Cartwright – Corresponding Secretary
Beth Guthrie - Historian
Verdis
Knight
–
Recording
Secretary,
Parents
and
Reading Chair
Children’s Book Review
Listen to the Wind
by Greg Mortenson Illustrated by
Susan Roth
Reviewed by Ken Schmidt
Listen to the Wind is an
inspirational story of how a school was built in a remote village in
Pakistan. First told in Three Cups of Tea, then in Three Cups of Tea:
Young Reader’s Edition, Mortenson’s experience is told from the
perspective of the village’s children in Listen to the Wind.
Although many elementary
students could read it independently, it would be better used as a
read-a-loud. The book gives insight into a different culture and would
be a good stimulus for a discussion about how lives of Pakistani and
American children are the same and different. It makes clear the
longing for education of children around the world and might make
students here reconsider their wishes for not having to go to school.
The illustrations – collages
that fill the page with the text set inside of them – are colorful and
expressive. The faces and figures are simple and one dimensional,
almost primitive, but deceptively so. They give the impression that the
children telling the story might have created them, drawing the reader
into their world.
Advocacy
By Chynita Turner-Pryor
As in past years, the Board discusses opportunities to
support literacy locally and internationally. As an affiliate of VSRA
and the International Reading Association (IRA), we are charged with
the task of not only providing our members with professional
development and networking opportunities, but also advocating for
persons in developing nations on behalf of the Council. Because we are
chartered by The IRA and governed by VSRA, we support their goals to
promote literacy worldwide.
International literacy projects seek to bridge the gap
between developing nations and local councils. This year we again
sponsored one membership ($61) to IRA in countries with developing
economies. We also awarded an IRA membership to Mindy Adams who is
participating in the Teachers as Readers Group at Mount Vernon
Elementary School in York County. The IRA membership allows access to
information about literacy and the reading process to educators.
As a result of reading
Listen to the Wind, Ken Schmidt researched the humanitarian efforts of
author, Greg Mortenson. Mortenson co-founded the Central Asia Institute
(CAI), which is a non-profit organization with the mission to promote
and support community-based education, especially for girls, in remote
regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. CAI states that adolescent girls
are targeted not only because they are uniquely capable of raising the
standard of living in the developing world, they are often invisible in
their society and the media. The Nike Foundation and the Nova
Foundation support their program entitled The Girl Effect. Our
contribution to this organization will further their efforts to enact
social and economic change for those adolescent girls who may under
other circumstances miss the opportunity for education. For more
information on the projects sponsored by the CAI, logon to
https://www.ikat.org/.
Legislative Update
Submitted by Marilyn Schempf
On April 1, 2009, the U.S.
Education Department received a hundred billion-dollar stimulus boost.
Part of the new money (in Impact Aid) can be used for almost anything,
including school construction. The key language is making improvements
in teacher effectiveness particularly for students who are in the most
need. Non-profit groups can receive money if they provide leadership
activities with the clear purpose of helping students in need. The
International Reading Association is asking for money to use for
professional development.
Early Childhood Education is
being promoted and will be receiving funding in both the Health and
Human Services Department and Education Department. You can learn more
at www.edu.gov.
Research
Corner
So
much
research,
so
little
time…
Kelly
B.
Cartwright,
Ph.D.
A Comparison of the Effectiveness
of Three Instructional Methods for Improving Beginning Readers’
Comprehension of Science Texts
There are so many instructional strategies for improving comprehension,
but we rarely find useful comparisons of the strategies to inform our
own literacy instruction. A recent study by Katherine Dougherty Stahl
provides just such a comparison! Dougherty Stahl (2008) compared the
effectiveness of DRTA (Directed Reading and Thinking Activity), KWL,
and Picture Walks for improving two things in beginning readers: (1)
reading comprehension and (2) learning of science content from texts.
Children received the comprehension lessons in small group instruction
to ensure that the study procedure best matched actual classroom
practice, and these instructional methods were also compared to a “no
instruction” control. What did Dougherty Stahl (2008) find?
* All three instructional methods produced gains in
science vocabulary knowledge.
* Picture Walks and DRTA produced greater gains than
KWL and “no intervention” on what she called “micro-level”
comprehension, measured by a cloze (fill-in-the-blank) comprehension
test.
* DRTA produced greater gains in “global”
comprehension, measured by the number of comprehension questions
children answered correctly.
These findings suggest that DRTA may be a more effective instructional
method than the other two techniques. According to Dougherty Stahl,
“DRTA procedures tended to demand higher levels of thinking by the
students than the other three procedures by requiring justification and
verification of predictions (p. 382).” In contrast to KWL and Picture
Walks, DRTA requires immediate interaction around the text, while
reading, between the teacher and students, and much research has shown
that engaging students in specific interaction about text is effective
in improving comprehension. (See Dougherty Stahl’s article for a review
of this work.)
Dougherty Stahl, K. A. (2008). The effects of three instructional
methods on the reading comprehension and content acquisition of novice
readers. Journal of Literacy Research, 40, 359-393.
Volunteer of the Year
Nominations
If you have a very special
volunteer working in your school, please consider nominating this
person for the NNRC Volunteer of the Year Award. Email the name of your
volunteer, the school(s) where this person volunteers, and a paragraph
describing why this person should be our Volunteer of the Year to
Chynita Turner-Pryor at cturner@ycsd.york.va.us . Please include your
name and phone number.
Reading Teacher of the
Year Nominations
The NNRC Reading Teacher of the
Year Award recognizes a reading teacher whose commitment to literacy is
exemplary and unparalleled. The candidate must have been a member of
the NNRC for at least a year and must teach reading a minimum of
one-third of each school day to students in grades K-12. If you know of
such an outstanding professional, please email or send a letter of
recommendation to ChynitaTurner-Pryor at 3711 Big Bethel Road,
Yorktown, VA 23693 no later than Monday, April 27, 2009. Please include
all contact information for the nominee and nominator. Our nominee will
be recognized at the 2010 VSRA conference in Virginia Beach.
James D. Mullins
Administrator of the Year Award
This award was established
in 1994 to recognize administrators who show exceptional support of
reading. The nominee is a strong advocate for reading and teachers and
children, has a vision for a school or school system, makes decisions
based on a belief system, is creative in finding resources to support
reading programs and is a strong supporter of reading and/or VSRA or
other reading-oriented organizations or groups. The candidate must have
been a member of NNRC for at least one year and have been an
administrator for at least three years. If you would like to nominate
someone for this award, please email or send the following information
to Chynita Turner-Pryor at 3711 Big Bethel Road, Yorktown, VA 23693:
Letter of Recommendation (Include contact information).
The
candidate’s
vitae.
Include
educational
background,
professional
experience,
professional affiliations, and specific contributions to
reading. Limit 250 words.
The completed packet is
due by May 1, 2009. Our nominee will be recognized at the 2010 VSRA
conference in Virginia Beach.
Paraprofessional of the
Year Award
This is the second year we have
offered this award. We would like to recognize a paraprofessional who
is dedicated to the support of literacy instruction in their school. If
you would like to nominate someone for this award, please email the
name of the paraprofessional, the school where this person works, and a
short letter describing why this person should be our Paraprofessional
of the Year to Chynita Turner-Pryor at cturner@ycsd.york.va.us by April
27, 2009. Please include your name and phone number.
Textbook
Scholarship
Spring
Textbook
Scholarship
forms
are
available
online.
The deadline for
entries is Friday,
May 1, 2009. Completed applications should be sent to Ann
Campas at Mount Vernon Elementary School,
310 Mount Vernon Drive, Yorktown, VA.
PH: 898-0480 FAX: 867-7444