Newport
News
Reading Council’s Meet and Greet
Tuesday, September 21, 2010,
found
educators at the Patrick Henry Barnes and Noble for Newport News
Reading
Council’s Meet and Greet. Cookies, coffee and herbal tea was served. Membership Chairs for York County,
Pam
Gaspard, and from Newport News,
Carmen Ellis, were on hand
to serve
those wishing to join or renew memberships. It was a great time to meet
the new
Board members, do a little shopping for our fundraiser and snack on
some good
food. Everyone was entered in the pool
for door prizes. Winners were as
follows:
$10 Barnes and Noble Gift Certificate- Renee
Holloman from York
Elementary School
$10 Barnes & Noble Gift Certificate- Amanda
Edbauer from
Watkins Early Childhood
Center
Bag of books donated by Barnes & Noble- Amy
Barber from Watkins
Early Childhood
Center
Legislative
News
Legislative
Update
Reported
by Marilyn Schempf
State Superintendent of Instruction, Dr.
Patricia Wright,
was awarded the VSRA Friend of Literacy Award this summer.
On June 24, 2010, when VSRA Past-President
Vicki Oakley presented the award, she spoke of how Dr. Wright had done
everything she could to help with funding for reading specialists. She was the one who proposed that requirement
for EIRI funding be opened up for use in
hiring
reading specialists. Dr.
Wright spoke
at the VSRA Governing Board meeting last November and presented much
useful
information. She is a big supporter of
literacy.
Troilen Seward, the VSRA Legislative Liaison,
reported that,
also, on June 24,
2010,
the State Board of Education adopted a statement opposing the adoption
of newly
developed Common Core Standards as a prerequisite for participation in
federal
competitive grant and entitlement programs.
One important reason is that Virginia
has invested far more in its SOL assessments than the $250 million we
could
possibly receive by abandoning the SOL and competing for Race to the
Top funds.
The Board opposes the use of federal rulemaking and peer review to
compel
word-for-word adoption of the Common Core Standards.
The Governor agrees.
Newport News
Reading Council’s
International
Project
The
International Project selected for this year
is the Ghana’s Money for School Supplies.
A group of teachers from the US
will be going to visit Ghana this
summer to work with the teachers and the students there.
They have school supplies and books that have
been donated to take with them.
Unfortunately the cost of taking suitcases filled with these
items is about
$250 per suitcase. We are going to be
collecting money, in a suitcase, at all of our events this year to help
defray
the cost of taking a suitcase to Ghana. Then at our Spring
Banquet
we will be raffling off the suitcase!
Participating in an international project is one of
the
International Reading Association’s requirements to receive Honor
Council
status. This year the Board thought some
of our members would like to participate by personally contributing to
the
project. Bring your pennies, dimes and
dollars to help build supply books and school supplies to a needy area.
SAVE THE DATE
NOTICE!!
The Newport
News Reading Council
and the Hampton Reading Council are sponsoring a fall literacy
conference. Our conference will be held at
the new Phenix
School
on Big Bethel Road
in Hampton
on Monday,
October 25, 2010, from 4:00 – 6:30. We will
have a
variety of presenters, vendors, and door prizes.
On November
17 at 7:00 at the
Gloucester Library we
will be hosting a “Meet the Author Night”.
Sue Corbett, a local author, who has written 12
Again, Free Baseball, The Last Newspaper
Boy in America
and The 12 days of Christmas in Virginia
will be presenting. This is a great time to meet the NNRC
Board and get information about the Council plus meet an interesting
author!
Research
Corner
So much research, so little time…
Kelly B. Cartwright,
Ph.D.
Expressiveness
is
Important, Too: Prosody’s Role in Comprehension
Benjamin, R. G., &
Schwanenflugel, P.
J. (2010). Text complexity and oral reading
prosody in
young readers. Reading Research Quarterly,
45(4),
388-404.
Fluency: we have heard much about it in recent
years, and we
know it’s important for our students’ reading success.
Fluency has three components: rate, accuracy,
and expressiveness; and we assess our children’s rate and accuracy
quite
frequently – with PALS assessments, DRAs, and even with quarterly
running
records. Rate and accuracy tell us much
about whether our students can decode automatically, and this is
certainly
important for developing reading skill. But, what
about
expressiveness? PALS and DRA both
include expressiveness ratings. What
does expressiveness do for our students?
Well, researchers Rebecca Benjamin and Paula
Schwanenflugel
just published a study that helps to answer that question.
Children were given easy (on grade level) and
difficult (above grade level) texts to read orally, and their rate,
accuracy,
expressiveness, and comprehension were assessed. The researchers found
differences in students’ processing of easy and difficult texts (not
surprisingly). What they found, however,
is intriguing. On easy texts,
expressiveness was not related to children’s comprehension. However, on difficult texts, expressiveness
played a significant role in comprehension. That is, the more
expressive a
child was when reading a difficult text, the better her comprehension. Benjamin & Schwanenflugel concluded that
children use expressiveness as a tool to scaffold their understanding
of more
difficult texts. In that sense, we can
think of expressiveness as a strategy children can use to help
themselves focus
on texts’ meanings.
This has important implications for instruction.
Rather than
just teaching children that they should “sound like good readers” or
that their
“reading should sound like talking,” we may consider explaining that
“when our
reading sounds like talking, we understand stories better!”
Children’s Book Review
Read to Me, I’ll
Read
to You
Book Review
By Carolyn England
Bethel Manor Elementary
School
Want a great
way to build fluency with your students? Want
to find an interesting book to have 2
students read together? Check out Read
to Me, I’ll Read to You books by Mary Ann Hoberman.
Not only are they for two voices, they are in
three colors – one for you, one for me and one for us.
There are four versions of this book. My
favorite is Very Short Fairy Tales. They
are familiar stories with a little twist
(fracture) of the original. There’s also
Very Short Stories, Very Short Scary Tales and the newest Very Short
Fables. Let 2 readers pick a story, read
it together several times and then read it to the class as a fun fluent
story.
Professional
Book
Review
Professional Report
Review – October 2010
Newport News
Reading Council, Quill
Kelly B. Cartwright,
Ph.D.
Shanahan,
T., Callison, K., Carriere, C., Duke, N. K., Pearson, P. D.,
Schatschneider,
C., & Torgesen, J. (2010). Improving
reading
comprehension in kindergarten through 3rd grade: A practice guide (NCEE
2010-4038).
Washington, DC: National Center
for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education
Sciences, U.S.
Department of Education. Retrieved from http://whatworks.ed.gov/publications/practiceguides
The Institute for Education Sciences just released a
new
Practice Guide that summarizes the research on comprehension
instruction for
primary grades students, prepared by a panel of well-respected experts
in
reading comprehension instruction. Five recommendations emerged from
their
work, and these are listed below (quoted from p. 1 of the report).
Recommendation 1: Teach
students how to use reading comprehension strategies.
Recommendation 2:
Teach students to identify and use the text’s organizational structure
to
comprehend, learn, and remember content.
Recommendation 3:
Guide students through focused, high-quality discussion on the meaning
of text.
Recommendation 4:
Select texts purposefully to support comprehension development.
Recommendation 5: Establish
an engaging and motivating context in which to teach reading
comprehension.
These recommendations are supported by research
evidence and
are effective specifically for our youngest comprehenders: children in
kindergarten through third grade! The report is an easy read, and I
highly
recommend it to (1) learn something new about comprehension instruction
in
primary grades or to (2) brush up on our current knowledge.
Kudos
to Dr. Kelly Cartwright
Dr. Kelly Cartwright,
who
has served as an officer on the NNRC
Board and is now our University Liaison, has authored a book of her
research
that has recently been published. The
title of the book is Word Callers and is being published
through
Heinemann Publishers. “Word callers are
so focused on letters and decoding that their minds don’t knit together
the
meaning of the words they are reading.
The diverse interventions in this book all address this
inflexibility,
helping these children to become better able to process meaning
alongside letter
information” says Dr. Cartwright. Visit
www.heinemann.com to read sample chapters of the book and to place
orders. Dr. Cartwright will be presenting
a workshop
at the Fall Conference on her research and strategies.
We are all proud of her accomplishment!
TOP TEN
REASONS FOR JOINING NNRC
At $25,
membership in the NNRC and VSRA is a bargain. Here
are some of the benefits of membership:
*Reading Council workshops are free
*Membership in the Virginia State Reading Association
*Reduced registration for the annual VSRA conference
*Four NNRC and Four VSRA newsletters per year
*Annual VSRA journal-Reading In Virginia
*Teachers as Readers groups
*Textbook Scholarships
*Legislative advocacy
*Professional networking
*Recognition through awards for outstanding teachers, administrators,
and school reading programs
This fall we are offering two incentives to join the Reading Council:
The school with the highest
percentage of members by
November 11th will receive a $100 gift certificate to Parents Teacher
Supply.
One school from Newport
News,
one from York County, and one from Poquoson will win.
NNRC is an organization that offers an opportunity for professional
growth to
the individual and the profession as a whole. Join
today.
NNRC 2010 - 2011 Textbook
Scholarship Application
Textbook
scholarships (up to $100
per person) are available to NNRC
members who are currently under contract or are full-time students
pursuing a
degree in the field of reading. Please submit the complete application with
your receipt(s) attached to Carol Clark – YCSD Yorktown
Elementary School
by November
30, 2010.
Teachers as
Readers Grant Application
(TAR)
NNRC will fund TEN
Teachers
as Readers groups in schools throughout our council.
Each group will be awarded $100 for
professional books. For your group to be
considered, fill out this application and send
it to Holly Rutledge at Bethel
Manor Elementary
School by November 21, 2010. Each group selected should
submit a receipt
for books purchased by December 12, 2010.
If your group receives the grant, a written
description of what the group has done will need to be submitted to the
Board by
May 8, 2011 EVERYONE
IN YOUR GROUP MUST BE A NNRC
MEMBER.
2010-2011
Titles
Primary (K-3)
- Chester. Melanie Watt, Kids
Can
Press,
2007.
- Dog
and Bear:Two Friends-Three Stories. Laura
Vaccaro
Seeger, Roaring
Brook
Press,
2007.
- Duck!
Rabbit! Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Chronicle, 2009.
- Hansel
and Gretel. Rachel Isadora, Putnam,
2009.
- I
Ain’t Gonna Paint No More! Karen
Beaumont, Harcourt, 2005.
- I’m
the Biggest Thing in the Ocean. Kevin
Sherry, Dial, 2007.
- Katie
Loves the Kittens. John Himmelman, Holt, 2008.
- Rhyming
Dust Bunnies. Jan Thomas,
Simon & Schuster,2009.
- Too
Many Toys. David Shannon,
Blue Sky Press, 2008.
- Wangari’s
Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa. Jeanette
Winter, Harcourt, 2008.
Elementary
(3-5)
1.
Alvin Ho:
Allergic to Girls,
School, and Other Scary Things. Lenore
Look, Schwartz, 2008.
2.
Blown
Away. Joan Hiatt Harlow, Simon &
Schuster, 2007
3.
Chicken
Feathers. Joy Cowley, Philomel, 2008.
4.
The
Dragon
in
the Sock Drawer. Kate Klimo,
Random House, 2008.
5.
The
Gollywhopper
Games. Jody Feldman,
Greenwillow, 2008.
6.
Gully’s
Travels.
Tor Seidler,
Scholastic, 2008.
7.
Lady
Liberty: A Biography.
Doreen Rappaport, Candlewick, 2008.
8.
The
Magic
Half. Annie Barrows,
Bloomsbury, 2009.
9.
Martina
the
Beautiful
Cockroach.
Carmen Agra Deedy, Peachtree, 2008.
10. Masterpiece. Elise Broach, Henry Holt,
2008.
Middle
School
(6-8)
1.
After
Tupac and D Foster. Jacqueline
Woodson, Putnam Young Adult,
2008.
2.
All
of the Above. Shelly Pearsall,
Little Brown, 2008.
3.
The
Best
Bad
Luck I Ever Had. Kristin
Levine, Putnam, 2009.
4.
Breathe: A Ghost Story. Cliff
McNish,
First
Avenue Editions, 2009.
5.
The Girl Who Could Fly. Victoria
Forester,
Feiwel
& Friends,
2008.
6.
Little Audrey. Ruth
White, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2008.
7.
The London Eye Mystery. Siobhan
Dowd,
Random
House, 2008.
8.
Shooting the Moon. Frances O’Roark Dowell, Atheneum, 2008.
9.
T4 a novel. Ann Clare
Lezotte, Houghton Mifflin, 2008.
10.
The Underneath. Kathi
Appelt, Simon & Schuster
Children’s, 2008.
Students
in
school
may read these
books and vote on their favorites. What
a great reading project for a classroom!
See the VSRA website for more information.
Upcoming
Events
Newport News/Hampton
Reading Councils
Fall Conference
October 25, 2010
Phenix School
Big Bethel Road, Hampton
4:00-6:30
Meet
the Author Night
November 17
at 7:00
Gloucester
Library
44th Annual VSRA Conference
Roanoke, VA
For more information, log on
to: www.vsra.org
The
Quill