Literacy Now

Random House Children’s Books just announced that the prize package for the recipient of the 10th annual Magic Tree House Educator of the Year Award will include registration to the International Reading Association (IRA) 59th Annual Conference.

The coveted award is presented to an educator of Grades 1–4 who incorporates Magic Tree House books (both the fiction titles and nonfiction Fact Trackers) into the curriculum in an outstanding way. For over 20 years, Mary Pope Osborne’s bestselling and internationally beloved series about a brother and sister who travel through time has been trusted by educators for its ability to educate and entertain young readers.

Mary Pope Osborne


Natalie Pope Boyce

The grand-prize winner will receive a trip to the IRA Conference in New Orleans, May 9–12, 2014, to meet authors Mary Pope Osborne and Natalie Pope Boyce, and receive full access to the exhibits and programs plus a ticket to the Book & Author Luncheon where Osborne will make the keynote speech. The prize also includes two autographed sets of the entire Magic Tree House series, $500 worth of books from Random House Children’s Books, a $500 gift card for classroom supplies, and a Skype school visit with the authors.

Three runners-up will receive an autographed set of the Magic Tree House series and a $250 gift card for classroom supplies.

To be considered for the award, educators are asked to describe in 500 words or less how they use Magic Tree House books to meet objectives across the curriculum and address Common Core State Standards. They may also submit additional classroom materials that distinguish them.

Entries are accepted until January 15, 2014. The official entry form can be found at teachers.magictreehouse.com.

Lisa Nadel is the associate director of educational marketing at Random House Children's Books.

Photos by Elena Seibert. 

“Every School a Star” is just one successful projects formed through the union of Rotary International and the International Reading Association. Another is the Rotary International (RI)-International Reading Association (IRA)-Pearson Foundation Literacy Project Award given to two projects that successfully improved literacy in a specific community, including a $2,500 award. The only other stipulations (besides submitting the application by June 15, 2014) are that both an IRA council or affiliate and a Rotary Club are involved in the project.

“I don’t think many of our council members know that they can contact their local Rotarians and invite them out for coffee, or for a tour of a school,” says IRA Education Relations Specialist Margie Bell. “Rotary is generally very responsive to community needs and would like to be a part of the education community.”

The Guatemala Bookmaking project
was a 2012 award recipient 

Grant recipients will be notified on the first of July, 2014, and will be invited to obtain their award at IRA’s International Literacy Day in Washington, DC, in September 2014. It is worth noting the Pearson Foundation will kindly pay for the first night of lodgings for the winners in the contest.

Last year’s winners of this award were the Reading Rocks in Rockford and Guatemala Bookmaking. Reading Rocks sought to create a “Storybook Character Sidewalk Parade” by including a book fair and musicians. Guatemala Bookmaking, on the other hand, served 130 preschool through sixth grade Mayan children who spoke Cozal Ixil as their first language.

The Pearson Foundation

The Pearson Foundation is a non-profit organization focused on working with other businesses and institutions to find workable solutions to the educational disadvantages facing young people and adults across the globe. The Pearson Foundation seeks to increase literacy through programs such as “We Give Books” and the “New Learning Institute.” See www.pearsonfoundation.org for more information.

Rotary International

Rotary International is an organization interested in improving education and literacy and focused on promoting peace, preventing diseases, providing clean water and sanitation, enhancing maternal and child health, and helping communities develop. Rotary boasts over 1.2 million members and has been working to help education and communities for over 100 years. For more information, go to Rotary’s main page at www.rotary.org/en.

IRARI 

The IRA / Rotary International Partnership Special Interest Group (IRARI SIG) facilitates many Rotary-IRA partnerships and collaborative projects. The IRARI goals include creating ideas and projects to increase awareness of their joint projects in local and global communities. They also agree to lead sessions between the IRA and RI at their conferences. Learn more about IRARI at /irari.

Organizations Working Together

So by reaching out to other organizations and working alongside them, new friendships can be made and literacy can be enriched. The RI-IRA-Pearson Foundation Literacy Project Awards is a prime example of organizations and people working together for the sake of national and international literacy. 

For further information about the award and access to the application page, please consult the RI-IRA-Pearson Foundation Literacy Project Awards page.

Chelsea Miller is the strategic communications intern at the International Reading Association.

 

Albury Sayle Primary School in Nassau, The Bahamas, celebrated International Literacy Day with a parade of students, read-alouds, and a “Foodimals Festival” to coordinate with IRA’s “Invent Your Future” theme in conjunction with Sony Pictures Animation’s film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2.

Students of Grade 3 display their posters before leaving the school campus for the community walk.

Grade 5 students displaying their posters during the community walk.

A Grade 2 and Grade 6 student read to the children of the Willard Paton Pre-school. Also present are the District Education Officer Mr. Lightbourne and our school’s principal, Mrs. Katherine Rose. In the background, is a supportive parent Officer Davis. 

Miss Belizaire, a Grade 4 teacher, reads to students during the “Reading in the Park” community outreach program.

The school’s Principal, Mrs. Katherine Rose, reads Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs to the Grades 4–6 students.

Officer Ware, from the South Street Police Station opposite our school campus, volunteered to read to our Grade 4 students during the Volunteer reading sessions.

Foodimals, (that won the Foodimals Festival), on display in the campus foyer, outside of the main office. The winners from each grade level were presented with free movie passes to see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2.

Loreen Patrick is from the Albury Sayle Primary School in Nassau, The Bahamas.

Teachers attending the Delaware Department of Education’s Common Ground for Common Core professional development program this fall will hear presentations from three distinguished authors and educators—Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar, Linda Kucan, and Doug Buehl—whose appearance was arranged in partnership with the International Reading Association (IRA).

“We are pleased to be partnering with the Delaware Department of Education on this project,” explained Stephen Sye, IRA’s Associate Executive Director. “IRA is helping teachers across the country get the information and strategies they need to transition successfully to the Common Core, insuring that their students acquire college and career ready skills by the time they finish high school.”

Common Ground for Professional Development is a comprehensive program that involves meetings, clinics, convenings, feedback, and follow up sessions, as well as a series of webinars. Locations vary by district. Sessions for teachers from Kent and Sussex counties will be held in Dover, the remainder in New Castle County.

Annemarie
Sullivan Palincsar


Linda Kucan

Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar holds the Jean and Charles Walgreen, Jr. Chair of Reading and Literacy at the University of Michigan, and Linda Kucan is an associate professor in the Department of instruction and Learning at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Education. Co-authors of the new IRA title Comprehension Instruction through Text Based Discussion, they will lead a session on close reading from informational texts, a critical student skill under the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for English Language Arts, which Delaware has adopted and is now in the process of implementing.

Palincsar and Kucan will impart a set of discussion strategies designed to support student interaction with texts for the purpose of comprehending text ideas, as well as identifying and synthesizing evidence in support of discipline specific claims. Their presentations will take place on October 15 and 16, 2013 in the Elementary and English Language Arts Strand.

Doug Buehl

Doug Buehl, a teacher, professional development leader, and adolescent literacy consultant with 33 years of experience in the Madison Metropolitan School District, Madison, WI, is the author of the IRA titles Developing Readers in the Academic Disciplines and Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning, Fourth Edition, the newly released version of the Association’s top selling title. Buehl will offer reflections and strategic advice on the use of self-questioning as a foundational strategy for the “close reading” of texts called for under the CCSS. Participants in his workshops will engage in model lessons that demonstrate scaffolded instruction for mentoring the successful reading of complex information texts. The workshops will take place on October 15 and 16, 2013 as part of the Secondary English Language Arts Strand, as well as on October 17, 2013 as part of the Content Areas strand.

For detailed information visit www.doe.k12.de.us/commoncore or call 302-735-4180.

 

The International Reading Association (IRA) is excited to announce that popular children’s book authors Jeff Kinney, Dav Pilkey, Megan McDonald, Matt de la Peña, and Mary Pope Osborne and renowned educators P. David Pearson and Rafe Esquith will speak at the IRA 59th Annual Conference in New Orleans on May 9-12, 2014.

Jeff Kinney


Megan McDonald


Dav Pilkey


Matt de la Peña


P. David Pearson


Rafe Esquith


Mary Pope Osborne

Diary of a Wimpy Kid series author Jeff Kinney kicks off the conference at the Opening General Session on the morning of Saturday, May 10, 2014. Kinney was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World and was twice voted Author of the Year at the Children's Choice Book Awards. The Wimpy Kid series won Favorite Book at the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards three times.

Later on May 10, Megan McDonald, author of the Judy Moody and Stink series, will speak at the Primary Literature Author Luncheon. McDonald has penned over 60 books for children and young readers. Her hilarious Judy Moody books have won numerous awards, ranging from a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year to an International Reading Association Children's Choice to the first-ever Beverly Cleary Children’s Choice Award. McDonald also created a series featuring Judy’s brother, Stink, and The Sisters Club trilogy.

The General Session on Sunday, May 11, 2014 features Dav Pilkey, creator of the Captain Underpants series, which is now published in 22 languages. Pilkey also wrote the children’s favorites Dog Breath, winner of the California Young Reader Medal; The Paperboy, a Caldecott Honor Book; The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby, which debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list; and the Dumb Bunnies series.

Sunday’s Young Adult Literature Author Luncheon speaker is young adult novelist Matt de la Peña, author of the critically-acclaimed and award-winning books Ball Don’t Lie, Mexican WhiteBoy, We Were Here, and I Will Save You. He is expanding into younger children’s literature as well, with the release of the picture book A Nation’s Hope: The Story of Boxing Legend Joe Louis (illustrated by Kadir Nelson) and his middle grade contribution to the upcoming Guys Read: Thriller anthology.

The Closing General Session on Monday, May 12, 2014 will feature two additional luminaries. P. David Pearson, former dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, the nation’s foremost literacy researcher and chair of the IRA Literacy Research Panel, will offer research based perspectives on critical issues of literacy education. Rafe Esquith, author of the New York Times bestseller Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire, the only teacher to have been awarded the president’s National Medal of the Arts, will offer insights on dynamic classroom pedagogy. Esquith has thirty-plus years of experience as a classroom teacher and has been given the American Teacher Award, the Compassion in Action Award from the Dalai Lama, Kennedy Center/Stephen Sondheim Inspirational Teacher Award, Parents magazine’s As You Grow Award, Oprah Winfrey’s Use Your Life AwardTM, and People magazine’s Heroes Among Us Award.

The special guest for the Book and Author Luncheon on Monday is Mary Pope Osborne, author of the New York Times number one bestselling Magic Tree House series and co-author of The Magic Tree House Fact Tracker series, along with her husband, Will, and her sister Natalie Pope Boyce.

“The 2014 IRA Conference will offer literacy educators unparalleled opportunities to gain valuable new insights on literacy instruction, including the latest in research-based instruction, classroom-ready teaching ideas, and practical, ready to use ways to implement the Common Core State Standards in K-12 classrooms,” explains IRA President Maureen McLaughlin.

“We’re thrilled that so many literacy educators consider our conference their number one event for professional development and networking,” adds IRA Executive Director Marcie Craig Post. “We work to improve it each year, whether it’s including more or better programs on the latest hot topics or streamlining registration and services. We’ve been listening to attendees to determine what they want and need to improve their skills as many states transition to Common Core State Standards implementation. This year is guaranteed to be the best conference yet.” 

The IRA 59th Annual Conference will be held at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, from Saturday, May 10 through Monday, May 12, 2014, with an Institute Day on Friday, May 9. Registration will open in December 2013. For more information on programs, registration, and exhibits call 800-336-7323 (302-731-1600 international) or visit the official conference website at www.iraconference.org or follow #IRA14 on Twitter.