Literacy Now

There is nothing International Reading Association would ask educators to do that we aren’t willing to do ourselves. So when the International Literacy Day 60-for-60 challenge was launched, asking teachers to engage their students in an extra 60 seconds of literacy-focused activities every day for 60 days, we wanted to get in on the fun, too.  As a staff, we agreed to take part in the challenge and squeeze an extra minute  into our days. Every weekday for 12 weeks, we’ll complete an activity from the ILD 2014 kit (get yours here). The kit contains suggested activities for ages 4 to 15+, including a category that’s appropriate for students of all ages. We’ve chosen variety of activities from each of the age groups and are tackling them in two-week intervals. For example, today we are finishing up the “Would You Rather…” activity (from the ages 4 to 8 section). Every day our social media strategist, Jayme Gravell, sent a question to the entire staff at IRA. We took a minute to think about it and debate our answers with co-workers and/or email a response to Jayme.

Here’s a sampling of our questions and answers:

Would you rather watch a Quidditch match or the Triwizard Tournament?

Anette Schuetz, creative services manager: "Quidditch is a wizarding sport played on broomsticks. Having been accused of riding a broomstick to work, I find this sport engaging!”

Would you rather live in Narnia or Oz?

Sara Long, web content manager: “That is a really tough question! I definitely wouldn't want to live in Narnia when it's winter all of the time without Christmas. After spring returns, though, Narnia is beautiful with all of the talking animals and creatures, but so is Oz. I guess I'd choose Narnia because I'd rather live in a place with a powerful Aslan than a bumbling Wizard.”

Would you rather take a ride in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Stephen King’s Christine?

Vicki Morris, accounting and finance assistant: “This is an easy one for me. I would rather ride in Christine since I am a huge Stephen King fan (and I would be nice to her), as opposed to the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (I don’t fly in anything anymore).”

Would you rather have the power of invisibility or the power to fly?

Lara Deloza, communications manager: Hands down: power to fly. Because who wants to be invisible? Sure, it SOUNDS good in theory, but in practice? You’d end up seeing things you could never unsee, hearing things you could never unhear. Plus, flying is just awesome. And you’d save a heck of a lot on gas.

Would you rather take Ophelia or Juliet to the prom?

Bill Hyman, purchasing/facilities/contracts manager: “Can I go with neither? I mean they both died, and who needs that aggravation, am I right?”

Play along with today’s question: “Would you rather have street smarts or book smarts?”

As for our next activity, Jayme will send out a “word of the day” and its definition to staff. The challenge will be to see who can work the word into conversation as much as possible each day. Want to join in? Follow @IRAToday on Twitter starting Monday, September 22. Tell us how you’ve made the word yours over the course of the day!

Don’t forget to share all of your 60-for-60 activities with us. Email stories and photos to social@/ or post them to Twitter or the IRA Facebook page using the hashtag #ILD14.

April Hall is the editor of Reading Today Online. She can be reached at ahall@/.

As teachers, we are fortunate to see positive change in our classrooms every day. To make a difference in my community, I look to my local council, the Toledo Area Council of the International Reading Association (TACIRA) in Ohio, to volunteer my time. And this year’s council service opportunities really touched my heart.

In 2013–2014, TACIRA collaborated with Cancer Connection of Northwest Ohio (CCNWO). Our work together has made our members aware of several important issues within our community. We have now learned that there are not many resources for children with cancer, there are very few resources for teachers who may have a student with cancer and there are many misconceptions about cancer,
especially childhood cancer.

We supported CCNWO by offering resources to assist with teacher education about cancer and share the goals of raising awareness for children with cancer in the Toledo area. We also offered insight into creating a cancer awareness program for schools with resources found on teacher websites, assisted with research to help CCNWO reach educators, and sought out materials from other cancer agencies to help with teacher education about students with cancer. Our members even worked together to reach out to our local chemotherapy patients served by CCNWO. TACIRA opened our September meeting during National Childhood Cancer week to be the first organization to view the CCNWO PowerPoint presentation.

In September, I met a 7-year-old girl, Zoey, by chance.

She was at the hospital to give out her rubber band bracelets to patients while visiting and comforting her grandfather who was undergoing chemotherapy. Zoey was asked to leave the cancer hospital due to an emergency at the facility. I got in touch with Zoey’s family to see if she would like to sell her bands
for the Toledo Council’s Childhood Cancer Awareness project.

The Zoey Band sale was very successful, and the Council sold out at our first meeting. The money raised was used to purchase the materials for the holiday ornament project to reach out to chemotherapy patients at several clinics and hospitals.

Hundreds of area students made handmade ornaments and cards with a positive message using readwritethink.org’s interactive tool to create theme poems. We were able to purchase 200 ornaments thanks to Zoey Bands. This Childhood Cancer Awareness project resulted in additional supports from Mercy College of Ohio, who attended our TACIRA meetings and presented to their students about the efforts of our local IRA council and sold Zoey Bands there at the college. CCNWO was awarded funds to support the needs of children with cancer in part due to our work to spread the word. Several members of the medical college and Cancer Connection of NWO are now members of TACIRA.

The children served by CCNWO were invited to attend our May 2014 Children’s Literacy Day event at the Wildwood Metro Park, a collaboration with Metro Parks of Toledo. More than 600 parents, teachers, and students attended the event to meet award-winning Ohio Author David FitzSimmons (Curious Critters series), and many of our members purchased and donated Curious Critters books for the children attending!

To further connect literacy with healing, I collaborated with Jean Schoen, founder and director of CCNWO, to develop a children’s book for cancer awareness. Created by CCNWO, Someone I Know Has Cancer helps children who may have loved ones with cancer. We are very proud of all that we were able to do to help CCNWO, and we hope to continue making a difference in our community. For more information about our council, see www.tacira.org. To find your local IRA council, see /councils.

Julie Greenberg is the TACIRA President, a reading teacher and intervention specialist at Coy Elementary, Oregon City Schools, and has been an IRA member since 2008.

Have some news you want to share with the whole of International Reading Association? Want to spotlight a colleague’s accomplishment or announce your own? In the ongoing effort to better serve our subscribers, Reading Today recently started a “Member Spotlight” section with the spotlight on—you guessed it—our members.

If you take a look at the September/October issue of the magazine, you’ll notice the section has pertinent information about free benefits for IRA members, as well as a new feedback page called “In Your Words.” Starting in the November/December issue, we’ll take it a step further with our “News & Notes” member news page.

Members should submit career news, including new books published (professional development, fiction, nonfiction, etc.), awards/grants, promotions/retirements, and the like. Please include contact information and links to background information, if applicable, for verification. Photographs must be 300 dpi for reproduction and may be PNG, JPEG or GIF files. Submissions, which must be 200 words or less, may be edited for clarity or length, and IRA reserves the right to all final editorial decisions. Due to space, anything not included in Reading Today may be published on Reading Today Online.

Submissions should be sent either in Word or copied into the e-mail, with separate photo attachments, to readingtoday@/ with the subject line “News & Notes.”

For your news to be included in the debut “News & Notes” page in the November/December issue, submissions must be sent by Oct. 8.

April Hall is the editor of Reading Today Online. She can be contacted at ahall@/.

As the school bell rings and we saddle up for another year in the classroom, International Reading Association publishes “Essential Reading for Back to School,” a new, cross-journal virtual issue featuring popular articles from the IRA’s three respected journals. The Reading Teacher (RT), Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy (JAAL), and Reading Research Quarterly (RRQ) provide tips and industry news, from advice on close reading to advancements in literacy research. The 11 pieces included in this issue are free. 

From The Reading Teacher

Articles in RT include step-by-step guidance from experts in literacy, as well as suggestions for creating rich classroom experiences to ensure success. In this virtual issue, “How Do I Write…? Scaffolding Preschoolers’ Early Writing Skills” by Sonia Q. Cabell, Laura S. Tortorelli, and Hope K. Gerde looks at how the first writing experiences for preschoolers can be greatly enhanced by productive writing instruction and encouragement.

Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey’s “Scaffolded Reading Instruction of Content-Area Texts” focuses on the complexity of the texts chosen for small-group instruction. Similarly, “Words, Words Everywhere, But Which Ones Do We Teach?” by Michael F. Graves, James F. Baumann, Camille L. Z. Blachowicz, Patrick Manyak, Ann Bates, Char Cieply, Jeni R. Davis, and Heath Von Gunten delves into the challenges teachers face when selecting vocabulary words.

In their RT article, Kathleen Roskos and Susan B. Neuman shed light on improving children's motivation to read, proficiency in reading, and their likelihood to become lifelong readers and writers in “Best Practices in Reading: A 21st Century Skill Update.”

From the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy

Published specifically for teachers of older learners, JAAL offers practical ideas for the classroom, as well as reviews of young adult literature and advice for integrating cultural trends into teaching style. The virtual issue includes the JAAL article “Close Reading as an Intervention for Struggling Middle School Readers” by Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey examining the effectiveness of close reading for struggling middle school students.

Zhihui Fang suggests moving toward discipline-specific language and literacy strategies in “Preparing Content Area Teachers for Disciplinary Literacy Research.”  Mary Beth Monahan’s “Writing ‘Voiced’ Arguments About Science Topics” is a teacher research study advocating the importance of “voice” in writing compelling scientific arguments. “Text Complexity and Young Adult Literature” by Marci Glaus, points out that providing broad, qualitative evaluations of fiction is an important variable of English language arts instruction, especially as high school students prepare for college and careers.

From Reading Research Quarterly

For those interested in diverse viewpoints on educational practices and reports of vital studies, RRQ is dedicated to literacy scholarship for learners of all ages. “Teachers’ Instruction and Students’ Vocabulary and Comprehension: An Exploratory Study With English Monolingual and Spanish-English Bilingual Students in Grades 3–5” by Rebecca D. Silverman, C. Patrick Proctor, Jeffrey R. Harring, Brie Doyle, Marisa A. Mitchell, and Anna G. Meyer explores the relationship between teacher instruction and student vocabulary and investigates whether the relationship differs for multilingual students.

Thomas G. White, James S. Kim, Helen Chen Kingston, and Lisa Foster summarize an experimental study on the part poverty plays in summer reading programs with “Replicating the Effects of a Teacher-Scaffolded Voluntary Summer Reading Program: The Role of Poverty.” In “Effects of Educational Technology Applications on Reading Outcomes for Struggling Readers: A Best-Evidence Synthesis,” Alan C.K Cheung and Robert E. Slavin discuss the effectiveness of educational technology in improving the reading skills of struggling students.

Read and share IRA’s free cross-journal virtual issue now through the end of December. Interested in gaining access to more reports on the latest research and reflections on education across the globe? Join the International Reading Association and subscribe to RT, JAAL, and RRQ to receive issues throughout the year, view online editions and supplementary material to keep current on new studies, best practices, and resources in literacy.

Morgan Ratner is a communications intern at the International Reading Association.

The school year has gotten off the ground and there is no better time for teachers to remember why they walked into the classroom in the first place. The next #IRAchat at 8 p.m. Sept. 11 focuses on keeping the passion for teaching alive. Joining us for the hour-long chat will be Meenoo Rami, English teacher at the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, PA. As the author of Thrive: 5 Ways to (Re)Invigorate Your Teaching, she provides a fresh outlook on teaching and is ready to answer questions and give advice.

Discussion will include why it is important for educators to remain inspired and use new tools to excite students, and how encouragement and motivation can help students realize their full potential and reach towards higher goals.

To join the conversation, search for the #IRAchat hashtag on Twitter. If you’re unfamiliar with Twitter, you can learn how to get started and make the most of your experience by reading Fly to Twitter for Online PD.

“Creating an environment that encourages innovation, risk-taking, and willingness to try new things is important in any school that wants innovative practices in their classrooms,” she said. “Change is possible when the teachers have the space to grow, and support from administration when things don’t work out as planned.”

Rami also said having mentors is beneficial, and that being a mentor is important, too.

“Sometimes,” she says, “just sharing your own journey and struggles to your current position can offer hope and a long-term view on a fulfilling career to a teacher who is just starting out.”

As the creator of #engchat every Monday at 7 p.m. EST, Rami developed a network of English teachers connected through Twitter to share ideas, advice, and encouragement. To join that chat, search #engchat on Twitter.

“I wanted to be inspired by other educators and create an easy way for teachers to share ideas, resources, and questions about their work with students,” she says.

“[It is] imperative for us to connect as teachers because it is only by sharing our ideas and questions about our work that we can get better at it.”

Feel free to tweet your questions during Thursday night’s chat and don’t forget to use #IRAchat.

Morgan Ratner is a communications intern for the International Reading Association.