Search Results for: blog ways you can help spread literacy

Barnes & Noble Has a Kid’s Sale- For Just Four Days!

Barnes & Noble is having a sale on Kid’s books, toys, and items that are holiday favorites. This sale is going to last for only four days. It started December 3, 2010, and will continue through December 6, 2010. This is the perfect time to shop for gifts for the children in your family! A great way to encourage reading, and literacy, is to make certain that there are plenty of great books on hand, for young readers to pick up and enjoy. Take the time to read to your children, but don’t forget to let your children catch you … Continue reading →

What is GoodReads?

Those of you who are familiar with Shelfari will immediately catch the premise of GoodReads, which has essentially the same concept – recommend books to your friends and get recommendations back. But it’s not just about reading, it’s a whole social network. You start your GoodReads experience by creating an account. You can upload a picture or an avatar (or leave that field blank, but how boring is that?) add personal information or not, and create your profile to suit you. Then you start adding books to your list. You can search for authors’ names or titles, or you can … Continue reading →

Media Week in Review June 2nd-7th

Welcome to our Week in Review for Media! We started out with a review of “Hatchet” by best-selling adventure novelist, Gary Paulsen. When Brian’s parents divorce, Brian is sent elsewhere to live, and at the airport, his mother makes him a gift of a hatchet. That hatchet becomes his lifeline when the small plane crashes and Brian must learn to fend for himself in the wilderness. We then read “Chopping Spree” by Diane Mott Davidson. Caterer Goldy Schultz is hired to create a fabulous spread for some rich clients at the nearby shopping mall when the manager of the mall … Continue reading →

Literacy Links

Who can argue that literacy is one of the greatest blessings we have, one of the most important skills we need to learn, a gift that we give ourselves and to our children, and that helping someone else learn to read one of the most satisfactory experiences we can ever have? The written word is an astonishing thing. You can become educated and entertained with a book, you can learn new skills, escape to another place, receive spiritual enlightenment, find friendship when you’re lonely — I can think of no other medium that can give us all these things. As … Continue reading →

Not All Fiction is Fluff!

It’s been a little while since I’ve gone off on an editorial-type rant, and after being good for so long, I’ve decided to break my silence in honor of Literacy Month. As a huge supporter of literacy, I talk to scores of people about the importance of being literate and how literacy can change lives. We all essentially agree that nonfiction is a valuable resource to help us to become educated, but there is a broad range of thought and feeling when it comes to fiction. For some, they’ll read anything voraciously and love every minute of it, others are … Continue reading →

Games for Reading – Peggy Kaye

September is National Literacy Month. In celebration of that, I thought I’d tell you about a great book for encouraging good read skills and for making reading fun and. The book is Games for Reading: Playful Ways to Help Your Child Read by Peggy Kaye. Games for Reading is divided into four parts that cover Games for Learning Words, Games for Learning Sounds, Games for Understanding, and Games for Reading Every Day. The reader will find all sorts of simple, homemade games that parents and teachers can make that will encourage the skills for successful reading. Most of the games … Continue reading →

Teaching Fluency To Older Readers

It is no secret that reading is absolutely necessary in life. It can be very hard to get by in life without knowing how to read. Even the smaller things in life would be hard. Things like ordering off a menu or reading labels off of grocery cans at the store. Let’s face it – reading is a necessity! We have heard about reading tips for helping to build fluency in younger readers. But what happens when older students need to build fluency too? Here are some great tips for helping older students to build reading fluency: Partner reading is … Continue reading →

Literacy Series: Statistics on Literacy

To start off our series on literacy, I would like to share with you some statistics gathered from the National Institute of Literacy. The United Nations declared a decade of literacy beginning in 2003, and they are reporting that significant strides are being made in the right direction, with nearly 4 billion literate persons worldwide, but at the same time, that leaves 781 million illiterate adults around the world, and about 64% of those are women. Let’s take a look at more of these statistics, paraphrased for easier consumption: • 34% of the world’s illiterate adults live in India. • … Continue reading →

Best Places on the Internet to Buy Books

Internet shopping is all the rage these days. We can sit at our computers, in our pajamas, no makeup on, and go shopping. There’s no driving from store to store, asking clueless salespersons for help and pushing our way through crowds with overloaded carts. We simply point and click. Within a few days our purchases are delivered right to our door by the friendly delivery man. We’re still in our pajamas, but he’s seen us in our pajamas before and it has ceased to faze him. Yes, indeed, the Internet is the way to go. As you can guess, one … Continue reading →

I Can’t Think of a Title. . .

. . .that’s how mad I am. The inability to think and communicate those thoughts on paper plagues our students in the inner city. I imagine it is a problem everywhere. . .but I know it’s a problem here. In fact, stating it’s a problem here really is an understatement–it’s an epidemic. Students are loosing the ability to communicate effectively and it’s no wonder. I was at a school this past week. The teacher had a bulletin board displaying the students’ work. The bulletin board featured the objective they were trying to accomplish and the students had to write mini-essays. … Continue reading →