Call for Submissions - Your Chance to Publish!

Dear Jennifer, We invite you to consider submitting an article for publication in our 2018 Primer Journal-Teaching Literacy Today: Relating Research to Practice. Topics may include but are not limited to cultural literacy, visual literacy, critical literacy, disciplinary literacy and other facets of reading and language arts. Deadline for Submissions is March 1, 2018. Please submit articles to: Jo Ann Thompson. Sample Primer Article. Manuscript Submission Guidelines The Primer welcomes original contributions on all facets of reading, language arts, and literacy education. Guidelines are as follows: Manuscripts are limited to no more than 6,000 words including references and other material (tables, charts, etc.) Manuscripts should be double-spaced in 12 point font and should be saved as Microsoft Word documents Manuscripts should be prepared according to the style specified by the most recent edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) style manual Each manuscript should include a cover sheet containing (a) the manuscript title, (b) the author’s name, affiliation, position, preferred mailing address, email address, telephone number(s), and fax number. No identifying information should appear elsewhere in the manuscript.

How to Stop Killing the Love of Reading

How to Stop Killing the Love of Reading

An article by Jennifer Gonzalez, from her blog, Cult of Pedagogy

If I had to pick one thing that makes the biggest difference in the quality of any person’s education, the quality of their life, really, it would be reading. And I’m not really talking about basic literacy—not about the ability to read—I’m talking about reading for pleasure, to satisfy curiosities, to understand how people work and find solace in knowing we are not the only ones who think and feel the way we do.

That kind of reading.

But when I see what my kids do in school for “reading,” it doesn’t really look like reading. 

Patterns of Organization for Teaching Non-Fiction

Here is the latest blog post from Keys to Literacy, on teaching Patterns of Organization or Text Structures to help students learn to read non-narrative non-fiction.

Patterns of Organization

New Strategy for Teaching Non-Fiction

Comic Book Templates: An Entry Point into Nonfiction

Check out this short video from Teaching Channel about Teaching Non-Fiction – 

a brilliant strategy using comic book templates to help students identify text structures and attributes of non-fiction in a graphic way.

How to Get Students to Actually Read a Teacher’s Essay Comments

In this Cult of Pedagogy article, high-school teacher Kristy Louden says it was incredibly disheartening when students looked at the grade on papers she’d carefully annotated and either tossed their paper away or consigned it to the depths of a backpack. “Wow, glad I put so much time into that assignment,” was Louden’s sotto voce reaction. “Not only did I feel like I had wasted my time; I felt like they just didn’t care. And then the snowball of thoughts would start: How will they survive if they don’t care about feedback? What’s going to happen in college? Or when they get jobs?” She confesses that this often led her to put off reading students’ papers for days at a time.

After nine years of suffering through this unproductive dynamic, Louden stumbled upon a process that has worked remarkably well for her.

Click here to read about her process.

Student Self-Assessment

An article from Mind/Shift called
How to Build Self-Assessment Into Jampacked High School Classes
highlighting 3 great new strategies:

1. Monthly Student E-mail to Parents
2. Writing Feedback using Anchor Papers and Kaizena, a Google tool
3. Collaborative Reading using Perusall, an app

"Helping students learn to evaluate their own work is a crucial skill that taps into their metacognitive abilities."

Educator Goals

Educator Goals
Click on the link above to see your colleagues' goals for the year. If you see a goal that you think you can help a colleague reach through your support or materials or consultation, please let them know that you can help! This is called Professional Collaboration, which is under the Professional Culture standard on the Educator Rubric. And it's good practice!