Exploring Student Response to Picturebooks

Book I want

It's on my list to buy.  Maybe it'll explain things that I can't seem to vocalize like how no one seems to be in my same situation with six kids and a dissertation looming.

From Cover to Cover

Jargoning

This is a lecture/discussion with a round table format with Dr. Glaser about jargonizing.  He is such a smart man!  I found this really informative.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6RpQelvS1k

This second video is a humorous example of jargonizing in action.  I think teachers tend to jargonize to kids and struggling readers definitely jargonize to improvise comprehension.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dM0rdnbeFs

Sampling

I found this powerpoint about research sampling helpful.  I'm so glad people out there make these available to the masses.  It saves me so much time!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be9e-Q-jC-0

Babies DVD

The director followed four babies in different parts of the world for one year each and then created this documentary.  Very interesting!

Storytime

Reading and Writing Genre with Purpose

Critical Literacy

A 20 minute presentation about using picture books to teach children critical literacy.  Based in Canada, they bring some interesting points and have some good quotes.  I liked the part about the lesson with third graders about which "voices" should be in the story but weren't. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pcB60_7iH0

Rereading favorite stories

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Children often request that favorite stories be read aloud.  This common practice of rereading favorite stories to children has attracted the attention of many scholars.  Researchers have questioned whether lasting cognitive and affective benefits result from repeated readings of the same story.  Investigators have sought to answer this question by studying the responses of children who have had the opportunity to hear repeated readings of the same story. 

• Children's comments and questions increase and become more interpretive and evaluative when they have listened to repeated readings, 
• children's discussed more aspects of the text and in greater depth.
• children elaborated more often and interpreted issues in the story
• children internalized the interaction that occurred between parent and child.  The child gradually took over conducting the reading
• the familiarity that comes with repeated readings enables children to reenact stories, modeling the parent or attempt to read stories on their own using illustrations and the experiences to reenact 
• the familiarity gained through the rereadings provides children with frameworks of background information that enable them to deal with the text on a variety of levels. 

p. 571-2

Morrow L., & Gambrell, L. (2000). Literature-Based Reading Instruction. In M.L. Kamil, P.B. Mosenthal, P.D. Pearson, & R. Barr (Eds.), Handbook of reading research: Volume III (pp. 563-586). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.  

Text as Authority

I read this article about a recent experiment done with preschoolers and whether they trust and obey directions when they are written in print versus given orally. 

This is the kind of nerdy stuff I find fascinating.  Plus, they used puppets.  That got my attention.  Check it out!

http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/kinderlab/want-fool-kid-put-it-writing

True Dat.

Appreciative Inqury

What is Appreciative Inquiry?  Ever heard of it? It's an interesting idea for leadership, management and business.  I think it could apply to education too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwGNZ63hj5k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzW22wwh1J4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JDfr6KGV-k

It reminds me of a book I like called Strength Finders, which focuses on people's strengths as part of a team rather than fixing the weak points.  I review it in more detail HERE.

Knowledge to Support the Teaching of Reading

If I was a principal or a reading coach, this would be purchased for every teacher in the elementary school and discussed in small groups book club style.  It is excellent and has everything you need to increase teacher knowledge about the teaching of reading.  BUY IT!

Positivity

This website article blew my mind.  I want to try this with my kids, with a class, by myself.  It seems simply amazing.  Can words change the physical world?

http://www.powerofpositivity.com/scientific-proof-the-power-of-positivity-alters-our-physical-world/

The Texts in Elementary Classrooms

Causation is not correlation

Studying statistics makes your brain a foggy haze of numbers, at least to me it does.  This was a link I liked to make numbers a little more entertaining to me.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/kjh2110/the-10-most-bizarre-correlations

StrengthsFinder 2.0

This book was recommended to me by my sister and we have two copies of it on our bookshelf.  My husband and I have both taken the test and written our strengths in the inside book jacket.  

We've compared our strengths, which are very different than one another.  In fact, we don't have any overlapping ones, which was a conversation in itself.  When you buy this book it comes with access to an online test which gives you a report at the end.  The book chapters detail each strength.  

If you like self-help books, leadership and management theories, and psychology, get this book.  I loved it.  

Handwriting

Handwriting has always been an interesting thing to me.  I can recall consciously changing mine in fourth grade because I wanted more loopy letters and later changing mine in seventh for a more sophisticated slant.

This New York Times article reviews a few studies about the value we place on handwriting and what the skill really teaches.

A quote I liked said, "Children not only learn to read more quickly when they first learn to write by hand, but they also remain better able to generate ideas and retain information. In other words, it’s not just what we write that matters — but how."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/science/whats-lost-as-handwriting-fades.html?smid=fb-share&_r=1

Powerful Single Stories

I just love TED talks.  This one about The Danger of a Single Story got my attention as a researcher and as an avid lover of storytelling.  19 minutes of time well spent.

https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story#t-399884