Harry Potter Preview

Have you seen the latest Harry Potter Preview!  Gives me chills!  Can't wait till November!

http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/23/new-harry-potter-trailer-shows-off-dark-times/?hpt=Sbin

Text Messaging

I am getting quite fast at my text messaging lately which is why this article came to mind.  

Using text message language – the OMGs, m8s and 2mros – does not harm children’s spelling abilities, new research suggests, and may even be a good sign.

The study, carried out by Canadian researchers at the University of Alberta, suggested that children who are good at spelling “real” words are also good at spelling in text speak. 

Professor Connie Varnhagen, who led the research, said: "Kids who are good spellers [academically] are good spellers in instant messaging. 

"And kids who are poor spellers in English class are poor spellers in instant messaging." 

It did find that boys who used text speak frequently tended to be worse spellers. However, girls who used a lot of abbreviations tended to be better. 

The study also found that children using text speak were using a lot of newly created words. One of the researchers, Nicole Pugh, said: "We would have to decipher the meaning of the language with online dictionaries or by asking younger siblings." 

The researchers suggest that their trial should lead to an easing of concern over the use of text speak, and teachers should perhaps start thinking of ways that the new language can be used educationally. 

By Tom Chivers
Published: 10:31AM BST 23 Sep 2009

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6221875/Text-message-speak-not-harmful-to-childrens-spelling-says-research.html

See it to Believe it!

Looking to decorate a public or school library?  How about a classroom?  Need the perfect gift for a teacher?  Then, please, take the time to link over to this amazing sculpters portfolio of literacy based sculptures.  All I can say is WOW!  When is the exhibit and I'm there!


http://www.sublackwell.co.uk/portfolio-book-cut-sculpture/

Great Quote 2

“The deep-read is when you get gut-hooked and dragged overboard down and down through the maze of print and find, to your amazement, you can breathe down there after all and there’s a whole other world. I’m talking about the kind of reading when you realize that books are indeed interactive. . . . I’m talking about the kind of deep-read where it isn’t just the plot or the characters that matter, but the words and the way they fit together and the meandering evanescent thoughts you think between the lines: the kind of reading where you are fleetingly aware of your own mind at work.”

–Tim Wynne-Jones, “The Survival of the Book”

Tailoring to Boy Readers

Nicholas Kristof has an interesting column on the gender gap in verbal skills. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28kristof.html?_r=1&sudsredirect=true

Boys may still be ahead when it comes to math skills, but girls are well ahead of their male counterparts in verbal skills. Kristof writes:

Many theories have been proposed. Some people think that boys are hard-wired so that they learn more slowly, perhaps because they evolved to fight off wolves more than to raise their hands in classrooms. But that doesn’t explain why boys have been sinking in recent decades.

A Web site, guysread.com, offers useful lists of books to coax boys into reading, and they are helpfully sorted into categories like “ghosts,” “boxers, wrestlers, ultimate fighters,” and “at least one explosion.”

A Harvard professor has this to say about this article:  

I’m not persuaded that gathering helped girls evolve to raise their hands in the classroom. And I wonder if the lag has something to do with the fact that, just as girls can wear skirts and pants, they also can read both the Nancy Drew series and the Hardy Boys. As a student once told me, his reading of The Secret Garden was constantly interrupted by astonished adults, who told him that the book was really for girls. He ended up reading it under the covers, with the help of a flashlight. There are, of course, many other signals sent to boys about books and reading. Rather than “nurturing boys with explosions” and coaxing them into reading books with ghosts, boxers, wrestlers, and bombers, maybe it’s time to change those signals. 

 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tatar/2010/03/30/402/

Check out this website below and see what your opinion is on the initiative to help boys enjoy reading more founded by the former Ambassador of Children's Literature, Jon Scieszka.  

http://www.guysread.com/