The Reading Teacher. March 2006.

Some ideas on teaching reading and English from The Reading Teacher, March 2006, a publication of the International Reading Association.

Scale of the value of each idea to me, RayS.
*Not much interest because the ideas are not new or the topic is uninteresting to me.
** I'll think about it.
*** Very much interested.

What is bilingual writing?
Students write family stories in Spanish or English, or a combination of both, then translate them--with help. JE Dworkin. RT (Mar. 06), 510-520. **

How teach students to respond to reading?
Teacher reads to small group, interspersing questions while she reads. Students then re-tell the story. "Dialogic reading." BG Doyle and W Bramwell. RT (Mar. 06), 554. **

How do students write?
They change their methods depending on the type of writing requested. S Dix. RT (Mar. 06), 566-573. ***

How encourage students to read?
Students organize their own classroom libraries by categorizing the books in their classrooms. Need to arrive at a decision of how to categorize a particular book. Requires skimming in order to learn the content and type of book. JA Jones. RT (Mar. 06), 576. **

How help students remember details of what they have read?
Use story webs with events and partial details listed. Students than add details. TJ Arthaud and T Goracke. RT (Mar. 06), 581-586. *

What can be learned from an international reading assessment?
84% of students read fiction; 56% read nonfiction. Teacher autonomy associated with higher achievement. More resources correlate with achievement. High interest in computers correlates with reading performance. Pressure for reading achievement is a negative correlation. Grading systems do not correlate internationally. Pre-school correlates with highest achievement. Principals spend most of their time on administrative duties. Teachers had 15 hours or fewer on professional development. With fewer types of schools, higher performance. Children with high performance were read to at home. Higher reading performance correlated with more than 100 books at home. Higher achievement with parent involvement. Socio-economic indexes for the school were more important than individual's poor socio-economic status. Females outperformed males in all countries. Males read newspapers, comics, e-mail and Web pages for information. Time spent reading was an important indicator of the gap between good and poor readers. K Topping. RT (Mar. 06), 589-590. *** [RayS. I think I knew much of this, but individual points raise some interesting questions.]

What types of informal reading inventories should teachers use?
Phonemic awareness. Alphabet. Word recognition. Oral reading fluency. Comprehension through re-telling. Motivation through interviews and surveys. S Walpole and MC McKenna. RT (Mar. 06), 594. *** [RayS: OK, these tools will give the teacher some information on the student's "readiness" for reading--"reading readiness" is a "no-no" these days in favor of terms suggesting "development"--but the issue remains, in medicine and reading: after the diagnosis, what then?]

Other topics: Taped literary discussions; then students reflected on what they had learned from hearing the recorded discussion. Evaluating CD-Rom storybooks. Attempt to break apart assessment and accountability.