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The Big Fresh from Choice Literacy
February 2, 2008 The Great Equalizer
Good things, when short, are twice as good.
Baltasar Gracian
"Louella" is a rollicking honky tonk tune sung by Texas blues
artist Marcia Ball. I always crank up the car stereo and smile
when I hear her drawl out these words to introduce the song:
One day at a domino game in Austin, Texas, somebody opened up a
good old Christian songbook. And written in the margin of one of
the songs in an old-fashioned hand in pencil was, "Why in the devil
would you want to tell Louella everything you know?"
Think what a master class those 47 words are in the power of short
text. There are so many literary devices and reading strategies
you could teach with that brief passage - foreshadowing, the
importance of details, voice, sense of place, background knowledge...
Short text has always been the great equalizer in reading and
writing workshops. Brief passages of fiction, nonfiction, and
poetry can be read by a class together in just a few minutes, or
read aloud so that even students who struggle with decoding have
the same access to the text as their classmates. Short texts build
classroom community, because the passages shared over time become
anchors or touchstones for learning that can be returned to again
and again.
This week we've got a simple staff development activity to help
teachers build curricular connections between short texts found in
the newspaper and learning in content areas. Plus a link to a
wonderful new book on short text that is posted in full on the net.
And more as always - Enjoy!
Brenda Power Editor, Choice Literacy
Free for All
In "Finding the Hook," Ruth Shagoury helps teachers in a
professional development workshop discover the versatility of the
daily newspaper as a source for short text:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/528.cfm
Folks, here is a great deal - the entire text of Kimberly
Campbell's new book Less is More: Using Short Text to
Differentiate Instruction is posted online by Stenhouse Publishers
for a limited time. You can browse chapters on using short text
from many genres, including poetry and graphic novels:
If you are looking for short text online, Project Gutenberg is the
best source for public domain text you can search, copy, and paste
for use in classrooms:
http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
Franki Sibberson's Writers in Transition DVD workshop kit has tools
that can help you as you design lessons with short text for your
classroom. The kit includes 95 minutes of video footage from
classroom minilessons, templates, small groups, and individual
conferences. The CD workshop guide includes 40 full-color pages of
templates, guiding questions, and supplemental readings. You can
preview footage from the DVD at this link:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/products/item12.cfm
For Members Only
Katie Doherty finds surveys of student reading habits and
preferences are really useful in the winter, after she knows her
students and they've settled into a routine. In this article, she
shares a sample reading survey she's adapted from Nancie Atwell's
work to use with her 6th graders:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/534.cfm
We all know that spelling instruction works best when it happens in
authentic learning contexts. Katie DiCesare takes on the challenge
of developing a one-page assessment tool to analyze the spelling
needs and abilities of each of her 1st graders. This is the first
in a series, as Katie takes us through the use of the tool in her
workshop over the next few weeks:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/529.cfm
A goal of many young readers is to graduate from picture books to
"big fat chapter books." In this video conference with
seven-year-old Elyse, Joan Moser demonstrates how the goal of
chapter book reading can be used in conferences as a catalyst for
the development of reading skills like summarizing:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/535.cfm
From the Choice Literacy Archives, Franki Sibberson pulls out just
a couple pages of text from the public domain book The Secret
Garden in this video of a whole-class lesson and paired reading
activity on character development. We've included a link to a copy
of the book on the web if you'd like to try the activity yourself:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/391.cfm
Finally, a hearty welcome to our newest site license members from
New Brunswick, Canada; Orlando, Florida; Oshkosh, Wisconsin;
Lebanon, Oregon; Princeton, New Jersey; and Comstock Park,
Michigan; as well as our renewing site licensees in Gillette,
Wyoming. If you're new to the site and wondering where to begin in
exploring our 400 features and videos, the Annotated Archives are
often a good place to start:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/department27.cfm
That's all for this week!
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