The Big Fresh from Choice Literacy
February 28, 2009
The Right Tool at the Right Time
This past week 30 new inches of snow fell in our area of rural
Maine. I know - I've written about the snow before, and if you're
sick of reading about it, just think of how tired I am of living in
it. I figure writing about the weather at least puts my readers in
Australia and Florida in a good mood as they don their shorts and
head out for the day.
Anyway, after we had the driveway cleared, my first stop was at
one of those big box hardware chain stores to pick up a roof rake.
For those of you who have the good fortune of never needing this
tool, it's exactly as it sounds - a rake on a long, lightweight
pole that allows you to scrape the snow and ice off your roof
before it all comes sliding down on your head.
I knew I would never be able to find the rake on my own in the huge
store, so I walked straight to the clerk at the information booth.
She shook her head sadly when I questioned her. "We've been out of
roof rakes for almost a month. You can't imagine how many people
have come through that door asking for them." I figured this might
be good luck on my part, because surely this meant more would be
coming in soon? "Oh no - we've moved onto spring merchandise," she
replied. "Just look at the displays - we won't have much available
for snow removal again for nine months." I glanced around, and
saw I was surrounded by patio furniture, deck umbrellas, and lawn
mowers. Just beyond the clerk's booth was a large array of small
flowers in pots waiting to be planted in gardens, already wilting
under the fluorescent lights.
The clerk and I looked at each other and burst out laughing.
Neither of us will be relaxing on a chaise lounge in the garden
with a gin & tonic watching our tulips bloom anytime soon. We have
over five feet of snow on the ground, and even if it
miraculously melted next week, the earth is frozen solid. Spring is
just around the corner somewhere - just not in this particular
corner of rural Maine.
Some central office geniuses for that hardware chain at a location
thousands of miles away are dictating what must be displayed and
stocked, even though they are far removed from their workers who
actually live near the stores. I'm not knocking the value of the
business - since it opened last year, we've purchased all sorts of
materials from them and even had their crew remodel our kitchen.
But isn't the primarily job of a hardware store to be able to
supply the right tool at the right time?
Literacy leaders always feel that tension of being tugged toward
the goals, mandates, and calendars designed by others who are
sometimes far removed from life on the ground in classrooms. If
you're feeling pulled in too many directions, it never hurts to ask
yourself - What's the most important thing I need to do, every day,
without fail? There are probably a thousand different right answers to that
question. One of them is certainly putting the right book at the
right time into the right hands. When the school gets engulfed in
test prep craziness and a colleague or student melts down, Testing
Miss Malarkey by Judy Finchler might be a perfect fit. When a
coworker takes a big risk in changing her curriculum and you're the
first to know, Walk On! by Marla Frazee is a funny and uplifting
pep talk in the guise of a children's book about first steps. We
are always reading with others in mind, stocking our mental shelves
with the tools people in our community will need to get through any
rough patch.
I hope you're treating yourself to lots of book browsing time these
days, no matter how many other demands there are for your
attention. Sometimes burying ourselves in books feels like a
guilty pleasure, since we're paid to do what we love best. But
it's not just reading - it's taking inventory, meeting needs, and
always connecting others to worlds beyond those in front of our
noses.
This week, we've got some terrific web resources for virtual
browsing of children's and young adult literature, plus more as
always. Enjoy!
Brenda Power
Editor, Choice Literacy
Free for All
Here are a couple features from the Choice Literacy Archives to
help you find the right book at the right time for your students
and colleagues.
If you rarely have time to get to the bookstore (or live far from
one), the web has many wonderful blogs chock-full of reviews,
author interviews, and the latest releases. Franki Sibberson
shares her favorite blogs in the kidlitosphere:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/194.cfm
If you had to choose only one professional text and one children's
or young adult book that you couldn't live without in your
teaching, what would you select? We've got the picks from over a
dozen of our contributing authors:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/427.cfm
Teachers Domain from WBGH in Boston has launched a new web-based
series of activities focused on struggling adolescent learners.
Inspiring Middle School Literacy is a set of multimedia-rich
self-paced lessons on the web in science and history to support the
learning of core reading and writing strategies. You can browse
the topics at this link:
http://www.teachersdomain.org/special/adlit/
March is Women's History Month, and the Wild Rose Reader has
compiled a master list of many different resources and booklists
of children's and young adult literacy that honor and instruct
about women's achievements:
http://tinyurl.com/c6enne
We've posted our full slate of Choice Literacy Workshop summer and
fall events, including new offerings on middle school reading
instruction,word work, nonfiction in the intermediate grades, and
dealing with assessment data. These new topics are in addition to
our popular offerings from last year on CAFE assessment, struggling
readers, literacy coaching, and the literacy principal in action:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/department22.cfm
For Members Only
It's mid-year, and many teachers are checking in with students for
more extended conferences assessing literacy strengths and needs.
Katie DiCesare shares her conferring format, template and two
sample writing conferences. The goal with these first graders is
to help them become more self-reflective and independent in
monitoring their work:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/843.cfm
If you are working in middle or high schools, the challenge is
finding a way to check in with over a hundred students with a
mid-year assessment. From the archives, Katie Doherty provides a
mid-year assessment survey and template that helps students home in
on their emerging skills and needs:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/534.cfm
What texts are appropriate for teaching comprehension strategies
to readers who are so young they may not yet be decoding texts?
Ruth Shagoury and Andie Cunningham present criteria for selecting
books for instruction, as well as two annotated booklists of
classic and more recent titles. These books are especially useful
in contexts with many English language learners:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/840.cfm
Finally, struggling readers require lots of attention in schools,
but supporting advanced young readers sometimes requires teaching
skills that are just as sophisticated. In Part II of "Harder Texts
Aren't Always the Answer," Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan offer
advice for talking with parents about what it means to "challenge"
a student instructionally. A catch-up link is included if you
missed Part I:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/845.cfm
That's all for this week!
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Jennifer Allen
