Teachers Without Borders's List: Literacy

• The Virginia Department of Education has unveiled a tool that teachers and parents can use to select books that interest young readers and help them improve their skills. 

   

   

   The service, developed by MetaMetrics, based in Durham, N.C., assigns each child a number, called a Lexile measure, that corresponds to the child's performance on the state Standards of Learning reading test. Parents and teachers can plug the number into an online database for a list of books at the student's reading level. 
• "Teachers can use Lexile measures to assign and recommend books that will help students develop stronger reading skills," state Superintendent of Public Instruction Patricia I. Wright said in a statement Oct. 23. "Parents can use Lexile measures to select texts that reinforce what teachers are trying to accomplish in the classroom."
• "Parents, for the first time, have actionable information when the score comes home," Stenner said. "If the score . . . just says 'below basic,' a parent does not feel empowered to work with their child, because the information is not translatable into any instructional activity. If they get the Lexile measure, they're directed to a group of books, and they can enter the student's level and interest and get a book."

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• “But their participation is giving them the technological skills and literacy they need to succeed in the contemporary world. They’re learning how to get along with others, how to manage a public identity, how to create a home page.”
• “Ethnographic studies like this are good at describing how young people fit social media into their lives. What they can’t do is document effects. This highlights the need for larger, nationally representative studies.”
• “Those concerns about predators and stranger danger have been overblown,” she said. “There’s been some confusion about what kids are actually doing online. Mostly, they’re socializing with their friends, people they’ve met at school or camp or sports.”
• “Teens usually have a ‘full-time intimate community’ with whom they communicate in an always-on mode via mobile phones and instant messaging,” the study said.
• While online socializing is ubiquitous, many young people move on to a period of tinkering and exploration, as they look for information online, customize games or experiment with digital media production, the study found.

• For example, a Brooklyn teenager did a Google image search to look at a video card and find out where in a computer such cards are, then installed his own.

  What the study calls “geeking out” is the most intense Internet use, in which young people delve deeply into a particular area of interest, often through a connection to an online interest group.

  “New media allow for a degree of freedom and autonomy for youth that is less apparent in a classroom setting,” the study said. “Youth respect one another’s authority online, and they are often more motivated to learn from peers than from adults.”

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• The most extensive U.S. study on teens and their use of digital media finds that America’s youth are developing important social and technical skills online – often in ways adults do not understand or value.
• “There are myths about kids spending time online – that it is dangerous or making them lazy. But we found that spending time online is essential for young people to pick up the social and technical skills they need to be competent citizens in the digital age.”
• Over three years, Ito’s team of 28 researchers interviewed over 800 young people and their parents, both one-on-one and in focus groups; spent more than 5,000 hours observing teens on sites such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, and other networked communities; and conducted diary studies to document how, and to what end, young people engage with digital media.
• two distinct categories of teen engagement with digital media: friendship-driven and interest-driven.
• According to researchers, young people are motivated to learn from their peers, as well as adults, online. The Internet provides new kinds of public spaces for youth to interact and receive feedback from one another. This may be different from how students are often asked to learn in schools.
• In a cautionary note to parents, the study indicates that most youth are not taking full advantage of the learning opportunities of the Internet. While most youth use the Internet socially, they may overlook learning opportunities. Serious learning opportunities are abundant online in such subjects as astronomy, history, creative writing, and foreign languages. Youth can connect with people in different locations and of different ages who share their interests, making it possible follow pursuits that might not be popular or valued with their local peer groups.
• they are also facing new challenges in how to manage their visibility and social relationships online. For example, online media, messages, and profiles that young people post can travel far beyond what is expected.

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• Children find the word difficult to spell because the third syllable sounds like "shun". But if they knew it was made up of the two morphemes, they could make more sense of the way it is spelled, researchers suggest.

  The researchers, part of a wide-ranging, government-funded project looking at teaching and learning research run by the Institute of Education, recommend schools systematically teach morphemes and their role in spelling in primary school.

• The researchers, part of a wide-ranging, government-funded project looking at teaching and learning research run by the Institute of Education, recommend schools systematically teach morphemes and their role in spelling in primary school.

  The research, led by Terezinha Nunes at Oxford Brookes University and Peter Bryant at Oxford University, found that teaching morphemes would improve spelling and language development in the classroom and would also help children acquire vocabulary.

• A survey of nearly 7,500 primary school children in Avon showed they struggle with the spelling of words such as "magician" and get mixed up with the endings of words that sound the same, such as "emotion" and "electrician".

  The researchers said the use of morphemes in teaching spelling had not been incorporated into the national literacy strategy used in schools.

  The pupils of teachers that attended a course on morphology made "significant gains in spelling" compared with children in similar classrooms receiving standard instruction.

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• Pupils starting primary school increasingly need to be taught to speak because they have heard little language at home beyond the "daily grunt" from their parents, according to the report. It also says that children growing up in the most deprived homes need lessons in empathy and self-control. Schools are increasingly teaching pupils social skills usually learned at home, but such lessons are most effective when they involve the parents, the report argues.
• Research shows that success in school is largely dependent on communication skills, but in poorer homes children hear 500 different words a day, against 1,500 in a rich household, the report says.
• it is estimated that one in 10 children start school unable to talk in sentences or understand simple instructions," says a chapter written by Jean Gross, an educational psychologist who runs early intervention programmes for children at risk of falling behind.
• In some parts of the country up to 50% of four- and five-year-olds cannot speak in sentences when they start school,
• parents in deprived communities sometimes struggle to bond with their children. "They may feel alienated from a child they did not want, be depressed by their circumstances or not be functioning socially and emotionally because of drugs or alcohol.

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• Teenagers at state schools dropped foreign languages in droves after ministers made the subject optional for pupils over 14 in 2004, though languages have remained popular subjects in private schools.

• The survey shows that state schools are introducing changes to make languages more appealing.
• However, the survey indicates that qualifications like the international baccalaureate and the i-GCSE are provoking interest and involvement in languages.

• Spanish, Italian and Mandarin continue to rise in popularity, showing the increase in the diversity of languages on offer.

  Spanish is set to overtake German as the second most commonly taught language after French. This is already the case in private schools.
• Other languages, such as Urdu, Russian and Mandarin, also appear to be generating interest following changed guidelines on which languages schools may offer.

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• A class library needs to be equipped with a variety of children's literature, short stories, poems and reading material. It can include wordless picture books, fantasy stories, humorous stories, mysteries, tall tales, biographies, experiential stories and folk tales among others. Other reading material can range from catalogues, brochures, pamphlets, magazines and newspapers.
• Children's projects, diaries, journals, self made books should be included in a class library. These materials serve as excellent resources and personalise the learning experience
• It is worthwhile to visit the resource room or the main library along with children and allow them to select material for reading.
• Emphasis of the class library should not only be on English. The purpose of libraries is to help children become proficient readers and writers and learn many languages. Thus it must have literature available in the regional languages as well. Children draw parallels between languages and thus cross language exchange needs to be encouraged.  
  
• It is important to allocate time for reading. Teachers should allocate at least 15-2o minutes of reading daily in the morning
• Teachers should engage learners in responding to what they read.
• At times teachers need to draw attention to the library. This can be done by talking about a book recently read, placing comments in the reading log, and planning lessons and activities around the books.
• It is also important to introduce sharing time where children share their reading experiences.
• Books from the class library should be issued to inculcate the reading habit in children. Children should be allowed to select books on their own at times and even home work can be carved around these books, if needed. Children should relate reading with both pleasure and work.
• Wear and tear of books is natural when children use a library. Children should be engaged in mending books and thus tapes, scissors and glue should be provided to them.

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• In January the government commissioned Sir Jim Rose, a former chief inspector of primary schools, to trim ten existing required subjects to give extra space to computing skills and to accommodate two new compulsory subjects: a foreign language and the now-optional “personal, social, health and economic education” (eating fruit and veg, refraining from hitting one’s classmates and much more). On December 8th he published his interim report—and many fear that, as well as losing fat, education will see a lot of meat go too.

    
• Sir Jim proposes merging the subjects into six “learning areas”. History and geography will become “human, social and environmental understanding”; reading, writing and foreign languages, “understanding English, communication and languages”. Physical education, some bits of science and various odds and ends will merge into “understanding physical health and well-being”, and so on. His plan would “reduce prescription”, he says, and, far from downgrading important ideas, “embed and intensify [them] to better effect in cross-curricular studies”.
• “An erosion of specialist knowledge,” harrumphs the Royal Historical Society; its geographical counterpart is worried about “losing rigour and the teaching of basics”. Even those with no brief for a particular subject are concerned. Pouring 12 subjects into six “learning areas” is not the same as slimming down; if the curriculum is to become more digestible something must be lost, and just what is being glossed over. “Wouldn’t it be better to address the question of subjects directly—which ones, for how long and what to specify?”
• Primary schools were turning away from discrete subjects even before he pronounced: a 2007 survey found a third taught mostly “themed” lessons; another 40% were planning to do so soon. Another recent review, this time of what 11-14-year-olds should learn, also plumped for more cross-curricular learning.

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• Marx's concept of labor, or production of use values, was the paradigmatic model of human object-oriented activity for Leont'ev. Mediated by tools, work is also "performed in conditions of joint, collective activity (...) Only through a relation with other people does man relate to nature itself, which means that labour appears from the very beginning as a process mediated by tools (in the broad sense) and at the same time mediated socially." (Leont'ev, 1981, p. 208)
• The third generation of activity theory needs to develop conceptual tools to understand dialogue, multiple perspectives and voices, and networks of interacting activity systems. In this mode of research, the basic model is expanded to include minimally two interacting activity systems (Figure 3).

• Even Silvey had to conclude that "most of these [recent] selections have moved away from the spirit and philosophy of those who established the award."
• "The criterion has never been popularity," he said. "It is about literary quality. We don't expect every child to like every book. How many adults have read all the Pulitzer Prize-winning books and the National Book Award winners and liked every one?"
• Still, the fact that recent Newbery choices are fostering wide-ranging discussion in the children's book world can only be a good sign – just in time for the next winner to be named in January.

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• With the review stating the need for a 'a curriculum design based on a clear set of culturally derived aims and values, which promote challenging subject teaching alongside equally challenging cross-curricular studies',
• this innovative project which sees them plan for an imaginary school in a creative way, offering curriculum subjects using topics or themes, such as global citizenship, families, festivals.
  
• To help students understand cross-curricular teaching ( or the integrated curriculum ), the University's Institute of Education invites teachers and children from local schools to talk to the students about their ideas. The project finishes with students putting together their plans and setting up their fantastic displays aimed at children.
• The teachers enthused the students with how they approached cross curricular work and the children were living proof of its impact, confidently presenting to the adults! The children said they enjoyed this way of working, it gave them independence and responsibility.

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• "To provide nearly everyone on the planet with a liquid crystal display is utopian," he said. "Are we not, therefore, in the process of creating a new elite, of drawing a new line to divide the world between those who have access to communication and knowledge, and those who are left out?"
• Publishers must support literary translation and act creatively so that books are no longer an inaccessible luxury for many, he said.
• "Joint publication with developing countries, the establishment of funds for lending libraries and mobile libraries, and, overall, greater attention to requests from and works in so-called minority languages – which are often clearly in the majority – would enable literature to continue to be this wonderful tool for self-knowledge, for the discovery of others, and for listening to the concert of humankind, in all the rich variety of its themes and modulations."

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• Transliteracy might provide a unifying perspective on what it means to be literate in the twenty–first century. It is not a new behavior but has only been identified as a working concept since the Internet generated new ways of thinking about human communication. This article defines transliteracy as “the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks” and opens the debate with examples from history, orality, philosophy, literature, and ethnography.
• We live in a world of multiple literacies, multiple media and multiple demands on our attention. Each of these is complete in itself yet we do not experience them individually, we synthesize and mould them to our needs.