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"Reading, in terms of scale and diversity, is different than it used to be. Thinking, in terms of context and application, is also different. It makes since that learning is also changing–becoming more entrepreneurial than directly didactic. That is, more learner-centered ... than teacher-controlled."
Beth Dichter's insight:
This post from te@chthought provides an embedded slideshare, Designing Digital Futures. The post pulls out some of the information found within the slideshow. The post looks at Architecture of Participation: 7 Characteristics of Future Learning which are defined as: * Collaborating * Tagging * Voting * Networking * User-Generated Content * Tools * Sharing and also Communal Construction. Take some time to check out the slideshare. There are many great slides that will make you pause and think about what may be taking place in your classroom. 
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Soon after Maryanne Wolf published “Proust and the Squid,” a history of the science and the development of the reading brain from antiquity to the twenty-first century, she began to receive letters from readers. Hundreds of them. While the backgrounds of the writers varied, a theme began to emerge: the more reading moved online, the less students seemed to understand."
Beth Dichter's insight:
The debate about online reading continues? Do students retain more information when they read from books rather than from digital devices? Does reading online present challenges due to distractions? Do students need to be taught skills to become better online readers? This post explores these issues and many more, providing much food for thought as you read through and learn what research is telling us today. Take the time to explore this article. It may change the way you have students in your classroom work with digital text.
Rosemary Tyrrell, Ed.D.'s curator insight,
August 1, 2014 11:44 AM
Interesting article in the New Yorker on another digital controversy. 
Dr. Helen Teague's curator insight,
August 3, 2014 9:36 AM
Do students retain more information when they read from books rather than from digital devices? Does reading online present challenges due to distractions? Do students need to be taught skills to become better online readers?
Ruby Day's curator insight,
August 3, 2014 5:21 PM
Studies show we are not reading as effectively online as we are with hard copies. This highlights the need for tools to help us read deeper online - e.g annotation type tools. This links to an interesting stuy of year 5 students using collaborative annotation software demonstrating higher performance than the control group's' paper based annotation.
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"I was recently going through an old folder of reading reflection prompts and forms, and found a reading log that I called a “Self-Guided Reading Response Log” (whatever that means). It’s a few years old, but I remember using it first as a way for students to get “points” in a reading program we were doing at the time."
Beth Dichter's insight:
Terry Heick shares 19 reading prompts that he has used with students in the past. The list would work with both fiction and non-fiction. In the post he describes how he used the prompts to help students, stating that he expected his students to be able to say "I read this, and know that writing about what I read is important, and I picked these questions to use to guide my writing." The image above includes the prompts. He also has included additional explanations with many of the prompts within the post.
David Baker's curator insight,
July 29, 2014 6:16 PM
Powerful frame for reading in most content areas. Not all are appropriate for each setting but helping to identify type of text and relevant questions might be a great pre-reading classroom activity.
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"For those many kids who choose not to read books, for those kids who are news junkies, for those kids who choose to focus on nonfiction, for those kids who read everything anyway, and for those kids who are motivated by regular, tangible rewards, Newsela’s Free Summer Reading Challenge may be just the thing to engage students with the world, while attacking potential summer reading slump."
Beth Dichter's insight:
If you haven't had a chance to check out the website Newsela this may be a great opportunity to take a look at it and share it with students (if you have an easy way to access them). Newsela provides news at five reading lexiles, from Grade 3 or 4 through Grade 12. When you log in there will be a choice of articles to choose from. After reading you may choose to take a quiz. Although this challenge has started you may still sign up. The post provides additional details and links to the website.
Lisa Norris's curator insight,
July 5, 2014 2:15 PM
Excellent source of informational articles relevant to the world and students in upper elementary grades.
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Beth Dichter's insight:
This one page infographic provides a five step reading stategy for students using super heroes to help them become enaged. The five steps are: Step 1: Preview the text for two to three minutes. Step 2: Grab a pencil and read the passage aloud. Step 3: What "clicked?" Step 4: What "cluncked?" Step 5: Put fix-up strategies into play. Suggestions are provided in all but Step 2. Consider printing a copy of this out and using it as a poster in your room...or perhaps sending a copy home with students whom might need additional support!
Kate JohnsonMcGregor's curator insight,
March 20, 2014 8:25 AM
In our pursuit to make literacy skills accessible, this quick, 5-step infographic has appeal. 
Reading Power's curator insight,
March 23, 2014 10:15 AM
This certainly infuses power in reading. What are some of your favorite strategies?
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In addition to learning our content and curriculum standards, today's students also need to be able to do the following effectively: collaborate with one another, synthesize ideas, create content, ...
Beth Dichter's insight:
Have you seen an RSA Animate video? Are you interested in learning how to make one or better yet, have your students make one? This post provides an in-depth look at how to go about have your students create an animated video that provides them with the opportunity to practice 21st century skills (quoted from post below): * collaborate with one another * synthesize ideas * create content * communicate ideas clearly * use technology This activity is designed to have your students create content, providing you with materials to use in future classes as well as helping your current students understand the materiial. The author, Jordan Collier, provides a detailed five-day plan. Day 1 would have you dividing students into groups of three, assign them a section of a chapter in a textbook, and determine the key facts that need to be taught. To read about how to assist them with this and the tasks for Day 2 - 5 click through to the post.
Eduardo Wegman's curator insight,
January 19, 2014 10:29 AM
Collaboration is the key for future society development
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Reading is a huge part of a child's development. In the early stages, it should be a shared experience between parent and child which can impact a love of books
Beth Dichter's insight:
Although this infographic was written with the parent in mind the ideas are applicable for teachers. Chances are you have at least a few students in your classroom whom may not be as engaged as you would like. Learn some of the tricks that you might try to help them become more engaged and consider sharing this with parents.
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In the age of the Common Core and its emphasis upon having students take on more challenging text, independent reading and student choice can easily take a back seat to the demands of increased rigor.
Beth Dichter's insight:
How many ways can you come up with to support reading in school? This post provides 25 ways to support independent reading. Chances are you already know some of these but you will probably find one or two new ideas in the lengthy list. Below are five. Click view to read the complete list. * Create a “Caught Reading” Campaign that features Teachers as Readers. * Host Book Clubs for Students and Parents. * Sponsor a Young Author Conference. * Encourage Students & Teachers to Write Book Reviews. * Host a Mystery Check-Out Day.
Audrey's curator insight,
December 2, 2013 6:12 PM
In addition schools can encourage story writing. Have a look at storgy featured on www.hotmoodle.com
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Reading Activity Reading Comprehension - How well do you understand the things you read? Test and improve your reading with our reading comprehension activity! This activity includes 140 texts, each with a set of challenging questions.
Beth Dichter's insight:
If you are looking for online books to help beginner readers or ELL students check out 140 texts available at GCF Learn Free. Each text can be read to the student and there are four questions for each story. If a student answers a question incorrectly they may try again.
Jessica Janus's curator insight,
October 23, 2014 9:26 PM
I tired this out and I think this is a great tool to integrate within the classroom. Perhaps on Friday when there is some free time.
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Free educational online games for children. Our games reinforce the skills that are vital to elementary students. We offer many math and reading games.
Beth Dichter's insight:
If you are looking for some games that are free and that reinforce skills then consider checking out RoomRecess. There are about 30 games available for students in K-1, 2-3 and 4-5. Find games "with the goal of reinforcing fundamental learning concepts in math, reading, spelling, language arts, and basic problem solving." All games are free and no sign-up is required.
April Ledesma's curator insight,
October 6, 2014 11:18 PM
Educational games are great ways for learners to have technological interaction in the classroom, plus the students love it!
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"Have you ever wondered why students choose the books that they do? Renaissance Learning explored this question in the fifth-edition What Kids Are Reading report, which lists the top 40 books read by students in grades 1-12 in the 2011-2012 school year. Rankings are based on the Accelerated Reader database, the largest of its kind, which houses reading records for students who read 283 million books."
Beth Dichter's insight:
This post links to a page that will provide you access to the full report, the infographic (part of which is above), and a report summary. The full report also includes: * Caldecott and Newbury winners from 1922 to present * A selection of the Common Core State Standards exemplars There have been many shifts in reading over the last 100 years, and one shift is that the complexity of required reading has decreased. To learn more check any of the resources found through this link. If you prefer an oral version from NPR you can listen to (or read) a short piece aired on June 11th, 2013 called "What Kids are Reading, In School and Out" at http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2013/06/11/190669029/what-kids-are-reading-in-school-and-out.
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Beth Dichter's insight:
This infographic comes out of a recently published book, 'Reducing the Risk, Increasing the Promise: Strategies for Student Success.' The book explores ways to help "at-risk students achieve success in and out of the classroom." This infographic proivdes six skills that students need to do this: * Resilience * Resourcefulness * Responsibility * Relationships * Respect * Reading The infographic includes some specific details for each of the skills. A great resource that may be shared with students.
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How does reading proficiency impact a child's life? Check out this infographic to find out. Research is showing that the a child's reading level in 3rd grade is an indicator of future success.
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How can you be sure that you are prepared to help your child get the most from this school year? Getting the answers to these questions can help.
Beth Dichter's insight:
What if you read this post and think of it as 10 answers you will provide to parents when they come in for a teacher conference? Parents may not know the best questions to ask, and this is one way to educate them. What are the questions. Three are below, The rest may be found in the post. * Student Feedback & Support - How do you like to provide feedback to students? Are there any interventions to help children who need a little extra attention? When are you available if my child needs extra help? * Cognitive Skills – How would you say my child is doing, as compared to peers, in these areas: Memory: How well does my child learn and remember new information? Does he or she require more or less support than peers? How easily is information retained?
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Fluency Tutor is an application for Google Chrome which allows educators to assign reading passages to students via their Google Drive accounts.
Beth Dichter's insight:
If you have Chrome installed on computers at your school consider checking out this app called Fluency Tutor. The website states FluencyTutor "is an easy-to-use, time-saving leveled reading and assessment tool that helps busy teachers support struggling readers. Teachers pick reading passages based on content, lexile level or reading age and share with individual students or groups via Google Drive." Students may access material from home or school and can record passages. Text-to-speech, a dictionary, a picture dictionary and translation tools are also available. The teacher dashboard and the student area for interaction is free. If you want to be able to see analytics, track progress, and more there is a charge of $99 per year (for teachers). Tools such as this are great free resources for many students. You might also want to check out Read&Write for Google.
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Different students have different ways of learning, and this is absolutely true for literacy. Jules Daulby, whose wheelhouse includes SEN and English teaching, discusses how a certain amount of pupils are best learning with their ears...
Beth Dichter's insight:
This post begins: "In order to be an effective reader, two skills are required:
The post also provides access to an interview with Dr. Keith Stanovich who "argues that reading improves ‘crystallized intelligence’ and compares children who do not learn to read with those who do, by using ‘the Matthew Effect’ analogy." The question remains, how do we help students whom do not read well, who have difficulty decoding text? We need to seriously consider the options, which include aural text (as in text that is read to students). This issue is close to my heart. We want our students to be successful, yet we do not provide tools that are readily available to all who would benefit from them. This post looks at resources that are available in England for struggling readers. I will add a number of resources that are available in the US, and others may add resources for their countries in the comment section. The question that each of us must answer is should we advocate for our students who are struggling with their reading skills to be able to use TTS (text-to-speech) programs that provide them with the ability to listen to the text and understand the text, without necessarily relying on their decoding skills? Do we give them the opportunity to level the playing field? By providing students with access to text that meets their learning style, we have given them the opportunity to be successful. Today there are many free (or low cost) tools available that allow students to have text read to them. In the US two key players that help provide text to students (think books) with diagnosed reading disabilities are Bookshare, which provides free access to many books as well as TTS software and Learning Ally, which has many resources for students with dyslexia but may also require a membership fee. Additional sites to check out are Natural Voice Reader, which will read digitized text directly from a website and Rewordify, which will simplify the text. Do you know free (or low cost) tools that help struggling readers? Please share them in the comment section.
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Could e-books actually get in the way of reading? In a study looking at students’ use of e-books created with Apple’s iBooks Author software, the Schugars discovered that the young readers often skipped over the text altogether, engaging instead with the books’ interactive visual features.
Beth Dichter's insight:
Do students retain more information from e-books or from traditional books? Some studies have shown that they retain more from traditional books but this post shares research that take stock of the features of e-books, noting that "the very “richness” of the multimedia environment that e-books provide—touted as their advantage over printed books—may actually overwhelm kids’ limited working memory, leading them to lose the thread of the narrative or to process the meaning of the story less deeply." The post provides suggestions of books that provide multimedia that is beneficial as well as ways to effectively use ebooks with young children.
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One of our missions here at CBLDF is promoting the use of comics and graphic novels in schools -- hence our publications Raising a Reader! How Comic & ...
Beth Dichter's insight:
Graphic novels...do you think they have a place in school? The Comic Book League Defence Fund (CBLDF) has recently published an article on ten graphic novels that could be part of the curriculum. This post includes descriptions of the ten graphic novels and you might also want to check out some of the materials available through this website, such as a free publication "Raising a Reader! How Comics & Graphic Novels Can Help Your Kids Love To Read!"
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"Reading is reading. By understanding that letters make sounds, we can blend those sounds together to make whole sounds that symbolize meaning we can all exchange with one another. Without getting too Platonic about it all, reading doesn’t change simply because you’re reading a text from another content area. Only sometimes it does. Science content can often by full of jargon, research citations, and odd text features. Social Studies content can be an interesting mix of itemized information, and traditional paragraphs/imagery..."
Beth Dichter's insight:
Along with the visual that provides 12 reading strategies this post provides an additional 13 strategies and links to 4 additional resources. The strategies suggested go across curriculum areas.
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"SummarizeThis is a free tool that summarizes the main point(s) of long articles that you find on the web. To use SummarizeThis you just copy and paste text into the summary box and click "summarize." A summary of the text then appears above the original text that you copied."
Beth Dichter's insight:
This tool look interesting and you might have students use it when they are doing research. We know how hard it can be to get students to read longer articles. This has the potential to let them see if his article is important to their topic. Will it help them answer their questions?
Intriguing Networks's curator insight,
December 3, 2013 3:35 AM
B Possibly not just for teachers, but if it works so well then maybe the authors might need to think again, 'brevity the soul of wit' 
Phil Turner's curator insight,
December 3, 2013 6:03 PM
This looks surprisingly effective (in my test of one article) ... and could be a useful first order tool for scanning large amounts of work. Students might learn to summarise/paraphrase by looking carefully at how the results relate to the original text (if they can resist just cutting and pasting the new words). 
Tracy Shaw's curator insight,
December 10, 2013 6:58 PM
Here's a cool tool for teachers! Time saver.
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Literably "allows students to read a text and have it automatically assessed for accuracy and words-per-minute speed. Plus, and this is what was most surprising to me, it also provides a fairly accurate indentification of student errors — in other words, what word they said instead of the word in the text. You’re able to provide the student or parent a link to the recording. And it’s free."
Beth Dichter's insight:
Thanks for Larry Ferlazzo for sharing this website that allows teachers to choose reading and levels for students to read and saves their reading so you can come back and access it via a dashboard. You will need to register and set-up your student list. Ferlazzo also discusses the cons of this. There is value in having one-on-one time with students when they read so you determine if they are "racing through words" or having other issues that may not be apparent through a recording. None the less this may be a great tool for some of your students. Students do have the option of re-recording.
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"Rewordify is a free site that was developed by a special education teacher and former computer programmer for the purpose of helping students read complex passages. At its most basic level Rewordify takes a complex passage and rephrases it in simpler terms."
Beth Dichter's insight:
Here is a tool you might want to try with students whom have difficulty reading complex passages. Rewordify rephrases passages (simply cut and paste text into a "yellow box" or type directly into it). Users may select setting so they only see the "easier version" (although they may see the more difficult words as they mouse over the word) or have this option in reverse. You may also enter in a website and have them rewordify the site. There is much additional information on the site including a teacher and student demo. The site is free, and also works on tablet and smartphones. As we move to more informational text and more complex (think Common Core) this site may be quite valuable for many students.
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"Do you read aloud to your students? Is there ever a time when students are too old to be read to? Many teachers are firm believers in reading aloud -- even at the upper grade levels."
Beth Dichter's insight:
This post describes why it is valuable to read to older students as well as a wide variety of resources. There are many reasons to continue to read to older students (and not just those students whom have access to assistive technology). A few of those reasons are below. * "Reading aloud to children helps them develop and improve literacy skills -- reading, writing, speaking, and listening..." * "...children listen on a higher level than they read, listening to other readers stimulates growth and understanding of vocabulary and language patterns." Resources are available in two categories: * Beyond Instruction that includes a link to a post of Audio books and publications, Information on optical character recognition,Text-to-speech and Variable speed tape recorders Sites to explore includes links to about 10 websites. Some are free and some will cost.
Adrianna Castelo's curator insight,
February 19, 2014 11:13 PM
I thought that this was quite interesting because you never early think to read to students as they get older. It has always been pretty routine that when you learn how to read you do it yourself.For myself, having something read out loud to me is not the best. I never pay attention when it's being read aloud only when I read it for myself. However, it could be beneficial to other students who really do have learning disabilities without them knowing.
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"ReadWorks is a free service that has cataloged hundreds of lesson plans and more than one thousand non-fiction reading passages aligned to Common Core standards. With a free ReadWorks account you can search for lessons and reading passages by grade and skill. In your account you can create digital binders of the lesson plans and reading passages that you want to use."
Beth Dichter's insight:
Richard Byrne posted this resource and it is definitely worth checking it out. The site was founded in 2008 to "help teachers meet the nationwide crisis in reading comprehension. The goal is to "help teachers improve their effectiveness through research-based, classroom-proven practices and curriculum." From their website: ReadWorks provides research-based curriculum and guidance directly to teachers and principals, online, for free, to be shared broadly.To go directly to the site: http://www.readworks.org.
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What are your rights as a reader? First off, you have the right NOT to read. You also have the right to read out loud and the right to skip parts.
Beth Dichter's insight:
An interesting infographic that looks at the rights of a reader. This comes from a book published in 2006 and the author 'discusses his experiences teaching in what he calls “challenging” schools.' The image is also available as a pdf if you click through to the site.
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