On winter break

This blog won't be updated until school resumes Monday, January 3, 2010.

Scientific Santa celebrates reading

Yesterday's session of Literary Lunches featured Kris Kringle. Take a look at one of the many highlights.

Oh those darned Brits

Quotation marks are used to set off speech or quoted sentences and words. Despite its simple role, people tend to get confused about the position of other punctuation in relation to the quotation marks. Should it go inside or outside the quotation marks?
It depends. If you are writing in American English, other punctuation should go inside the quotation marks, even if it is not part of the quoted sentence. Here is an example from the New York Times:

“When we have got a contractor city, say, of 180,000 people, and there hasn’t been a completed prosecution of anybody coming out of Iraq, not one,” he said, “what sort of city in America would be like that, where no one is prosecuted for anything for three years? It’s unthinkable.”

If you are writing in British English, on the other hand, punctuation that is not part of the quoted sentence should be place outside the quotation marks. Here is an example from The Telegraph:

A crisis in the US subprime mortgage market will affect Britain, he said, warning that the housing market is likely to weaken as a result. However, he insisted that the economy is starting from “a very strong position”.

The above text comes from Daily Writing Tips. Clicking on it will take you to a short piece on punctuation at Daily Writing Tips. To visit Daily Writing Tips, click here.

School Library Journal rocks

School Library Journal, is the leading print magazine, and now SLJ.com serving librarians who work with young people in schools and public libraries. The two resources give librarians up-to-date information needed to integrate libraries into the school curriculum, become leaders in the areas of technology, reading, and information literacy, and create high-quality collections for children and young adults.

If you think School Library Journal is just for librarians, think again. The journal's website includes blogs, book reviews....a staggering number of resources to keep you reading. Click here to learn more.  Click here to explore the section on adult books for teens.

Literary connections

Though the author Cathy Williams read from at yesterday's session of Literary Lunches may not be familiar, the local event that writer attended is familiar: the annual UND Writers Conference.
Williams read the work of Karen Russell, who participated in the 2010 Writers Conference for which the topic was wit.  Specifically, Williams read the title story from Russell's St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves.

In an online interview at Book Browse, Russell talks about the importance of reading. Click the text below to read more.


What in your own life made you want to become a writer?
Reading, definitely. I loved reading so much; I mean, I still do, but not with that sort of illicit midnight intensity. I was such an anxious kid, and reading was a way out. At sleepovers, I would sneak away and lock myself in the bathroom and read the other kids’ books. Here was a way to step-out of your child’s body and into the mind of a Salem witch or a bunch of warring rabbits. It’s still amazing to me. It was spooky and intimate and totally intoxicating, to step into an author’s private rooms. I’d read the words and they became my rooms. Then I wanted to be a writer myself, to do to others what these authors were doing for me.

Check this out

TED (Technology, Education and Design) is a terrific resource, perhaps best known for its talks. The one above is a dazzler.

What education looks like in high-performing countries

U.S. leaders say we must learn from and emulate what high-performing countries do—the only issue is that what Singapore and Finland talk about is not what's discussed in Education Nation or even in the Klein/Rhee Manifesto. Rather than "more standardized testing" it's actually "more PE and the arts." (from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development blog)

Click the above hyperlinked text to learn more.

Young adult fiction meets social media

When Jacob Lewis helped create the beta version of the Web site Figment with Dana Goodyear, a staff writer at The New Yorker, Mr. Lewis envisioned it as a sort of literary Facebook for the teenage set. 

“I really went into it and thought, ‘We’ll be the social network for young-adult fiction,’ ” said Mr. Lewis, a former managing editor of The New Yorker. “But it became clear early on that people didn’t want a new Facebook.” (Julie Bosman at NYT)

Click the above hyperlinked text to learn more.

Check out Figment by clicking here. (Remember, it's in Beta)

New holiday tradition focuses on reading

Unfortunately, in a season that has already seen record-setting pre-orders for a video game, statistics on reading and literacy are alarming:
According to literacy organizations, less than half of young children in this country are read to regularly.
A high percentage of American families have no children's books in the home.
This holiday season I am putting my column where my heart is, and so I'm asking "Ask Amy" readers to celebrate by giving a book to a child, through a homegrown campaign called, "A Book on Every Bed."
Here's how it works:
Take a book.
Wrap it.
Place it on a child's bed so it's the first thing she sees on Christmas morning (or whatever holiday you celebrate).
That's it (Amy Dickinson, Chicago Tribune).

To read more, click on the hyperlink text above.

Alliance for Excellent Education resources

American youth need strong reading and writing skills to succeed in school, work, and in life. Most students are able to "decode" or sound out words on a page, but far too many then fail to master critical reading and writing skills that include the ability to comprehend the meaning of what they read, understand the use of increasingly complex vocabulary, or to write for various purposes. Yet these are skills they desperately need if they are to succeed in college or work after high school.
In fact, 70 percent of 8th graders and 65 percent of 12th graders do not read at grade level, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation's Report Card. That translates into approximately 6 million struggling readers in grades seven through twelve. Improving the ability of older students to read and write at high levels must become a national priority, especially since students in the bottom quartile of achievement are twenty times more likely to drop out of school than those at the top. (from the Alliance for Excellent Education website)

Click here to for resources on adolescent literacy from the Alliance for Excellent Education.

Paula Davis

          Paula Davis, former GF Central English teacher and current teacher at Northland Technical College, shared an essay she likes to use with her college students as the start their comparison contrast essays.  In "Grammy Awards," by Deborah Dalfonso, the narrator Jill compares two grandmothers who are very unlike each other--one very proper and respectable, the other fun-loving and eccentric.  Both want the world for Jill, and the essay concludes with a wonderful metaphor: one will be her anchor, the other will be her mainsail.

          Ms. Davis also talked about finding time for free-reading, college reading and writing,  and the adjustments students and teachers make in going into a post-secondary school.  She also recited "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost, linking it to the choices we make in our lives and careers.

It was great to have Paula back in GFC, sharing her love of literature with students!

Resource for finding children's books

Children's books can be effective in helping not only elementary students but also high school and middle school students understand content area concepts. Because the text is accessible, students don't have to manage difficult text and new concepts at the same time. In other words, children's books can lighten the cognitive load for students as they encounter new information and concepts.

And, if you're looking for children's books check out JacketFlaps. Click on the hyperlinked text below to learn more.

For Librarians, JacketFlap provides a searchable database containing practically every children's book that has ever been published. You can look for authors and illustrators that might be interested in a library visit by searching our member directory by city, state, or country.

Always lots of resources

Over the last eighteen months I've created and offered seven free ebooks for teachers. In those ebooks I've covered Google tools, web search, video creation, blogging, and other resources of interest to educators. All seven of those ebooks are available in the right hand column of Free Technology for Teachers. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

The "I" in the hyperlinked text above is Richard Byrne, the indefatigable force behind Free Technology for Teachers.  To learn about the ebooks, lick the hyperlinked text above.

For the young and young at heart

Former Grand Forks Central teacher Cathy Woidtke encouraged the audience at Friday's sessions of Literary Lunches to "Find a child to read to this Christmas. It's fun."

Woidtke read from A Christmas Guest by White Bear Lake, Minnesota writer David RaRochelle, and My Penguin Osbert by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel.

"I love children's books...the simplicity of the message," Woidtke said.

In other news, Grand Forks Central sophomore Deion Hanson won an autographed copy of Lois Lowry's The Giver.  Students who attended Literary Lunches during November were eligible for the drawing.

What makes for high quality digital learning?

On December 1, Jeb Bush, governor of Florida 1999-2007, and Bob Wise, governor of West Virginia 2001-2005, released the "10 Elements of High-Quality Digital Learning." 


The ten elements represent the recommendations of the Digital Learning Council (DLC), a diverse group of more than 100 leaders in education, government, philanthropy, business, technology and policy, and are meant to serve as a roadmap of reform for local, state and federal officials to advance digital learning. Read the EdWeek blog post on the announcement. (from the Alliance for Excellent Education website)

Click the above hyperlinked text to learn more...quite a bit more.

And...

The Alliance has also published state-specific profiles that present information about (1) online-learning opportunities in that state, (2) the presence of state policies that support online learning, and (3) how federal policy supports online learning in that state.

Again, click the text to learn more. And, to see profiles of each state's digital learning profiles, click here. 

Thinking about reading

Reading is a cultural activity. This statement may seem obvious, and yet in recent decades an increasing number of educators have considered reading from psychological and even neurological perspectives, as if reading were a process that happens in the agent’s mind and is ultimately regulated by brain mechanisms. (Michael Ben Chaim at The Answer Sheet)

To read more, click the hyperlinked text above.

Books and tweets

Want to create your own Virtual Student Library. Click here to learn how.
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Grand Forks Central Literacy is on Twitter. The above information comes from someone Grand Fork Central Literacy follows. If you want to follow Grand Forks Central Literacy, click on the Twitter icon along the side of the blog.