Reading with you family

A new study conducted (in the USA) by Scholastic and Yankelovitch finds that 75 percent of kids ages five to 17 say that although they love technology, they still want to read books. (Scholastic is a publisher in the USA; Yankelovitch is a consumer trends research company.)“The Kids & Family Reading Report,” also says that 62 percent of kids prefer reading printed books rather than those on a computer or a handheld device. (In 2006 the study found that a majority of children (68%) think it is “extremely” or “very” important to read for pleasure, and “like” or “love” doing so.)

(But reading decreases with age. After age 8 reading begins to decline, and continues to drop through the teen years.)

The study also found that two-thirds of kids age 9-17 who go online have extended the reading experience via the Internet. These online reading extenders say they learn what other people think about a book, learn new things about an author and connect with other readers.

The report also found that parents have a strong influence over kids’ reading. They overwhelmingly view reading as the most important skill a child needs to develop, but only about half of all parents begin reading to their child before their first birthday. The percent of children who are read to every day drops from 38% among 5-8 year olds to 23% among 9-11 year olds. This is the same time that kids’ daily reading for fun starts to decline.

Read the whole article at Scholastic at this link.

I encourage you to watch the videos of the report presentation at these links:

Part I: Kids & Reading

Part II: Technology and the Printed Book

Part III: The Internet: An Extension of Reading

Part IV: Parents' Role in Kids' Reading

Downloads

Click here to download The 2008 Kids and Family Reading Report™ (Adobe pdf file)

The Art of Commenting

Our Year 6 students have been investigating how to leave comments on blogs, first by looking at their own Year 6 Exhibition blog maintained by one of the Year 6 teachers, and then at Class 2i Reads and Writes! Many of those students had Mrs. D as a teacher when they were younger, so they were entranced at this window into their past.

We talked about what a comment can be - a compliment, a question, an elaboration - and how correct language is essential. Everyone must be able to read the comments. Re-read, edit, and spell checking become very important skills when one is writing for the whole world. SMS and chat shortcuts are not appropriate for these "mini-essays".

If you'll click over to the Class 2i site, you'll find approximately 40 new comments from admiring students!

photo credit: Hackintosh (Creative Commons License: Attribution, Non-Commercial)

Outcomes for Literacy

Ewan McIntosh describes himself as having been "part of the small but persistent team within Learning and Teaching Scotland who, for the past three years, has been pecking away at the definition of Literacy."

Yesterday, he wrote about the outcomes for Literacy in Scotland's new Curriculum for Excellence having been released for consultation. He writes that in the "Cover Paper" for the outcomes, text is defined as

novels, short stories, plays, poems, reference texts, the spoken word, charts, maps, graphs and timetables, advertisements, promotional leaflets, comics, newspapers and magazines, CVs, letters and e-mails, films, games and TV programmes, labels, signs and posters, recipes, manuals and instructions, reports and reviews, text messages, blogs and social networking sites, web pages, catalogues and directories.

and he quotes Maureen Watt, the Schools and Skills Minister's statement:

"We teach children how to understand, analyse and communicate using words on paper and rightly so. We're not going to stop that - indeed we want people to be properly equipped with better literacy skills.

"At the same time, of course, we get our news and information more from TV and the internet than from the newspaper. We communicate through email and text messaging and social networking more than writing letters.

"Young people are immersed in technology and the tools that help them create websites, blogs, videos and podcasts also allow them to be authors and publishers. They can reach a worldwide audience, so we have to teach them to do this well. We would be failing them if we just stand by and ignore these developments."

Read the whole statement here.

My Useful Blog

A wonderful thing happened to me today; Dangi offered this observation:

"When I was absent from school because I was sick," he said, "I looked at our Blog to see what I had missed."

Now if that's not a good reason for being a Blogging Teacher, I don't know what is.....

The miniLegends 08

A new school year has begun in Australia, and with it a web blogging project with Year 3 students at Glenelg School in Adelaid, Australia. Teacher Al Upton is beginning his second year of class blogging at The miniLegends 08, where each child has created his own blog.

He invites visitors from around the world to visit the student's blogs and leave a positive comment. He writes: "I find it empowering for my Year 3s to be involved in establishing their own blogs. But it’s the sense of belonging, the emerging and ongoing conversations, the networking and collaboration, the publishing and sharing, the reading and responding, the questioning and thinking, the pride and fun … of learning … that really matters."

All Readers, All Writers!

A colleague has started using a blog to reflect Units of Inquiry in her classroom. Here's a video she posted that shows how the students viewed the big ideas in Tomie dePaola's books at the end of their Author Study:

Grade 3 Blog Pals

Kim Cofino, at the International School of Bangkok, has begun a blogging project with 3rd graders. Their blog is Grade 3 Blog Pals. " We are learning to use a blog to communicate with schools around the world! Our Blog Pals partners are in Pennsylvania, USA and Singapore Follow along on our classroom adventures!"

Kim writes that "we will begin to blog regularly as part of our normal classroom routine. Making time once a week to read a partner class blog and leave comments will be a great way to connect with other students on issues and ideas that they can relate to."

Perhaps our bloggers (and their families) will read and comment on the writing from these blog-mates!

Questions about blogging in the classroom

Darren Kuropatwa has created this VoiceThread as a public way to answer questions about blogging in the classroom posed to him by April Luemann. He invites others to add comments to the VoiceThread. (Daren teaches Math in Secondary school. His current blogs are Consumer Math 20S (Fall '07), Pre-Cal 40S (Fall '07) and AP Calculus AB ('07-'08). Links to his past class blogs are here.)

1a. What are your goals for blogging with your class?
1b. How are these goals different from when you first started blogging with your class?
2. How did you present and explain the intended use of blogging to your students?
3. Did you notice any particular time in your blogging when you remember thinking "Blogging is accomplishing what I had hopped (and maybe more)?" Explain.
4. Were there any interesting or surprising experiences with respect to blogging with your students?
5. These are some the things the literature on blogging claims are potential benefits. Which of these is important to you?

Telling the New Story

I was pleased to find this interview with a grade one teacher, illustrating how even the youngest student takes advantage of social software such as blogs, wikis and podcast to share learning and exchange ideas with the world. Kathy Cassidy of Moose Jaw, SK provides insights into her classroom. Students and parents also share their experiences. It was reading Mrs. Cassidy's Classroom Blog that got me imagining what we could do ourselves.

after one month of blogs

This blog project has discovered it has legs, and is beginning to to move! It has been an energizing month, sharing the excitement with the class teachers of getting these blogs set up and beginning to post with each child. It is not a quick process, but is already reaping benefits, for us the teachers, and for the students as readers and writers.

Class 2i asked for feedback from parents. Here are some of the replies (edited) :
"I must say the class blog is great."
"The blog is fantastic!"
"We enjoyed looking at the blogs, its such a nice idea."
"I LOVE THE BLOG – amazing !!! please pass on our complete and utter delight with it."
"We LOVE the blog. It is like a window into my child's day."
"Several mums have verbally told me how much they love the blog."

It is so great to have this positive feedback! We know now that the project is worth all the time we can give it.

I hadn't thought much about how this would affect me as the ICT person involved (beyond the mechanics of setting it up, and the excitement of working with enthusiastic teachers). I realize that feedback like this is as important to me as a teacher as it is to the kids as authors. Roll on blogging!

Why let our students blog?

Watch this video by Rachael Boyd (a Primary School teacher in Nelson, New Zealand) about students blogging and learning.

Why?

Why are little kids blogging in the classroom?
Because it helps develop their literacy skills. They are writing and reading in a real-workd context, about things in which they are active and interested. How else could they share their writing with the whole world?
Is their writing worth sharing with the world, you ask...
Perhaps not if one is looking for the next classic novel of their generation. But if you believe that each human being is unique, and that their thoughts and creativity have value, then yes. Their "world" may be different from ours, but it is none the less valuable. Blogging gives them a voice, and a place to show their achievements and abilities to people outside their class.

The British National Curriculum for English summarizes these areas of development

• Speaking and listening (Speaking, listening, group discussion and interaction, drama, standard English and language variation)
• Reading (Reading strategies, reading for information, literature and language structure and variation)
• Writing (Composition, planning and drafting, punctuation, spelling, handwriting and presentation, standard English and language structure)
  

and for ICT

• Finding things out
• Developing ideas and making things happen
• Exchanging and sharing information
• Reviewing, modifying and evaluating work as it progresses

In more detail, the PYP Scope and Sequence Overview for Language describes the desired skills in the Visual, Written and Oral strands of language:

"(Students) will learn to understand that effective use of language is a valuable life skill."

Oral Language

Children 3 - 5
- use oral language for social interaction and to obtain understanding
- communicate needs, feelings and ideas
-participate appropriately in conversations
-tell stories and events in sequence
-give and follow instructions
-have daily opportunities to listen and speak in a variety of authentic contexts.

Children 5 - 7
- use a variety of oral language appropriately with increasing confidence
-talk about their thoughts, feelings and opinions
-work in groups and discuss ideas
-appreciate that listening is important in both small and large groups
-listen with increasing concentration and consideration
-pick out main events and relevant points
-increase their ability to anticipate and predict.

Written Language

Children 3 - 5

Reading
-be eager to read
-enjoy playing and experimenting with reading behaviours
-show an interest in books, stories, charts and songs
-“read” familiar text using visual, contextual and memory cues
-focus on meaning of text rather than word accuracy
-“read” daily in a variety of situations and have opportunities to discuss what has been read.

Writing
-be curious about print
-enjoy playing and experimenting with writing
-move from scribble to writing letters and words
-assign meaning to messages regardless of their stage of written development
-gradually produce recognizable spellings of a range of words
-be encouraged to write daily with or without support.

Children 5 - 7

Reading
-read simple texts with confidence and pleasure
-use a range of strategies to decode text
-discuss stories heard and read, demonstrating an increasing awareness of character and plot
-understand and respond to ideas and feelings expressed
-begin to use reference books and dictionaries independently
-participate in daily reading for independent and instructional purposes.

Writing
-write confidently with developing legibility and fluency
-write for a variety of purposes
-write simple, sequenced stories with a beginning, middle and end
-begin to plan, edit and review their own writing
-begin to spell high-frequency words accurately
-use simple spelling patterns or spell phonetically
-write legibly in a consistent style
-write daily for a variety of purposes.

Visual Language

Children 3 -5

-play, experiment, talk about and relate to different media materials
-use media to make sense of their world
-respond to media verbally and non-verbally
-show curiosity in many forms of visual media
-make connections between the real and the imaginary
-view and react to simple messages or factual information and describe what they see.

Children 5 - 7

-understand that communication involves verbal, visual and kinaesthetic features
-understand that signs and symbols carry meaning
-begin to read a range of signs in the environment
-read and use texts with different types of layout
-understand information presented in a range of visual forms including television, theatre and computer
-search for, record and present information using a variety of media
-begin to make choices about what is relevant and useful to them.

Blogging provides an environment and a platform for student growth in all these areas.