11 Books by Lesesne, Reeves, and Marshall Resource Type: Content Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 6–Postsecondary Professional Commentary: The May/June 2006 issue of AdLIT's In Perspective includes reviews by Sheila Cantlebary (Reading Content Specialist at the ORC). This month's "For Your Bookshelf” includes the following titles: (1) Making the Match: The Right Book for the Right Reader at the Right Time, Grades 4-12 by Teri Lesesne; (2) Naked Reading: Uncovering What Tweens Need to Become Lifelong Readers by Teri Lesesne; (3) Adolescents Talk About Reading: Exploring Resistance to and Engagement with Text by Anne R.... Projects: Writing 6-12 12 Reader and Task Considerations Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades K–12 Professional Commentary: This resource, available through the Kansas State Department of Education, guides educators in making decisions about the reader-to-task appropriateness of a text. As the third component in evaluating the complexity of a text according to the Common Core State Standards, reader-to-task considerations rely on professional reflection about a student's cognitive capabilities, reading skills, motivation and engagement... 13 I Read It, but I Don't Get It [excerpt]: Chapter 1, "Fake Reading" Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 6–12 Professional Commentary: This chapter from I Read It, but I Don't Get It offers practical ideas for engaging and motivating struggling readers. Written by Cris Tovani, an accomplished teacher and staff developer, the text documents the challenges of working with students who have mastered the art of "fake reading" and who struggle with the different demands of high school level textbooks and novels.... Career Fields: General Career Skills Projects: Standards First 14 An Update on Reading in the Content Areas: Social Constructionist Dimensions Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 8–12 Professional Commentary: An article that both summarizes and comments on studies aimed at understanding sociocultural dimensions in teaching and learning, this professional resource draws attention to the need to foster critical media literacy with adolescents. Included, too, are links to websites where additional information on these issues can be found.... Career Fields: General Career Skills Projects: Standards First 15 Boys May Be Boys, But Do They Have to Read and Write That Way? Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 5–10 Professional Commentary: Citing research from a number of recent books and studies that have explored how boys often want to read and write (Smith and Wilhelm's (2002) "Reading Don't Fix No Chevys": Literacy in the Lives of Young Men; Maynard's (2002) Boys and Literacy: Exploring the Issues; Booth's (2002) Even Hockey Players Read; and Newkirk's (2002) Misreading Masculinity: Boys, Literacy, and Popular Culture), this professional resource asks thoughtful questions about how boys, responding to the dominant culture, engage in literacy practices in and out of the classroom. The author shares samples of his own adolescent boys' writing, and shows how research demonstrates that boys who seem uninterested in literacy in the classroom may be enthusiastic readers and writers in different contexts.... Career Fields: General Career Skills Projects: Writing 6-12, Standards First 16 Making the Match: The Right Book for the Right Reader at the Right Time, Grades 4-12 [excerpt]: Chapter 1, "What is a Young Adult?" Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 7–12 Professional Commentary: What do adolescents care about? Chatting online with friends, movies, their favorite bands . .... Career Fields: Education & Training, General Career Skills Projects: Standards First 17 Juxtaposing Traditional and Intermedial Literacies to Redefine the Competence of Struggling Adolescents Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 6–12 Professional Commentary: In his earlier article (2001) in Reading Online, O'Brien examined at-risk adolescents in relation to the new literacies (media, digital, nonprint), and lent his perspective, based on his collaborative project research, to multiliteracies and their effect on struggling readers. He focused especially on how students' literacy competencies were redefined as they moved from a predominantly print-based literacy to an environment of mulitliteracies.... Career Fields: Arts & Communication, Information Technology, General Career Skills Projects: Standards First 18 Complex Human Activities Taking Place in Complex Human Relationships Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 6–12 Professional Commentary: Ohio State University Professor David Bloome's "Complex Human Activities Taking Place in Complex Human Relationships" is the featured article in this issue (October 2004) of AdLIT's In Perspective. Bloome suggests that, as teachers, "we need to change our approach to teaching reading as if it were an autonomous activity made up of isolated skills." Instead, as he so aptly builds a case for in this professional development article, we need to teach reading "as part of a broad range of activities that are meaningful to students, that position them as people who act upon the worlds in which they live instead of merely being acted upon by others and by various social institustions." Bloome advocates designing our instructional programs "to eschew mock participation, procedural display, text reproduction, passive stances toward reading, and the isolation of reading form the complex human activities and complex human relationships in which it is inherently embedded." He provides classroom models, demonstrating that there are "powerful and exciting ways" to approach and to teach reading.... Projects: Writing 6-12 19 School Smarts [excerpt]: Chapter 2, "The Four Cs of Academic Success" Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 7–12 Professional Commentary: Recalling his own struggles and disinterest in academics as a high school student, Jim Burke begins this article by describing the unconventional path he followed to success. Burke identifies four "C's" as essential components of a success model: commitment, content, competencies, and capacity.... Career Fields: Education & Training, General Career Skills Projects: Standards First 20 Making Meaning with Texts [excerpt]: Chapter 5, "The Acid Test for Literature Teaching" Resource Type: Professional Resource Discipline: English Language Arts Ohio Standards Alignment: Grades 7–Postsecondary Professional Commentary: This site is a complete reading of Chapter 5, an excerpt from the book The Acid Test for Literature Teaching. It describes in detail the concerns involved with teaching literature to adolescents and young readers in today's classrooms, and suggests that as teachers, we can develop criteria for judging the short-term motivation we provide our students, the works we ask them to read, and the teaching methods we employ.... |