Children’s Literacy and Reading News Roundup – 1 February

Welcome to the weekly roundup of news, analysis, and ideas for raising readers. Can you believe February is here already? My thanks to Jen for taking the helm of the children’s literacy and reading news round-up two weeks in a row.

These roundups are brought to you by Jen Robinson’s Book Page and Scrub-a-Dub-Tub, a Reading Tub blog. Jen and I collected plenty of content for you about literacy and reading-related events; literacy/reading programs and research; 21st century literacies; and grants, sponsorships and donations.

This is National Storytelling Week in the United Kingdom, and there are two great posts that offer ideas (of course!) about ways to celebrate.

• Susan Stephenson (aka, the Book Chook), who is an IRREPRESSIBLE story teller, explains how telling stories is a valuable form of literacy, and adds a few suggestions, too!
• At Paper Tigers, Corinne told us about The Donkey Sanctuary opening its doors so that kids and donkeys can listen to stories, together.

As Jen says, “[we] are suckers for inventive programs to promote literacy.” Don’t have a donkey? Then grab the closest Democrat, stuffed animal, or your pet.

On the school front, there are two stand-out articles. They are particularly *personal* for me …

• As reported by Tricia from The Miss Rumphius Effect, a recent study found that “First- and second-graders whose teachers were anxious about mathematics were more likely to believe that boys are hard-wired for math and that girls are better at reading… What’s more, the girls who bought into that notion scored significantly lower on math tests than their peers who didn’t.”  (Emphasis mine). This is so frustrating. Despite everything we do at home to encourage math confidence in our second grader, it is undermined in her classroom.
• Teacherninja (aka Jim) offers a detailed list of 18 reasons why schools need to think long and hard about using/relying on Accelerated Reader (AR) programs.  Jim refers to Mark Pennington’s article (which is also worth a read). On the personal side … kids need to learn to read, but  they do it at different rates. Having worked in multiple classrooms with young readers, this one is particularly damning reason to me: “Using AR tends to limit differentiated instruction.”

Today’s Nonfiction Monday round-up is at Wild About Nature. Even if you don’t have a contribution, be sure to stop by and leave a comment to congratulate Heidi, Kim, and Laura a Happy 1st Blogoversary. This week’s Poetry Friday roundup will at Great Kid Books.

Last and certainly not least, Jen has some additional links for parents about children’s literacy and raising readers in her newest Literacy ‘Lights from the Kidlitosphere at Booklights.

Have a great week, everyone! We’ll see you here next Monday.