Children’s Literacy and Reading News Roundup – Early June 2011
June is just a jumble. As is often typical this time of year, time seems to just fold over on itself. Between recovering from BookExpo, holiday weekends, year-end commitments at school, graduations, summer sports … you get the picture. Odds are also pretty good that if you are reading this, you’re also living it. So ‘nuf said. On with the show …
Three times a month, Jen Robinson @ Jen Robinson’s Book Page, Carol Rasco @ Rasco from RIF, and I publish a children’s literacy and reading news round-up. Jen covers the first part of the month, I (usually) take the middle, and Carol Rasco does a lovely wrap-up and look ahead. Carol’s May in Review post went up last week, and Jen’s June post went up yesterday.
I must admit that although I have seen #YASaves on Twitter, I had not followed up to see what it was all about … though the tweets themselves were pretty hefty clues. I knew that the wise voices in the #Kidlit world would speak eloquently … and they have. Jen has pulled together a nice set of links with different perspectives: educators Donalyn Miller @ The Book Whisperer and Teri Lesesne @ Professor Nana; librarian and ALA award committe member Liz Burns @ A Chair, A Fireplace, and a Tea Cozy, with a long set of links; and author Cheryl Rainfield (whose book -among others – was mentioned in the WSJ article), who also has a very extensive list of posts about the topic.
You may also be interested in this eClassroomNews article that Jen found via one of our long-time sources Trevor H Cairney of Literacy, Families and Learning and @TrevorHCairney on Twitter. The short response is that technology (namely tablets) are impacting test scores in a positive way. Whether or not it improves learning … we’ll have to wait and see.
I never seem to be able to participate in MotherReader’s Annual 48 Hour Book Challenge (this was year 6!), but I am bent and determined to try Donalyn Miller’s third annual Book-A-Day Challenge (#bookaday) this summer. I read Jen’s post yesterday, so I am going to use Monday June 6 as my start date … and we’ll keep reading until the first day of school in August.
Earlier this week I posted a summary from Carol’s May in Review post and added a few new tidbits … including a program in Singapore to recruit dads who work odd-hour jobs to read with their kids. I took out all the links at one point to fix an HTML problem, but now they’re all back. So please stop by to take a look.
Because of the afore-mentioned “jumble,” I am going to be taking some time away from the Roundup. Susan Stephenson @ The Book Chook – who as you all know is a huge help to us with all the cool links she finds – is going to do the mid-June roundup.
THANK YOU SUSAN!