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December 06, 2015

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In the Name of Reading Education

December 14, 2014

This is my last post in 2014. I promise I will be better about posting book reviews more regularly in the new year. So for now, here is one last rant to close out 2014. Happy Holidays! As I have been writing my new book, which will be out in Spring 2015, I have been wandering the internet for resources and have uncovered an unfortunate trend: teachers still do crap in the name of teaching children to read that life-long readers would never tolerate. I have seen so many "alternative" to book reports postings, using digital resources to make kids do the same waste-of-time assignments I tried to rally against when I write my first book on the Reading Workshop in 2001. Why does anyone think having children post images on Pinterest from their iPads is any more worthwhile than writing book reports on paper plates? Why waste their time? The next thing you know someone will be suggesting that we use auto-cad architectural programs to build digital dioramas. So what should we ask youn...

Building Capacity for Effective Instruction

April 19, 2014

Let me begin this post with an assertion: the quality of the classroom teacher, not the instructional program, is the primary variable in determining the effectiveness of a comprehensive reading program. This assertion is often hidden beneath the glitz and packaging of many commercial programs. It is not the quality of the wand, but the magic of the teacher that makes reading and writing come alive in today’s classrooms. In addition to this primary assertion, I would assert that no significant changes in instructional practices will occur until corresponding changes take place in one’s theoretical understandings. In other words, unless we rethink why we do what we do in the name of literacy education and instruction, most changes will be cosmetic and superficial. The resources teachers select may change, or the daily schedule may be rearranged to accommodate new program com...

Coding Novels for Literature Discussions

July 31, 2014

For many years, my students in both elementary and college classes have asked me about what to put on their post-its, how many post-its are required for each book, and what are they expected to do with them when they are finished reading. These are all logical questions, but they also reveal that students were not using the post-its for their own purposes, but were simply following directions to complete an assignment. As a reader, I don’t comment on texts or write in margins to complete an assignment. Rather, I highlight or code texts, write comments, and share these comments to help me make sense of and analyze the texts I read. Until our students understand the purposes behind these coding and commenting practices, they will simply complete the assignments we require of them and fill their books with useless post-its. Coding texts is simply a form of highlighting and commenting. When I have asked students to code texts in preparation for their literature discussions, I sugge...

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Dr. Frank Serafini: Dr. Frank Serafini is an award winning children’s author and illustrator, a landscape photographer, a literacy researcher, and a Professor of Literacy Education and Children’s Literature at Arizona State University. Frank was awarded the Arbuthnot Award from the International Reading Association as the Distinguished Professor of Children's Literature and the Distinguished Educator Award from the International Visual Literacy Association, Frank has published seven books with Heinemann Publishers including: The Reading Workshop, Lessons in Comprehension, Around the Reading Workshop and Classroom Reading Assessments. Frank’s new book is entitled: Reading the Visual: An Introduction to Teaching Multimodal Literacies with Teachers College Press. In 2008, Frank began writing and illustrating a series of non-fiction picturebooks focusing on nature with Kids Can Press. The Looking Closely series contains books about the desert, garden, pond, rainforest, shore and forest. In 2009, Looking Closely Along the Shore won an International Reading Association’s Teachers’ Choice Award, and Honorable Mention from the Society of School Librarians International.

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