Reading Room

Here's an Inkling's promise: we will only post articles and books here if they are immediately applicable and interesting to read. (We can't abide a useless or boring text.)

Links to Articles about Reading/Writing (Common Core)

• Educational Leadership: Reading: The Core Skill: Turning the Page on Reading.  Read like a detective. Write like an investigative reporter." That's how David Coleman, one of the lead authors of the common core state standards, described in a nutshell the approach to the teaching of reading and writing ushered in by the standards.

• Educational Leadership: Supporting Beginning Teachers: The Don'ts and Don'ts of Teaching.  It's a lot more efficient to learn a few mistakes that you should avoid than to learn all the things you should do right. When I compare my awful first year with my very successful second year, the main difference was not so much what I did as what I didn't do. Here are 10 rookie teacher mistakes I wish I'd avoided.

• Educational Leadership: Reading: The Core Skill: Every Child, Every Day.  Here, we outline six elements of instruction that every child should experience every day. Each of these elements can be implemented in any district and any school, with any curriculum or set of materials, and without additional funds. All that's necessary is for adults to make the decision to do it.

• Educational Leadership: Reading: The Core Skill: Taming the Wild Text.  From my observations at the Children's Village and my decades of work with vulnerable readers, I have built a top-10 list for how teachers can create a classroom culture that ensures that all students fall in love with reading. From that love, students will build reading muscles for lifelong strength. Through these actions, we can help each struggling reader arm himself or herself for the joys of engaging with the wild thing of printed text—and taming it.

• Educational Leadership: Reading: The Core Skill: How We Really Comprehend Nonfiction. Nonfiction writers never leave narrative far behind. Instead, they use narrative in more complex and embedded ways. It's time we let students in on the secret.

• Educational Leadership: Reading: The Core Skill: Teaching Genre with Purpose. The three principles that follow can help teachers teach in a way that's sensitive to genre.

• Educational Leadership: Reading: The Core Skill: Teaching for Historical Literacy.  Students should be reading a wide range of historical sources; they should be grappling with and constructing ideas for themselves. 

• Educational Leadership: Reading: The Core Skill: The Challenge of Challenging Text.  What do we mean when we say that a text is difficult? Readability formulas usually answer this question by measuring two factors: challenging vocabulary and long, complex sentences. Here we look at these factors along with several others that also affect readers' ability to comprehend text.

• Educational Leadership: Reading: The Core Skill: Using Readers Theater to Reach Older Readers.  I sat in my chair while Kenya cried. As tears streamed down her face, she choked out, "I can't do it. I'll never be able to read." I wanted to tell Kenya that this wasn't true, that I could help her reach her reading benchmark. But the truth was that, as a 5th grader reading far below grade level, Kenya's odds of catching up to her peers were slim.

• Educational Leadership: Reading: The Core Skill: Inspiring a Nonreader.  Jonah came to us in 5th grade refusing to read, write, or do much of anything. A major challenge in class, he sported an odd indentation on his forehead from regularly banging his head against his desk. He had been assigned to participate in a half-day behavior program; the other half of the day he spent with us.

Reports

• 2007 McKinsey Report: How the World’s Best Performing School Systems Come Out on Top

• The Real Value of Teachers (EdTrust)

• Good Teaching Matters (EdTrust)

Videos

• Digital Media: New Learners of the 21st Century (PBS) –Submitted by Ms. Chapin

• Tony Wagner: The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need–and What We Can Do About It.

Books

• The World is Flat (Friedman)

• The Global Achievement Gap (Wagner)

• Beyond Monet (Bennett)

• Never Work Harder Than Your Students (Jackson)

• Leading Lesson Study (Stepanek)

• Boy Writer’s (Fletcher)

• Catching Up or Leading the Way (Zhao)

• Looking to Write (Ehrenworth)

• Practical Poetry (Holbrook)

• The Art and Science of Teaching (Marzano)

• Checking for Understanding (Fisher)

• 7 Keys to Comprehension (Zimmerman)

• Results Now (Schmoker)

• Comprehension Connections (McGregor)