My good friend and former first grade teaching colleague in Shanghai, Elaine Voge is a whiz at running and organizing learning centers. Below, she shares some professional knowledge about the benefits of learning centers as well as the tools which make it all run smoothly.

Downloads:

• Center Chart
• Center Job Labels
• Center Information/Rubric
  

Making centers meaningful is always the challenge. Do you have ideas to share?

Sometimes you just have to laugh. Today I came across a lit blog which made me LAUGH OUT LOUD! How often does that happen when you’re reading about Earth Day, Jerry Spinelli, and poetry? Check out MotherReader- I think her mini profile says it all…

One of the bestselling preschool books of recent times was Walter the Farting Dog. At the same time, the American Library Association named as one of its best books Michael Rosen’s Sad Book, a book in which Mr. Rosen talks about his despair over the death of his son. I believe that, for most of us, what we want lies somewhere between a flatulent canine and overwhelming grief.

My friend and colleague Tanya Shehan who is working at the American School of Doha just emailed me this interesting information about teaching reading. I wasn’t familiar with literacy theorist, Louise Rosenblatt’s book Literature As Exploration, but I just might need to buy it.

The information Tanya provided, reminds me how important and sensible it is to be striving for a balanced approach when teaching reading.

From Literature as Exploration…

Two modes of reading
Parallel frames of mind, which any reader brings to bear during every act of reading in order to create meaning
Efferent – (from the Latin word effere meaning ‘to carry away’)
Reading in order to acquire information so we’re focusing our attention on facts and ideas, on what we’ll learn and carry away.

Aesthetic – a reader fuses affective and cognitive elements together, reading for the pleasures and rewards of living vicariously inside someone else’s literary world.

*A concern is that twentieth-century teachers are asking students not to ‘live through’ and love literature but to find facts (strategy data: main ideas, supporting details, causes and effects, plot events, settings, character motivations.) A comprehension-strategy approach asks students to take an efferent stance every time they read, regardless of the text or their purpose in reading it. There is a place for reading with an efferent frame of mind, to consider comprehension in the content-area disciplines in order to further one’s understanding.

At NESA, our facilitator Shannon Stanton led the literacy coaches through a professional development session to explore expository writing in the writer’s workshop format.The session was one we could use again with teachers at our own schools.

During the work, Shannon mentioned how it could be challenging to create an environment where teachers feel secure enough to confide they are not strong writers themselves, and therefore might struggle with implementing structures such as Lucy Calkin’s Units of Study lessons. In fact, she went on to say how it isn’t culturally acceptable in elementary schools for a teacher to say she isn’t confident teaching language arts concepts. If that same teacher talked about her challenges teaching the math curriculum it would be accepted and understood.

I’ve been thinking about this idea since I returned.

For many of us the “Art of Teaching Writing” is something that comes without a memory attached. The way I teach now is nothing like the way I was taught to write. That learning curve- our own prior knowledge- can be so steep. The question though is how can coaches create a climate in our international schools where teachers are the learners? For me to learn as an adult I need three things:

1. Scaffolding (To make meaning and layer my learning)
2. Time (To think it through and to practice.)
3. Reflection (To make the learning my own.)

We adults need the same things our kids need to learn. If we gave ourselves permission to ask questions, had the time to practice new techniques and the opportunity to discuss our work with colleagues, we would BE the learners we want to teach.

Photo Credit: http://seomraranga.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/old_classroom.jpg

I was recently part of the final meeting of the first cohort for International School Literacy Coaches at NESA. This group has been working together for the past two years. For me personally, highlights from this work have included:

1. Two multi-day seminars with expert literacy coach Katherine Casey.
2. The opportunities to work collaboratively, face to face with other coaches working internationally.
3. A chance to create a network of international coaches connected and collaborating via the internet.
4. Time to work with school administrators as they learn more about the benefits of having a literacy coach.

This meeting at the NESA Spring Educators Conference in Cairo, Egypt was led by Carrie Ekey and attended by over 20 literacy coaches and teacher leaders from around the world. Our goal is find ways to stay connected and to meet again in the future to share and learn together once again.