Flavour "Yuh Story" the Caribbean Way

If you like reading short stories that reflect on long ago or have an important lesson to be learnt, you would love this site called “Some Perfect Short Stories.” I did not read all of them but just two. The first talked about carrying water on one's head. Of course if you have grown up in the Caribbean especially in the 1970's this was a very common phenomenon. In my days it was said that it caused a person to have a very refined and dainty walk, but knowing how things go here, maybe someone else may have heard something else.
The second story was called “I had a Hero.” I absolutely loved this one because it teaches us and children that heroes are ordinary people among us who have desirable qualities that we can emulate. Anyone can be a hero to another, if you live by correct principles and values, which is so needed in our “less personable” world.
A link to this site is provided under “My Hyperlinks”
Another interesting site I found was “Coomacka Island” They tell interesting children stories based on a Caribbean theme. The one I watched and listened to was “The Story of Spider & Ant.” Children will thoroughly love hearing these stories. They remind me about using e-books and digital storytelling to get my students motivated to read and to help sustain that motivation. You can also check out the site and stories by clicking on “Coomacka Island” under “My Hyperlinks” on this page. Please ensure though that you approve of the stories before presenting them to your students.
If you find other interesting sites that relate to Caribbean “Flavour” Stories that are “Free” please let me know.

Picture retrieved from Bing images

Update Your Teaching Technology

While reading an article written by Paulo Freire I saw these words “Reading the world precedes reading the word, and subsequent reading of the word is hinged to continually reading the world.” Needless to say I was very much intrigued though his discourse was a bit challenging at times. I gathered that he was speaking of how children learn things about their environment or world even before they can formally read, thus he reflected on the intertwined relationship of reading and the world.
In essence, the world provides context for our reading and thereby facilitates greater understanding.
If this is indeed so, then one can understand why the use of these modern day technologies need to be incorporated into the classroom. Many of our students were born in this digital age, thus their reading has been shaped in such. If we as educators do not move onto this new canvas by refusing to update our “teaching technology,” wouldn’t it affect our Digital Natives/Net Geners/ Millennials drastically?

Images retrieved from "Bing Images"

Important Tips for Wiki Work

If you are thinking about really delving into “Wiki Work” with students, a good book to get is “Using Wikis for Online Collaboration” by James & Margaret West. I had the privilege of reading portions of this book and it was really helpful. In this book they pinpointed several characteristics that students should possess,and which many researchers have suggested are key to wiki success. These they placed under two main headings namely:

Cognitive or Prerequisite Skills
1. Writing & Constructive Editing Skills because the exercise should encourage writing not criticism.
2. Web Skills therefore students’ confidence about using the web need to be known
3. Group Process Skills such as shared leadership and conflict resolution.

Affective Value-base Behaviours.
1. Openness which is deemed to be the most challenging characteristic.
2. Integrity in terms of each student doing their part to the best of their ability.
3. Self Organization refers to one's own behaviour and how one responds to this mode of teaching.


Please feel free to post additional tips.

Motivating the Reluctant Secondary School Reader

An article in the ERIC Digest written by Ms. Norma Decker Collins entitled Motivating Low Performing Adolescent Readers posits the view that these readers have negative experience with the task, and consequently view “reading as a process of getting the word right rather than an act of making sense of the material.” Ms. Collins also seems to infer that these adolescent readers are void of metacognitive skills which can greatly facilitate the reading process. Accordingly she insists that these readers need:
1) The opportunity to revalue themselves.
2) Relevant experience with text.
3) Strategies that would result in comprehension.

Ms. Collins thus proceeded to provide a number of ways in which these readers can be motivated. Among these were:
1) When using informational text, teachers should construct situations in which students find personal reasons for comprehending the text.
2) Use films or television to broaden students experiential background knowledge.

As Reading Specialist, we too must think in terms of how we can motivate the low performing adolescent reader. What other strategies do you think can assist them?

Don’t Throw Away The Baby With The Bath Water.

Recently I read an article written by Joanne Rooney entitled “Teaching two Literacies,” which was published in March, 2009 in the Educational Leadership. I found the article to be very interesting because she really made me consider the issue of “throwing away the baby with the bathwater.” The baby here refers to the mastery of traditional skills, while the bathwater refers to the acquirement of non-traditional ways of gathering information and communicating instruction such as blogs, wikis, text messaging, Facebook, chat rooms etc.
She centred her attention on teenagers, to whom the new digital age seems to have the greatest lure and expressed the hope that in addition to reading blogs, instant messaging, and other digital technologies, that teenagers would also “relish such experiences as reading a great book, writing a personal letter, or memorizing a poem.”

Such hope stemmed from her belief that although the ways in which we read and communicate may be changing, “the ability to understand, use, and appreciate the written word remains the core quality of an educated person.” She therefore surmised that schools should incorporate the new technologies but insist on mastery of traditional skills. This she refers to as the “Teaching of two Literacies”

Ms. Rooney did not leave the matter there but proceeded to enumerate 3 ways in which this could be done, namely:
1) Continue to encourage students to relish good books, cherish the beauty of expressive writing, and communicate through powerful (and correct) language. Hence “How r u feeln?” must be outlawed.
2) “Redefine” literacy and abandon some archaic teaching methods such as using textbooks as the primary source of information and others.
3) Principals and teachers alike must be adamant about teaching, reading, writing, and thinking in schools.

What do you think?

(Picture retrieved from Bing Images)

Interesting Videos on the use of Quotation Marks, Comma Splice and the Colon.

Many students experience difficulty with the use of correct punctuation marks while writing. Since there is an inextricable link between reading and writing, I have decided to add some videos to my Blog that address some of these areas. Why not check them out? They are quite interesting. The first addresses "quotation marks."



The second deals with "comma splice" in sentences.


The final video here talks about how to use a "colon" in sentences.

The Brazen-faced “Ms. Debbie Jacobs”

Of course you may be wondering why I named this post “The Brazen-faced Ms Debbie Jacobs” but such is out of complete admiration to actually read a column which directly tells students that they must take responsibility for their own learning. While I, just like her, may not amass total responsibility to them, I do believe that as students mature, they must accept a greater level of responsibility for their educational outcomes, barring any birth defects.
Ms. Debbie Jacobs is one of the few persons whom I have seen within recent times, that could bold facedly make such a statement. In an article published in the Trinidad Guardian on the 29th June 2009 entitled “Reading is the Key” she wrote:

“Brace yourself because I am going to say something that no one wants to hear. Here it is: children—and by extension their parents—are really responsible for children’s education. We like to think that teachers are responsible for educating our children. They are responsible for providing the framework for education. They are responsible for imparting knowledge, but children are really responsible for learning. The best teacher can stand up and teach to his or her heart’s content and if a student does not want to learn, it’s not going to happen.”

She proceeded to explain why she expressed such sentiments in a short but interesting article. The major point she spotlighted was to meet the required level/standard of reading for secondary school students. Some interesting points made in the article were:
1) Many secondary students think that reading is only for English and literature majors.
2) Elementary school students should be reading approximately 1/2 hr every night in order to read books at their level when the reach university.
3) The most important thing children can do over the holidays is read.

Check out the article under "My Hyperlinks" on this page.

What are your views?

Teaching Reading in the Classroom

The International Reading Association (2007) believes that having a quality teacher in the classroom is key to addressing the challenges of reading achievement in schools. They then identified six elements which teacher training institutions must integrate into their programs in order to ensure that teachers teach reading well. These include:
1) Content, which embodies research about how students achieve reading success.
2) Faculty and teaching, which deals with appropriate content and instructional strategies.
3) Apprenticeships, field experiences, and practica— this exposes teachers to excellent teacher models, coursework, and systematic field experiences.
4) Awareness of diversities that exist among students.
5) Candidate and Program assessment
6) Vision, Resources & Governance.
Personally I found this article to be too teacher centred, since reading achievement within any classroom must be viewed from a 360˚angle. It must take into consideration, the student’s school environment and his/her home environment as well. In other words, the student, his/her parents, significant others,and teacher are major stakeholders in determining reading achievement in the classroom.

What do you think? Please post your views

Tips to Increase Your Young Child’s Love for Reading

These are just some ideas I used with my own children as they grew up to encourage them to read. They seemed to have worked quite well so I thought I’ll share some of them on my blog.

1) I began reading to my children from a very young age as soon as they began to speak, which was around 9 months for both of my children.
2) I used books which had pictures inserted to replace the words at various points in the text.
3) I would usually lie down in a comfortable spot where it was easy for all of us to see the words and pictures as I read.
4) I chose interesting books and used a lot of voice dynamics as I read to them.
5) While reading, I would stop by the pictures for my children to name the picture as it came up in the text. They were therefore part of the whole process. If they did not remember/know it, I would tell them and at other times I gave them hints to help them remember.
6) I made the entire process fun and exciting. It was never viewed as work, but fun.
7) We would reread the same book on different occasions.
8) I stuck up beautiful alphabet charts and other stuff around my home so that my children would learn them and I taught them the letter sounds.
9) I used magnetic letters and made up fun games where they spelt words for prizes.
10) As their vocabulary and word recognition ability increased, I bought simple books for them to read. Sometimes I read them; we read them together, or they would read to me, but we did it as fun.
11) As they became more and more independent readers, I promised them that every time they were finished reading a book I would buy another for them.
12) This increased their drive to read so much that I joined them in a library because they were finishing the book really fast and it was becoming a bit too costly.
13) Today, they still love to read and are very prolific writers as well.

Hope these tips can work for you too!

Advantages of Using Computer-Based Concept Maps

A very interesting article that I wish to share here is on the use of computer- based concepts maps to comprehending listened text. This article was written by Shadin, Shadin & Yadin (2009) and it posits some convincing arguments as to how these maps can improve an individual’s ability to understand listened text. They propose that since the listening skill is the most widely used for social and educational life, it is the most crucial skill. They further propose that the use of computer concept maps is a very effective way to teach this skill since it conceptualizes the listened words, visualizes them in the mind, and composes a meaningful whole out of them.
They cite Reif & Heller (1982, pgs.102-127) who state that the only way information can be perceived easily is via two dimensional visual organizations. They also cite Novak & Gowin (1984) who believe that all classroom activities should involve students actively constructing their own knowledge. They therefore support the constructivist paradigm through the use of concept maps. Finally they also cited Cleminson (1990) who stated that learning should involve the construction of concepts from work studies about conceptual learning.
The results of the study reported in this article purported a meaningful increase in students’ ability to comprehend text via listening text accompanied with computer-based concept maps as opposed to traditional educational methods.

Interesting Sites for Reading Activities

One way of making reading fun is to play games that the students would enjoy while getting them to read the words. KABOOSE is just one of the many online sites which offer free online games which can greatly build students vocabulary knowledge and reading ability. This site provides an online teachers’ forum, activities that both parents and teachers can do with their kids. It also provides word puzzles, printable worksheets and lots more. Although the site provides “non reading” games as well, at least the student must read the instructions in order to play the game. I believe that this is a good resource for teachers especially at the Primary level, so why not check it out. The link for this site is:
http://resources.kaboose.com/games/read2.html.
Another interesting site for Primary level students is http://www.starfall.com/.
This site has different reading levels and is very interactive and reader friendly. The site purports to adopt a systematic phonics approach, inclusive of phonemic awareness and thus states that its programme is beneficial to those ranging from preschool to second grade, as well as those in special education, home school and English Language development.
The final site I will talk about is http://www.magickeys.com/books/. This site has online stories for children of all ages. I read one about “The Journey of the Noble Gnarble” and it was quite interesting. Important themes such as “focussing on a task” and “determination” were quite evident in this story. Teachers though should check out the stories beforehand since the background on which some are written can be problematic to read.

I have added these sites under "My Hyperlinks" on this page. Check them out.