Are “Just Right” Books Too Easy?

In this article in Reading Today, Timothy Shanahan (University of Illinois/Chicago) examines the long-standing belief that children learn best when they’re taught at their current instructional reading level, using materials that are not too hard, not too easy – “just right.” This seems like common sense, as anyone who has watched a frustrated student struggling with a frustration-level book can…

Should Books in School Libraries Be Organized by Reading Level?

In this article in Knowledge Quest, Georgia librarian Susan Grigsby makes the case for not leveling books in school libraries – for example with Lexile numbers, AR levels, or colored dots. “I believe strongly in teaching independence in book selection,” she says, and creates personal bibliographies for her middle-school students by having them fill out surveys of their interests –…

Close Reading with Sets of Related Picture Books

(Originally titled “Close Reading Without Tears”)

In this Educational Leadership article, Nancy Boyles (Southern Connecticut State University) says she is a big fan of close reading because it has the potential to teach students “to delve into a text and uncover one layer of meaning after another, to appreciate as much as possible a book’s multiple themes, diverse points of view, rich…

We listen to the research, the thought leaders, community members, boards of education, business, mental health and health care providers. But, someday, we need to remember that the children also have something to say. There is value to listening to the children.  Here, we are thinking about four.  Read more...

 Please read this scary article by Laurie Rogers, a well-known education reformer you can trust.

The Network (her word)  is all the people and forces trying to subdue education. Common Core represents the fulfillment of their control over everything K-12. They have to be stopped if you want to save genuine education.

  You know what the only hope is? That all the people in the middle start to take sides.

Presumably some people…

Technology Improves And The Internet Expands But School Acceptable Use Policies Still Lock Students Out Of The Benefits

from the an-internet-with-18-years-worth-of-training-wheels dept

Tech Dirt

Tim Cushing

The last week of September is celebrated as Banned Books Week.  Click here for info on how you can celebrate literary freedom, and learn the effects of censorship on schools, libraries and communities.

Here's the short version: you're doing a lousy job. You're betraying your own future and letting the country down. You're abandoning the parents in your community to the scams of the Education Establishment. You're making real educational reform almost impossible because you don't explain any of the issues to the community. You and the NEA seem to be engaged in some sort of treacherous deal to make sure that the deliberate dumbing down of the country…