Celebrate National Library Week

National Library Week

If you have been a follower of this blog for any length of time, you are well aware of the importance I have placed on literacy- getting students to read, to enjoy reading and to get books in their hands.  Next week will provide you as classroom teachers another great opportunity to weave literacy in your lesson plans.  April 8-14 is National Library Week. It is one of the annual events sponsored by the American Library Association. (www. ala.org). With the use of the Internet and all that it has to offer, many students may believe that the library has become obsolete. There are numerous activities that you can use to demonstrate to your students the importance of the library and how valuable the librarian can be. The American Library Association has created a web site that will be helpful in the planning of activities. You can access it at www.atyourlibrary.org

There are many civic and education minded non- profits out there that have been established to aid in promoting literacy in schools and to encourage students to read. I had the opportunity have lunch with the founder and executive director of one such organization.  “K is for Kids Foundation Inc.” was established in Southwest Florida by Mrs. Karen Clawson to encourage today’s readers. The organization seeks to obtain donations of books as well as funds to purchase books and give these books to school students. Clawson calls her events “fun raisers” and in a short period of time her organizations has been quite successful getting books into the hands of school children. The program has a teen advisory council and the organization has been successful in obtaining a donation of bookshelves from Target. Aside from individual donations, thousands of books have been donated by Book Warehouse. So far books have been donated to 19 schools that serve over 15,000 students.

A similar program was recently initiated in North Carolina. Book Harvest is a nonprofit organization that placed news and gently used books in places easily accessible to children. They include, school, after school programs, Head Start program, health clinic waiting rooms, etc. (you   get the picture.) To date this organization has provided over 45,000 books to children in North Carolina. For more information, check out their web site at http://www.bookharvestnc.org/contact_us

The Harvest Book Company in Suburban Philadelphia is a huge buyer of second hand books. They often donate books they cannot sell to area charitable organizations. For more information you can contact them at webservice@harvestbooks.com

More tips for getting kids to love reading. It starts at home!

http://www.freeprintablebehaviorcharts.com/reading.htm

This site has free printable book logs and reading charts for parents to help motivate children to read.
There is also an excellent list of tips for activities to do at home. From the methodical to the zany it is crucial for everyone, parents, siblings, teachers, librarians, civic organizations and the government to encourage young people to read.

Don’t forget to thank your librarian both in school and at your local public library.

READ!!!!

Get Ready for Read Across America

"You're never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read with a child."

Recently, Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow got together with a group of children from the Boys and Girls Club in Los Angeles. He was participating in “America’s Greatest Storytime” where he read the Dr. Seuss classic, “Green Eggs and Ham” to the youngsters. The reading was broadcast over the Internet as part of the BOOK IT ! reading program sponsored by Pizza Hut.

In Naples, Florida, former governor Jeb Bush and his mother, former First Lady Barbara Bush hosted a literacy/ fundraising conference focusing on the importance of reading. These events and numerous others, lead up to March 2, 2012 which will mark the 16^th annual Read Across America Day. The program is sponsored and supported by the National Education Association (NEA) and commemorates the birthday of Dr. Seuss . Across the country, thousands of schools, libraries, and community centers will participate by bringing together kids, teens, and books.

This is an ideal teachable moment for classroom teachers as well as parents. There are numerous web sites  just brimming with ideas and links for student activities. One such site that I highly recommend is First Book. If you teach in a community where at least 70 percent of the children in your program come from low-income families, they can help. Access this site at http://www.firstbook.org/

First Book’s available resources can

• Elevate the quality of literacy programs.
• Register Now Enrich the learning experience for children in need.
• Enable teachers to create new curricula.
• Impart a love of reading to children.

If your School is eligible for participation they will receive:

• First Book Marketplace offering new books at 50 to 90 percent off retail prices
• First Book National Book Bank offering free books (pay only for shipping typically at 35 cents a book)
• Book grants through First Book’s local Advisory Boards

Another wonderful source is Read, Write, Think sponsored by the International Reading Association. Here you will find lesson plans, student activities as well as printable worksheets. Go to  http://www.readwritethink.org/

As always your input and comments are welcome. Please  let us know if you  have had success with some  you own projects.

Toward a National Curriculum

Cultural Literacy.

Presented by Jeffrey A. Margolis

Is there a specific body of knowledge that every American needs to know? Who should decide what we need to know and how do we determine what is to be included in that body of knowledge?

Dr. E. D. Hirsch, Jr., former professor of Humanities and English at the University of Virginia decided to address that issue.   His book, Cultural Literacy – What Every American Needs to Know, when published in 1987 became at once both a best seller and a controversial flashpoint. It evolved from a concern with the decline in literacy in America.  Hirsch maintained that “to be culturally literate is to possess the basic information needed to thrive in the modern world.” (Hirsch, p.xiii). His thesis, while well meaning, angered multiple groups of educators. There were those who challenged Hirsch with righteous indignation. Who is Hirsch to decide what Americans should know?  His book provided a “list” of about 5000 items including historic events, names of famous scholars and politicians, opera and music, religion, and so on. So the argument went on as to what should be included on this list. A subsequent publication of Hirsch’s Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, gave brief descriptions and illustrations of the items he included on his now famous list.

The other group of offended scholars and intellectuals included those who saw this as exposing class differences in American education.  Minority and disadvantaged students were not exposed to the same experiences as their middle and upper middle class counterparts.  They had not been to museums, concerts or the opera. They had not read the same books (like Shakespeare’s plays), magazines or even vacationed in the same places. Many had not been to a live sporting event.

Those familiar with public education in the United States know that with the exception of the Advanced Placement program in high schools and the International Baccalaureate Program (IBP), there is no standardized national curriculum. What this means in a mobile society is that students who move from one state to another may either be ahead or behind their peers, depending in what state they end up in. Thus if Hirsch’s theory would be adopted there would be a common universal fund of knowledge that all American students would be required tp know.

It should be pointed out that there is a movement under consideration that would standardize knowledge in specific subject areas (like math).-(Common Core State Mathematics Standards)

In 1986 Hirsch established the Core Knowledge Foundation ( www.coreknowledge.org)  in an effort to develop a uniform curriculum for elementary school students. The foundation subsequently published a series of books about what each grade level student should know.  The series  goes from Kindergarten through grade 8.

Where do you stand on this issue? Should there be a uniform national curriculum? What should its contents be? Who should devise it? We want to hear from you.

Social Studies - an Endangered Species

An article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on June 15, 2001 with the headline “Students Stumble Again on the Basics of History.” Those educators who have been following the trends in standardized testing aligned to No Child Left Behind Act should not be surprised. Classroom teachers are charged to focus on getting the students prepared to take the tests and those tests focus on essentially two subjects – language arts literacy and mathematics.  Thus a subject like social studies gets put on the back burner and is not taught as it should be.  According to the WSJ article, for example, fewer than 25% of US twelfth graders knew that China and North Korea were allies during the Korean War. Students had a difficult time with historical time lines or the US Constitution.

I recently attended a lecture in Washington DC give by noted historian David McCullough. While he was promoting his latest book, The Greater Journey, McCullough lamented during the question and answer session about the decline in the teaching of social studies in America classrooms.  Although the article was recent, the issue of what America school children should know about their country and its history is not new. E.D. Hirsch, a highly regarded professor at the University of Virginia, published quite a controversial book in 1987. Cultural Literacy- What Every American Needs to Know was an attempt to quantify the body of knowledge that Americans needed to understand in order to successfully participate in society. Hirsch developed a “list” of 5000 names, phrases, dates and concepts that transcended many disciplines- art, music, mathematics, civics, and history.  What Hirsch discovered was that social status had a great deal to do with what a student’s general fund of knowledge was.  Children who were exposed to museums, plays, concerts, and books, were better readers and had a higher rate of cultural literacy that more underprivileged (read minorities) students. Hirsch and his colleagues went on to publish the Dictionary of Cultural Literacy and a series of books for each grade level (e.g. What Your First Grader Needs Know). These are part of the Core Knowledge Series that spawned from  an organization that Hirsch helped to establish.

It behooves us as educators to be the guardians of social studies, the arts, and others school subjects that are on the endangered list. We need to make sure that such subjects remain a part of the school curriculum. We need to stress to our students that history and music are important and deserve their attention. Those of us in the profession need to develop materials that are both engaging as well as challenging.  As always your comments and input are welcome.

(Note: The Great Journey and Cultural Literacy are available from Amazon.com and can be ordered from this site.)