Reading Rockets News

February 2012

• In Focus: Comprehension
• Books & Authors: Interview with Julianne Moore | New booklist: Travel Through Time | Black History Month | Seuss-apalooza
• Ideas for Educators: Text Sets | Digital learning resource roundup | Valentine's Day is for writing | Reading toolkit for pre-K teachers
• Ideas for Parents: Top 12 comprehension apps | The vocabulary of science | Virtual experiments and field trips
• Research & News: All children can read | Watching teachers work

In Focus: Comprehension

Featured Strategy: Jigsaw

With this cooperative learning strategy, "home groups" and "expert groups" do research, collaborate, debate, and present everything they've learned about a topic.

Watch jigsaw in action! Go inside Cathy Doyle's second grade classroom in Evanston, Illinois to observe her students use the jigsaw strategy to understand the topic of gardening. Joanne Meier, our research director, introduces the strategy and talks about the importance of advance planning and organization to make this strategy really effective.
See jigsaw strategy >

See more comprehension strategies from our library >

Reading for Meaning

Reading for Meaning, one of the shows in our PBS Launching Young Readers series, highlights effective ways to help kids understand — and care about — what they read. See what Reciprocal Teaching and Concept Oriented Reading Instruction strategies look like in action.
Watch show online >

Related video:

From Emotion to Comprehension

Six-year-old Arik is reading through his books with lightning speed — but is he understanding it all? Using a technique developed for children with autism like Arik, Drs. Greenspan and Shanker believe that they can help Arik's comprehension by expanding his emotional connection to the words.
Watch clip online >

Revisiting Read Alouds

This article describes evidence-based practices that encourage first graders' engagement with texts. The authors review reading as a "transactional process" where text and reader together make meaning, talk about the benefits of reading aloud, provide a rationale for promoting engagement with texts, discuss three literacy strategies implemented in one first-grade classroom (Alphaboxes, making connections, and discussion webs), and share examples of work contributed by the students.
Read article >

For parents

Use a PEER When You Read Aloud

The best story times are very interactive: You are talking about and reading the story, your child is talking, and there is conversation taking place between the two of you — often called dialogic reading. It takes a bit of practice! The PEER method (Prompt, Evaluate, Expand, Repeat) can help guide you.
See article (In English and Spanish) >

Reading Together: Tips for Parents of Children with ADHD >

Webcast: Make Reading Count

Isabel Beck, Nanci Bell, and Sharon Walpole discuss the essential components for developing good reading comprehension skills, identifying potential stumbling blocks, and offering strategies teachers can use in the classroom.

In this excerpt, Walpole paints a vivid picture of a classroom where a lot of deep learning is going on:

They're filled with language. You can't teach comprehension quietly. Teachers are talking, children are talking. There are wonderful books being read that are complex contexts for comprehension. You can't teach comprehension in a very, very simple book, you have to have something that actually has some meat to it. Teachers are actually modeling thinking, which is the hardest thing about teaching comprehension. Making that thinking verbal and accessible to the kids. And the kids are asking questions of the teacher, of the text, and of one another. So, they're noisy places.

Watch online >

Do you train preservice or inservice teachers? Use our webcasts in your teacher education courses!

Our webcasts feature national experts in lively discussions on critical literacy topics. The one-hour webcasts can easily be integrated into your teaching curriculum across a wide range of literacy courses.
Learn more >

See all of our comprehension resources >

Books & Authors

In the Fraternity of Redheads: Our Interview with Julianne Moore

Actor and author Julianne Moore taps gently into the minds and feelings of young children with her Freckleface Strawberry series. Brimming with humor and insight, the books tell the story of a feisty young girl who learns that what makes you different makes you who you are — and that's something to celebrate. Whether you're a member of the "fraternity of redheads" or not, you'll find universal truths in Moore's books.
Watch interview >

Travel Through Time

Investigate the concept of time in this hot-off-the-press collection of fiction and nonfiction books. Rediscover the classic story A Wrinkle in Time (still fresh after 50 years), hop aboard a mysterious train that's winding its way into the heart of prehistoric times, or take a provocative look at what can happen in just one second. (Did you know that in one second a bat can make 200 calls and a black mamba snake can slither 24 feet?)
See booklist >

Celebrating Black History Month

Explore the extraordinary achievements of African Americans through stories, biography, and literacy activities. In our Black History Month section, you'll discover great online resources for school and home. Many, like National Geographic's interactive journey on the Underground Railroad, will inspire conversations in class and around the kitchen table. Watch video interviews with award-winning writers and illustrators — and browse our children's books featuring the lives of artists, musicians, writers, athletes, and civil rights leaders as well as stories about African American families.
See Black History Month resources >

New booklist! Incredible stories of bravery, resolve, and triumph...
Freedom Stories >

Seuss-apalooza

Start planning your Seuss reading party! March 2nd is right around the corner and with it comes the NEA's annual Read Across America celebration. This is a great opportunity for toddlers, teens and everyone in between to celebrate their literacy and language skills, the joys of reading, and their love of Dr. Seuss. Rachael Walker, our outreach coordinator, literacy advocate, and blogger (as Belle of the Book), shares her favorite ideas and links for Read Across America 2012.
Browse resources >

Find more Read Across America resources on Reading Rockets >

Ideas for Educators

Text Sets: One Theme, Many Levels

The theme is Ancient Egypt and your students are eager to dig into books about this fascinating topic. Text sets are a great way to support the learning of all students, by providing a wide range of books on the same theme but different reading levels. Our reading expert, teacher, and blogger Joanne Meier shares a few of her favorite text set resources. ReadWriteThink offers good guidelines for creating text sets and Lit for Kids has gathered text sets (what they poetically call Book Flights) on topics ranging from the night sky to cooking to Darwin.
Learn more about text sets >

Digital Learning Resource Roundup

Although the official Digital Learning Day has come and gone, we all know that digital learning is happening everyday in classrooms and homes across the country. Edtech leader Edutopia compiled a resource list highlighting 30 great tech makeovers. Topics include blended learning, teaching with new media tools, working with digital learners, and more.
Visit website >

Valentine's Day Is for Writing

Valentine's Day as a perfect opportunity to practice creative writing skills — and take a fresh look at poetry, figurative language, and word play. Kids can experiment with new poetry forms like Korean sijo and cinquain. Special video feature: a visit with children's writer Laura Elliott, author of A String of Hearts who shares wonderful ideas to spark creativity with words and art.
See Valentine's Day writing activities >

Reading Toolkit for Pre-K Teachers

Read Tennessee created a multimedia-rich toolkit to help pre-K teachers understand and implement best practices in language and literacy for young children. The toolkit offers resources in alphabet knowledge, book awareness and reading aloud, concepts of print, emergent writing, integrating literacy throughout the curriculum, oral language and vocabulary, phonological awareness, and social/emotional awareness.
Visit website >

Ideas for Parents

Top 12 Comprehension Apps

Unlock one of these apps to give your child practice with a range of comprehension skills: sequencing, inference, differentiating between fact and opinion, reading for details, developing word awareness (through antonyms, synonyms, and homophones), and mind mapping. Starring Aesop, Garfield, young magicians Luna and Leo, and other kid-friendly characters.
See apps slideshow >

The Vocabulary of Science

"Mom, what's photosynthesis?" Science learning involves lots of new vocabulary words. Discover ways to help your child figure out "big words" by breaking the words apart, thinking about what the smaller parts mean, and exploring related words. Have fun building "word families" together!
See article >

Subscribe to Growing Readers: Literacy in the Sciences >

Virtual Experiments, Field Trips, and Adventures!

Make a rocket pinwheel, experience life on a submarine, create a kaleidoscope, or build and test a paper bridge. These and many more hands-on science and technology activities are at your fingertips at this interactive website from the New York Hall of Science.
Visit website >

Research & News

All Children Can Read

Developed by the National Consortium on Deaf-Blindness (NCDB), this new website provides information and resources to state deaf-blind projects, teachers, family members, and related service providers interested in starting or improving literacy instruction for children who have combined vision and hearing loss and children with other complex learning challenges. Topics include early emergent literacy, emergent literacy, and writing. Topics under development include vocabulary and comprehension.
Visit website >

Watching Teachers Work

This recent report from the New America Foundation, Watching Teachers Work: Using Observation Tools to Promote Effective Teaching in the Early Years and Early Grades describes how observation tools — valid and reliable rubrics scored by trained observers who visit classrooms — could be harnessed to promote effective teaching and improve alignment across pre-K to grade 3.
Read report >

You're never too old, too wacky, too wild,
To pick up a book and read with a child.
You're never too busy, too cool, or too hot,
To pick up a book and share what you've got.

— Excerpt from NEA's Read Across America poem