This article was very interesting to me. I teach reading in an urban district so 'Delivering What Urban Readers Need' caught my eye. The article talks about the reading difficulty in schools that are predominately minority and economically disadvantaged. This article contains information on: 'An Acute Problem', 'Strategies for Urban Readers', 'Provide Balanced Reading Instruction', 'Identify Those At Risk', 'Provide Supplemental Instruction', 'Encourage Active Student Responding', 'Teach Within Small Groups', 'Monitor Student Learning', 'Create Peer-Mediated Learning Environments', ' Practice Nonexclusionary Classroom Management', 'Help Parents Reinforce Learning', and 'Offering Learners Their Best Chance'. I found the section on providing a balanced reading instruction to be the most relative and intriguing to me. After reading this article, I feel more confident then ever that all students need repitition! "Good reading instruction is explicit, intensive, and systematic. Such instruction is beneficial for all learners, but it is nonnegotiable for students at risk for reading failure." This article is important for teachers in urban districts or even if you have 'at risk' students...truly worth a look.

"Teachers succeed as teachers only when their students succeed as learners" This website is intended to assist middle to high school students with nonfiction writing. This website has resources and strategies for teaching nonfiction to teens and adults. 'You Can Teach Writing' consists of blogs, writing topics, teacher services, student services, books, and events. If you teach older students this is great for some ideas :)

I am currently working on a poetry unit in my classroom and I was recently introduced to this website by a colleague of mine. On this site you can find: funny poems, poetry lessons, poetry games, poetry podcasts (ideas for your classroom), cool kids' poem links, a rhyming dictionary and much more! You can also sign up for a monthly newsletter. So far, I like the site, and my students love the funny poems. It has been a great introduction to my poetry unit and the funny poems used as an anticipatory set are great-truly engage students!

This website I still have from back when I was student teaching. My cooperating teacher wrote this website down on a sticky note for me and I have kept it ever since. I student taught fourth grade and have been successfully using Mandy's tips in my sixth grade reading classroom ever since. Here is a breakdown of what exactly is on this link: What Is Guided Reading? Schedule (of the guided reading) What Are the Other Kids Doing? Planning for Reading Groups Starting Guided Reading Guided Reading Activities That Teach What Does the Teacher Need for Guided Reading Lessons? Leveled Book Lists If you are new to 'guided reading' or are planning out your guided reading groups, then this is a great place to start. Her schedule is broken down for an elementary classroom but I have adjusted her schedule and tweaked it to fit my 50 minute blocks of students. Works well-depending on the grade and the reading level of your students.

This is a great website that I use often. 'Read, Write, Think' is excellent because it provides useful resources for grades k-12. This site provides teachers with classroom management resources, professional development, parent and after school resources, and learning objectives. My favorite part of this site is under the classroom resources tab they provide a plethora of lesson plans (great place to get ideas), and terrific interactive lesson plans too! I hope you enjoy because this is one of my favorites :)

This site is full of excellent links for teachers. Hope this is helpful

I absolutely love this book. This was my bible when I taught fourth grade. Working with small groups and having your other students work independently is easier said then done-takes so much practice and patience! Great book and great review!

Here is the Amazon link for "Guiding Readers and Writers"

Guiding Readers and Writers-Teaching Comprehension Genre, and Content Literacy
Irene C. Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell

Book Review

Guiding Readers and Writers written by Fountas and Pinell is a comprehensive language and literacy framework. The text is organized into a three-block framework that is a conceptual tool for organizing instruction. Throughout the entire text there are guidelines for arranging schedules and integrating the curriculum components of the framework. The three blocks are Language and Word Study, Reading Workshop, and Writing Workshop. In each block, the teaching/learning structure and the curriculum components are broken down and simplified. There are helpful and descriptive pictures that identify different components and depict exactly how a reading and writing workshop should look like.
This text is also organized into six sections. Each section is made up of at least four chapters. Each section and the corresponding chapters have a common theme. For example, Section One is Breakthrough to Literacy: Powerful Teaching For All Students and each chapter in the section completely relates to the theme. Guiding Readers and Writers is organized very well and is easy to read and understand. One of the most beneficial aspects of this text is that following each chapter a brief summary is provided along with a list of suggestions for professional development.
The main topics in the text are Independent Language and Literacy, Conventional Use of Written Language, Word Study, Independent Reading, Guided Reading, Literature Study, Independent Writing, Guided Writing, and Investigations.
The author's message is to help teachers engage, inform, and inspire readers and writers. Fountas and Pinnell explore all the essential components of a quality literacy program. Guiding Readers and Writers is very positive and always begins each chapter with a motivational quote.
I would highly recommend this text to any of my colleagues as a purchase for their professional collection. I strongly recommend Guiding Readers and Writers to any English or Language Arts Teacher. Whether you are seasoned or just beginning your reading or writing workshops in your classroom, this is a terrific resource. I especially enjoy all of the visual aids and examples the text provides. It is broken down and simplified so precisely that it is easy to follow.
I have tried many of the suggested activities in the text. I teach sixth grade reading and I still use reading workshops and guided reading on a daily basis in my classroom. Although, my favorite part of this book that I use more than anything is the Special Feature section on Struggling Readers and Writers-Teaching That Makes a Difference. From this section I used all of the suggestions. For example, I taught and continuously teach my students explicitly how to listen and use language as they discuss literature with other students. We also use graphic organizers to help analyze literary text. I also have directed my students' attention to the features of nonfiction text and taught them how to take information from them. The results were phenomenal. Most of my students comprehend text on a deeper level when they use graphic organizers. Guiding Readers and Writers is one of the best resources for fostering the success that will enable students to enjoy a future filled with literacy journeys.
This is a text that I truly use on a daily basis.

Amazon Website Link:
http://www.amazon.com/Guiding-Readers-Writers-Grades-Comprehension/dp/0325003106/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328663917&sr=8-1

The article I read was inspirational and made me think about my teaching style/methods in a whole new way. The article was about helping children use literature as a way to grow intellectually and emotionally. This article described that no matter what the medium, we must create educational experiences that strive to make the individual learner the central focus-the star of the lesson. If we do this, then the lessons have an outstanding chance of helping children grow. Throughout the reading, a study of an inner city, African American adolescent named Kevin is depicted. Kevin struggled to succeed in school and in life. He received tutoring from the author of this article (Terrence Hackett). After getting to know Kevin, Hackett realized that he had a difficult life and the fact that Kevin saw himself as a survivor. Kevin's home life was in turmoil in ways that are unfortunately all too common for inner-city single parent families. As his tutor, Hackett decided to have him read the novel, "Hatchet" by Gary Paulsen. This book united his world in a meaningful way. Kevin's real life was a survival story. This book matched his lived experience. It was personally relevant to him, and as a result he was interested and engaged.

He continued to fail in school, despite being tutored by Hackett. Kevin saw the lessons he was being taught in school as completely irrelevant. They had no relation to his lived experience. They were remote and distant, did not appeal to his interests, and were presented in ways that failed to engage and motivate him in the least. The lessons did not consider his strengths and weaknesses as a leaner. The school's ditto sheets, textbooks, and workbooks were meaningless to him, so he tossed them aside. Something that was particularly noticeable to me was that Kevin attended a school that stressed remembering over thinking and acceptance over inquiry. Faced with the prospect of being turned into an object that memorizes and repeats irrelevant information, he chose to rebel. Hackett's tutoring sessions helped Kevin grow intellectually and emotionally, unlike school. To me, as a reader, this article demonstrates the power of personal relevance for learning. At school, If Kevin was the focus -the star of the activity-his level of concentration and determination devoted would have been enormously high. I am now a firm believer in making sure that my students are the "star" of every educational experience I provide for them. This article helped me understand what separates meaningful, effective learning environments from ineffective, frivolous ones.

This article was about labeling "readers" and how teachers identify students by whether they were or were not "readers". Not everybody has the same definition or meaning of the word "reader". What characteristics do we as teachers assume someone possesses when he or she is (or is not) a reader? The article suggests that most people refer to the word "reader" as someone that possesses the ability to recognize letters and decode some words and sentences. Yet the people in the study often categorized reading as an activity that they regarded as more focused, literary, and part of high culture, not daily life. Also, the reading that happens every day is not what most teachers mean when they talk about a student being a reader. This article further states that being a "reader" is generally a positive identity for young children and often negative for adolescents. The following paragraph was meaningful to me and truly hit home: I believe it is important that we talk more with our students about what kind of qualities we expect from the people we identify as readers. For one thing, we need to explore with students the multiple and varied nature of reading. We need to remind them that they are constantly being readers as they go about their lives, and we need to talk with them about all the ways they engage in reading and for what purposes. (We can also remind them that reading is often pleasurable and can be so in school as well as outside of it.) After reading this article, I believe teachers should take into account that outside of the classroom students are reading such texts as video game magazines. I plan on emphasizing to my students that good readers do not necessarily read fast, do not necessarily understand what they read the first time, usually read important works more than once, and often finish reading with more questions than they started.

This is a great website that will assist you in finding a journal article.