TEMS520

The Café Book is written by The Two Sisters, Joan Moser and Gail Boushey. The book is written in conjunction with The Daily 5, also written by them. The Daily 5 is a management system for a readers workshop style literacy block. The Café Book is the content to go along. Café is centered around the Café Board. Each letter for Café represents a reading strategy, which are also the heading on the board. The four heading are comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and expanded vocabulary. The idea behind Café is that during the Daily 5 mini lessons the teacher teaches different strategies to go under each heading on the Café board. For example, one of the first Café lessons taught to the students is "Go Back and Reread." This strategy goes under the comprehension heading on the Café Board. This board gives students a reference for all of the different reading strategies that they learn throughout the year. Along with the mini-lessons and Café Board, The Café Book also focuses on strategy groups and reading conferencing. The Two Sisters suggests that rather than meeting with students of the same abilities, meeting with students that are focusing on the same reading strategy. Along with the strategy groups, the teachers meet with individuals during reading conferences. During this time the teacher can ensure that each student is reading just right books and practicing the reading strategy that they are focusing on. I run both The Daily 5 and Café currently in my classroom. I believe both are amazing. Although I have not tried it, I think that Café is most successful when The Daily 5 is also implemented. My students reference the Café board daily. They use the strategies to help them be more successful readers. This year was the first year that I have used The Daily 5 and Café. I have not fully implemented all aspects of Café. I am using the board, but have yet to use strategy groups. I am still grouping my students based on ability

Herbert , Thomas P., and Alexander P. Pagnani. "Engaging Gifted Boys in New Literacies ." Gifted Child Today . 33.3 (2010): 36-45. Print. This article discussed the issue of the achievement gap between boys and girls reading abilities and habits. Girls have reading habits that are recognized and rewarded in schools, while boys read more nonfiction, science fiction, and action novels that are not valued as much. The article discusses how boys do not find dialogue, character interaction, and other literary devices as interesting as girls, and prefer to read for the sake of gaining information, and have plots that are action driven rather than character driven. Although the achievement gap between boys and girls with reading comprehension and leisurely reading is well known, the article points out that less attention is given to this achievement gap than the one that occurs in math. Herbert and Pagnani discuss how high quality new literature is out there for boys to read, and can be incorporated in the classroom. This approach can lead to boys having a higher reading, writing, and comprehension level. I found this article helpful for several reasons. First, I think it is imperative that teachers change their thinking about what is considered quality literature. You can hook boys with things that interest them, and then guide them slowly into literature that is considered part of the literary cannon later on when you have built up their confidence level and academic abilities. The reasoning behind boys literature preferences needs to be not only understood but respected by educators in order to teach them effectively. Secondly, my English classes are ten to one girls, and this scares me as I read this article. As many already know, people tend to teach the same way that they learn. If women and girls have the same reading preferences and appreciate the same things about literature, than many boys will be left to the wayside in English classrooms. I hope to learn more

Reading is more than looking at the words on a page. Critical reading involves re-reading text to "dentify patterns of elements -- information, values, assumptions, and language usage-- throughout the discussion. These elements are tied together in an interpretation, an assertion of an underlying meaning of the text as a whole."

Carnegie report follow-up to Writing Next. This report provides evidence answering the following three questions: 1. Does writing about material students read enhance their reading comprehension? 2. Does teaching writing strengthen students' reading skills? 3. Does increasing how much students write improve how well they read?

This article provides five strategies for improving adolescent literacy. The first stragegy is to help students with explicit vocabulary instructions, and then on to comprehension strategies like being careful about what text you select and showing them the strategies to use for that type of text. The third strategy was providing extended forum for discussing vocabulary and text, and that is something that I need to work on with my ninth graders. One of the goals of this article is to improve adolescent literacy and the strategy is to increase student motivation and engagement, which I latched on to right away. One of the ways this article suggest doing it is by making "literacy experiences more relevant to student interests, everyday life, or important current events." I am using this technique in my Ninth-Grade Civics class this semester. Students are learning that the way you read a newspaper is different than reading a textbook. Each week they must select a current event related to Civics and write a brief report about it. Three students are randomly selected to give information on their current event each week. I use a form to help guide them through current event articles, and focus on textual evidence in articles. In other words, what statistics and facts are the writers using to make his/her point? Also, what adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs does the writer use to convey a message or tone of the article? The students' vocabulary and reading are increasing, and they are becoming more informed citizens. It brings Civics alive for them and into the present day.

"Teachers of English need to reach the tough guys out there, and they are probably not going to do it by prescribing another go at The Sound and the Fury. The problem is not so much that tough guys lack the brainpower to read: they simply do not want to." I like the suggestions given for books to motivate adolescent male readers given in this article. I appreciate how Lawrence Baines has collected information over the years to share with us as teachers.

I always try to do an interest inventory with students and find books that fall into these interests to offer for independent reading time. I also love informational books that center around sports and life oddities, such as Ripley's or Guiness Book of World Records. Boys seem to like these types of books. I have used Sports Illustrated for Kids also as an offer for reading. For class books, I have used "The Air Down Here" by Gil Alicea, a teenage boy from the Bronx. It is written in journal format and tells about his life in his own words. I used this with 8th graders and the boys especially seemed to "grudgingly" get interested and want to read more! I also found that books about aliens, Big Foot, Sasquatch and those types of informational books were interesting to them as well!

When I was a media center teacher, I could not keep the Guinness or Ripley books on the shelf! I think besides the "ew" factor, another draw is (of course) the pictures, and small chunks of text.

Christine Cziko, a former high school English teacher, writes about a year-long undertaking that she was a part of that sought to transform students into capable readers.  Her desire to do something about the lack of reading ability that her students exhibited came out of her concern about her students' apparent inability to read independently or to understand what they read.   I was greatly impacted by this whole idea.  I would LOVE to do something like this at my school.  I have taught high school English at a private school where many common issues don't exist and I still had students not doing the reading or not understanding what they read.  However, once we read CS Lewis' The Great Divorce (which is written at a very high level) they were engaged and devoured the difficult text.  We would then come together and ask questions, discuss, and analyze the text.  I didn't have to beg my students to read it, they WANTED to.  One of the big differences was that I talked it up and let them know that it was going to be very difficult but that people would be impressed to know that they had read it in high school.  They were so proud to have read, analyzed, and understood this difficult text. 

This year my students read "The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin. They absolutely loved the book and I had to beg them not to go ahead because doing so would spoil the ending. Teaching reading (or any subject matter) is so much more fun when the students are engaged. I wish we had these same experiences in everything we taught!