"A whisper phone can help kids quietly read out loud without bothering other students. A whisper phone can also help a student hear herself read aloud. Some educators think this helps to build reading fluency. These instructions make 60 whisper phone. Total spent is $24.45 + tax for 60 whisper phone. That is 41 cents each. That is much better than the $1-3 teacher supply stores charge."
"In the article Room for Beliefs: Linking Classroom Design and What We Value, Debbie Miller helps us think through the ways that our room design reflects the things we value about student learning. She provides three important questions to think about when we map out our classroom designs that we want others to be able to answer when they visit our rooms:
Excerpt re literacy:
"While English classes will still include healthy amounts of fiction, the standards say that students should be reading more nonfiction texts as they get older, to prepare them for the kinds of material they will read in college and careers. In the fourth grade, students should be reading about the same amount from "literary" and "informational" texts, according to the standards; in the eighth grade, 45 percent should be literary and 55 percent informational, and by 12th grade, the split should be 30/70."