I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think. ~Socrates
Inspired by one of my young students, this poem is especially for children who prefer visual art expression to reading and writing TIGER BASKETBALL I see the lines I see the color They are bold And they are bright I see a tiger in the basketball I see a panther in the night I love to paint I love to draw It doesn’t matter If “was” is.. Read More
I have another story to tell about reading–a story about educational trends that may lead us astray if we get too caught up in them. “Authentic” reading is one such trend in Language Arts. I have heard principals deny programmed reading materials to Reading and Language Arts teachers because they were not “authentic,” and current “best practices” dictate that we use only authentic texts in our classrooms (these are texts that readers.. Read More
Reading teachers, diagnosticians, interventionists, tutors, and all readers interested in honing reading skills might appreciate reading (or re-reading) the classic work Practical Criticism by I. A. Richards—at least the part where he explains the principal difficulties of readers. His list deals specifically with reading poetry, and the difficulties his students have with critiquing poetry, but I think the same difficulties can occur in other types of reading as well. Interestingly, his book was.. Read More
Students who struggle with reading, or perhaps anything, do so for different reasons. The most rewarding and interesting part of my graduate work in literacy was learning how to diagnose and then design appropriate lessons for individual students who struggled with reading or writing and find ways to solve their problems or at least get around them. As a core classroom teacher, there is little time to delve so deeply into individual.. Read More