District Administration - July 2006 - (Page 38)

LITERACY What I've found with fi rst graders is ONE SCHOOL AT A TIME Administrators in Richmond, Ind., started Literacy Col- that sometimes a genre of preference laborative in each of its eight elementary opens the door. schools in the past decade. In the first And while veteran teacher Nancy school, the number of children meeting standard has doubled to 80 percent. Lass had her doubts when she piloted the microscopic animals unit that informational texts. Her solution is Duke had designed, she discovered to have teachers introduce infor- that dust mites, fleas and lice made mat iona l texts early and often, and good partners in engaging students. she recommends non-fiction for When she first came to me with the one-third of the reading curriculum, unit, I said to myself, `You've got be even in kindergarten and fi rst grade. kidding,' Lass recalls. My second The research that is out there con- graders had to become aware of sistently suggests that young children indexes, glossaries, captions, the bold- can interact successfully with informa- ing of words, and they had to work tional text, she notes. The challenge on comprehension strategies ques- isn't as great as people may think. tioning, schema, making inferences, There are informational texts that are and synthesis of what they had read. as simple as `Dogs have four legs. Dogs But the students loved it. When have fur. Dogs have babies.' you treat kids as scholars, they rise Paula Pulter, who has taught to those expectations of being able fi rst grade for seven years and to read and comprehend, and nine studied with Duke, agrees with that out of 10 times, they'll surpass those approach. It's changed the way I expectations. They're not afraid to view literacy, and it's my absolute pick up an informational text, and love, Pulter says. they still can get information if they The way I used to teach was can't read the words. They love what with three reading groups high, they call `the new learning,' even if medium and low level with the it's just a picture or a caption. same three fiction books. When a For more complicated materials, group of my students came in with Lass records her own books on tape a question on the moon and how it with simpler summaries, and she changes shape, I pulled the books splits the reading curriculum evenly out of the library myself, spent two between informational and fictional weeks going over them, and then texts. And while a district-wide read- gave a presentation to the class. ing and writing initiative helped 70 Nowadays Pulter stocks 25 per- percent of second graders meet stan- cent of her classroom library with da rd, her class rate soared to 98 per- informational texts, and lets the kids cent, which she credits largely to her fi nd the answers for themselves. I use of content-related texts. I always want to help the children learn how knew it was important, but not to the to read books they have self-selected extent I do now, Lass says. and are interested in, she says. While typical basal readers have been slow to incorporate non-fiction, Duke says, major educational publish- Literacy Collaborative changed ers, along with specialty providers such as National Geographic, have the way I view literacy, and it's my been turning out collections of infor- mational texts, as well as how-to books absolute love. for teachers. Still, Duke adds, teachers will likely need professional develop- Paula Pulter, first grade teacher, ment and help in finding quality texts Cornell Elementary School, Okemos, Mich. that match their student levels. 38 July 2006 District Administration reading.w.indd 38 6/19/06 11:39:58 AM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - July 2006

Contents
Editor's Letter
Letters
Update
Inside the Law
Curriculum Update
Administrator Profile
District Profile
Mixed Reviews
Making Reading Count
No-Nonsense Networking
Cover Story: Money Talks
Making Choices
The Online Edge
Speaking Out
Public Opinion
Problem/Solution
New Products
By the Numbers

District Administration - July 2006