The powerful voice of an 8 year old!!

In the David and Goliath story in which 8 year old Els started a petition at her school to convince Scholastic to stop marketing books “for boys” and books “for girls”, it is great to see that a victory for gender equality has been achieved.

Spurred on by her mother to “stop griping and do something,” when the North London young girl complained about the promotional tag on a pirate book in a catalogue advertising a Scholastic book fair, Els took the initiative and did do something!

Having already removed “boys” and “girls” sections on their online site, Scholastic “has pledged to no longer publish books that declare they are for a particular gender in the title.”

Looking very pleased with herself, you can read more details in an article in The Independent by Karen Attwood.

It’s a great story which proves the power of one!

 

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Programs to assist students with reading difficulties

Having spent many years of my career working with students who have reading difficulties has encouraged my strong interest in reading programs designed to assist this group of students.

On the surface, Scholastic’s reading program “Read 180” seems to hold much potential for successful intervention.  In a post – Learning to Read Goes High-Tech – on  the blog Mind/Shift: How we Learn, details of the successful implementation of this program with classes of disadvantaged students in New Jersey are outlined.

Given that the subject of this report is about reading, I found it both novel and highly valuable that an audio feed was included with this post.  So if you’re not inclined to read this post, certainly run the audio to have a listen.

In this, the National Year of Reading, I think it is imperative that we pay as much attention to our non-readers and those who struggle with reading as much as we do for those students who are reading comfortably at an appropriate reading level.

As a Teacher Librarian in a large school, it is a challenge to identify and assist those students having difficulty with reading without embarrassing them or reinforcing their sense of failure. I’d be really interested to hear about programs, techniques and ideas that others have in place to assist this group of readers. Does anyone know if Scholastic’s “Read 180” is being used in Australia?  I imagine, to be affective here though, there would need to be modification to the database to make it suitable for use in Australian schools.

Sharing techniques, ideas and programs amongst each other in either the Blogosphere or Twittersphere is a powerful contribution to our collective aim of developing our students’ skills.

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You are what you read!

‘You are what you read’ is a social networking site for books that allows you to share your five favorite books with other people in the world and socialize based purely on your bookprints. You can see the favorites books of other people including many celebrities, authors, educators and librarians.

You can also see which books have been listed and liked the most. Clicking on any book takes you to that book’s page where you read more about it, identify it as your favorite or share it with others through a variety of methods. You can also search using book titles or people’s name.

When viewing somebody’s profile, the tool also shows other people who have the same reading interests as that particular user.

Promoted by Scholastic Books, this global intitiative links to the Scholastic Teachers’ page where some nice ideas on how to promote literature with younger readers are presented.   Selecting the link  ‘Read Every Day Lead a Better Life’ takes you to the formidable world wide campaign that has been launched by Scholastic as part of its 90th anniversary celebration.  Select the ‘About’ tab on this page to read more details of the campaign.

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