Checking the Diversity of a Reading Program

You can check the diversity of your classroom reading program, including: read alouds, independent reading, guided reading, and literature study, be examining students' lists of books they've read.

Literature Study Quote

As students work with a variety of perspectives, they learn to search for answers to their own dilemmas. As they read and analyze a text, they sort out the similarities to and the mismatches with their own background knowledge and experience. This process is much more meaningful than searching for the answers to someone else's comprehension questions.

Fontas and Pinell: Guiding Readers and Writers, page 264

Literature Study Quote

"Teachers of literature want children to be more than plot readers." - Peterson (1990)

"Meaning from text is constructed socially ... conversing about text deepens our understanding about virtually everything we read." - Keene and Zimmermann (1997)

Voice Threads

(from The Voice Thread Team)

The Digital Library

The VoiceThread Digital Library is now open. This new resource is a database of outstanding VoiceThread examples that we hope will guide and inspire other VoiceThreaders to undertake new projects. The intention is not just to 'favorite' or 'tag' great examples, but to explore and document how these great projects were created and what lessons were learned in the process. Success can be replicated if it's documented, so we encourage you to share your experiences with the community. As this resource grows we'll add categories, ratings, and search functions to help you find relevant projects.

Voice Threads

(from the Voice Thread Team)

Hello VoiceThreaders,

The recently published Horizon Report from the New Media Consortium refers to VoiceThread as one of the emerging technologies "likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning, research, or creative expression within education", with a 'time-to-adoption' horizon of one year or less. The report includes a well-written overview and analysis of collaborative environments that highlights many of our current goals for VoiceThread in education and is highly recommended reading. Here's a short excerpt:

Traditionally, a learning environment has been a physical space, but the idea of what constitutes a learning environment is changing. The "spaces" where students learn are becoming more community-driven, interdisciplinary, and supported by technologies that engage virtual communication and collaboration. This changing concept of the learning environment has clear implications for schools, where learning is the key focus of the space.
2009 Horizon ReportJohnson, Laurence F., Levine, Alan, and Smith, Rachel S.Austin, TX: The New Media Consortium, 2009.
Click here to download a full copy of the report.

Reading as a Transaction

Where does reading reside? Is it in the text or in the reader? Reader response theory suggests that meaning is a sythesis both of the reader's knowledge and of the information in the text, and that meaning consists not just of factual information but of emotion and visual images. Louise Rosenblatt argued that reading is trasactional-that is, meaning is a result of the interaction of the reader and text:

A text is merely ink on paper unitl the reader (if only the author) evokes meaning from it. (1983, 25)

From Guiding Readers and Writers: Grades 3-6, pg. 258 - Fontas and Pinnell