Category: Publishing

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Reluctant Reader as Author

Literacy specialist, Pat Martin,  authored this guest blog on one of publishing projects.
Pat Martin last guest blogged about the Parents’ Literacy Publishing Project

Img_0182_2Cuyler, a winsome first grader, has published his first book.  The experience encouraged him to exclaim, “I’m going to publish more than 1000 books. I have so much more to say.”

Mid-way through his second year of formal schooling, Cuyler should be reading about level 9/10 (guided reading text level as described by Pinnell and Fountas).  He’s not.  However, after reading a text created by MaryAnn McAlpin, a retired Reading Recovery teacher, for her grandson, Cuyler was motivated to create his own text using that model.

“I’m going to publish more than 1000 books. I have so much more to say.” ~ Cuyler, a 1st grader

Writing his personal text benefits Cuyler in so many ways.  His extensive daily vocabulary is supported by actual printed text.  His interests, vehicles of every description and outdoor life, become the basis of his text which further stimulates his daily effort to acquire reading skill.  As such noted advocates for boy literacy as Ralph Fletcher and Michael Gurian note, primary texts and writing prompts seldom deal with the world that interests boys.  There is scant opportunity to connect with the texts, to bring personal experience into the reading/writing or to interact with the text content.

Img_0193_2 Capturing Cuyler’s explanations and descriptions as a book’s text mimics interactive writing or the daily journal writing in the reading Recovery lesson.  And what child wouldn’t read and reread a book of their pictures and writing?  What better way to achieve fluency?  Certainly a more exciting, engaging and authentic method than grappling through Cuyler’s four inch thick stack of Dolch sight words – a practice he he finds less than engaging. Cuyler now sees himself as a literate individual.  He is excited about the growing up as a reader and writer rather than defeated by the challenges that text holds. 

By providing text that supports him as a reader and validates him as a writer, Cuyler is on the path of literacy.  And he is an excited traveler who wants to know “how many days until we go back to that learning lab so I can publish books.”Img_0192_2

For sometime now I’ve been an advocate of new print on demand technologies to give students a chance to publish their learning for an authentic audience and purpose. I’ve partnered with Pat Martin, a literacy specialist and Suzanne Suor, an educational technology consultant, to open a Educational Publishing Learning Lab in Rochester NY. We offer a variety of training packages to assist teachers and districts in taking advantage of the new opportunities in digital publishing. The lab is located at ColorCentric digital publishers, so participants can not only learn how to publish, but tour the facility to see books being made. For more information on how you and your students can publish your own books visit our website Read > Think > Write > Publish

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Rigor, Relevance and Reading for Content-Area Mastery

This week I’m presenting four workshops at the 2007 MAPSA Conference in Detroit Michigan.

Three sessions addressed “Rigor, Relevance and Reading for Content-Area Mastery” at elementary, middle and high school. The sessions demonstrated that teachers don’t have to sacrifice content to help their students achieve academic success. I featured practical examples of how teachers can support standards-based instruction in their subject area while improving student skills in vocabulary, comprehension and analysis. My goal is to present a session that is rigorous and relevant to teachers—we’ll actually use the strategies being promoted, not just talk about them!  Here’s the handout for these sessions.
Elementary Session (1.1 MB pdf)
Middle School Session (1.4 MB pdf)
High School Session (1.6 MB pdf)

I used my TurningPoint audience response system and posed questions which probed participant expectations of students and instructional strategies. The system allows me to capture participant thinking and use it foster some lively discussion and reflections. You have to model what you preach, so we worked through some higher-order thinking and problem solving ourselves. Thanks to Christina Stellers at Turning Point for supplying additional responders.

My fourth session was “Digital Publishing: Rigor, Relevancy and Literacy in Action.”   In case you haven’t heard – print on demand technology has made it possible to produce beautiful hard cover and paperback books without minimum runs or prohibitive upfront costs. Kids are motivated by producing books for an authentic audience. Publishing helps students master course content and develop project management and teamwork skills. The power of publishing enables students to think like writers, to apply their learning strategies and to organize and express their learning. It exemplifies the best of the information revolution –students as creators of content rather than as passive audience.

I featured two new products: FlipNLearn, is an innovative learning foldable that student design and print on school printers using specialty paper. EdteckPublisher – is book design software that allows students to design paperback books and then easily upload them for publication by digital on-demand press.
Publishing workshop handout (1.6 MB pdf)

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Teacher Using Books to Form a Link with Ethiopia

Memoir Project
Memoir Project

Alicia Van Borssum is a very talented ESL teacher who has contributed to our student publishing efforts with The Memoir Project – Memoirs and artwork by three young ESL students from the Ukraine. More on the book at Read > Think > Write > Publish

Alicia is now working to raise funds to bring books and staff development to Ethiopia this summer. I’ve reprinted an article below. For more information about projects for literacy in Ethiopia, go online at www.ethiopiareads.org.  For information about Alicia Van Borssum’s effort to bring books to Ethiopia, e-mail her at aliciavb@frontiernet.net. Donations can be made out to Ethiopian Books for Children and mailed to Van Borssum at 15 Fairwood Drive, Hilton, NY 14468. The organization is nonprofit and tax-deductible.

Greece Teacher Using Books to Form a Link with Ethiopia
Jim Memmott
Rochester (NY) Democrat and Chronicle

(January 27, 2007) — If all goes well, Alicia Van Borssum of Hilton NY will be in Ethiopia this summer showing teachers and librarians there about using wordless picture books for language learning and literacy.

Continue reading “Teacher Using Books to Form a Link with Ethiopia”

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Graphic Novels Meet Historical Fiction in New Series for Reluctant Readers

Timeline graphic novel
Timeline graphic novel

I’m pleased to serve as the historic consultant to the TIMELINE SERIES- graphic novels that falls into the genre of historical fiction. In each novel, a fictional story unfolds against the backdrop of a significant historical event or time period. Among the backdrops on offer are: Qin dynasty China, pre-revolutionary America, medieval Islam, ancient Egypt, Viking Europe, and others … More on Timeline Series

The protagonists of Timeline books are usually young people whose lives are altered when they find themselves caught up in the events of world history. In Pearl Harbor, for example, the young Alison Quigley finds that her life is shattered and her friendships challenged when the Japanese mount a surprise attack on her home island of Oahu. This is the question posed by many Timeline books: what would it have been like to be on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall in 1962? What was it like to be taken as a slave from Africa’s shores? How did it feel to be under siege in Constantinople in 1453?

In Timeline novels, real characters from history make cameo appearances but are only rarely the focus of the narrative. Napoleon features as the ambitious but benevolent uncle who meets his Waterloo in Napoleon’s Last Stand. In Trapped in Gallipoli, readers catch a glimpse of the young Mustafa Kemal, decades before he became the founder of the modern state of Turkey. In Pearl of the Tsars, Catherine the Great is the steely monarch who will do anything she can to ensure the throne passes to her son, Paul. We see her through the eyes of her (fictional) niece, Elise.

The line between historical fact and fiction is deliberately blurred in the Timeline novels. The books can be read as satisfying stories in their own right, having the structure of traditional fiction. But the reader also comes away with the experience and knowledge of other times and other places, of real people who made their place in the history books. The fiction in the novels is balanced by the fact in the Time Outs at the end of each chapter, pages that focus on the historical side of things in more detail. In the Introduction and Moving On sections, readers are given the historical context for the story they are reading.

So Timeline is neither fact nor fiction—but something in between. While the text is kept simple for the series’ target audience of “reluctant readers,” these readers will have to work hard to grasp the balance that each novel strikes. The graphic novel format, too, comes with its own conventions. The vivid illustrations will be an irresistible draw, but to follow the action, readers will have to parse the “grammar” of the graphic novel format. The result is a series of books that should increase readers’ ability to navigate the twists and turns of fictional stories—while providing a ‘lite’ introduction to world history.

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Writing the Book on Test Prep

I don’t think the answer to improving student achievement is by narrowing the curriculum to devote more time to test prep. As I said in a prior posting.. “as if being a struggling learner is not punishment enough, increasing numbers are pulled out of classes that offer hands-on learning and outlets for their creativity. What awaits them is likely “drill and kill’ that doesn’t sound like much fun for students or their teachers.” More

I’m pleased to have just concluded a project that turns test prep on its head. In this case, eighth grade students designed and published their own guide to passing the eighth grade NYS English Language Arts exam. I was joined on the project by Pat Martin. We worked with the nearby Albion Middle School. Ten sections of students spent about 6 weeks reviewing various literacy and test taking strategies with their teachers. As they did, they generated their own guide to the strategies they felt worked best. Thus learning strategies find audience and propose. Students had the opportunity to reflect on strategies and rework them for a peer audience of “seventh graders.” And don’t kids love to give each other advice!

A team of student editors from each class worked to do the final edits with the three teachers who supervised the project. Each class designed its own 100-page book using Lulu.com’s web-based, print-on-demand publishing technology.  The publication cost was about $6 per book. (color covers and interior b/w pages.) Ten editions of the guide were published and a finished book for each student author arrived about a week before the exam.  This gave students time to take pride in their accomplishments and refocus their thinking to the task of the taking the exam.

The state test is given in mid January, but it will be months before we see the final results. As Albion’s superintendent said to me – this project isn’t just about higher test scores. It’s about giving the students and their teachers a chance to see themselves as innovative creators of content, not just a passive audience. Already there is talk about starting a new test taking guide written by the seventh graders.

For more on student publishing see our website Read > Think > Write > Publish. Check my blog entries under the Commentary heading for more on students and 21st century literacy skills.