As it turns out, I can only do ten things well, not eleven. Guess I don’t go to eleven. Oh well. Anyway – I haven’t been posting on this blog frequently for two simple reasons: first, haven’t wanted to use any of the time in my contractual day with personal technological communications and missives, and second, by the time I ...

I think if I say it publicly, I’ll have to honor the promise to myself to write about reading. Disclosure statement: This is not everything I know about teaching reading, and I don’t know much, paradoxically! My experience is with “average” middle school-aged students, 11 to 15, with a large population of diverse languages, backgrounds, [...]

Excerpt: Chapter 20: Dying Languages Speaking, writing, and signing are the three ways in which a language lives and breathes. They are the three mediums through which a language is passed on from one generation to the next. If a language is a healthy language, this is happening all the time. Parents pass their language on [...]

No matter who you are, your ability to read is so important to making who you are. I have spent hours myself, reading about my burning question of “Why should we read?” and its sister question, “How do we read?” So, why should you? The reasons for reading are as many as there are words on a [...]

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Graham Smith (and Jane Austen, although without her permission…maybe she’s walking around as a zombie herself right about now…), Quirk Publishers (April 2009) is so completely funny…but not for the faint of heart. Imagine your 12 year old brother got a hold of the classic Austen novel ...

Defend your rights as a reader! Whether or not you choose to wear a purple polyester costume and mask is entirely up to you!   From: The American Library Association (ALA) Everyone has the right to read. Here’s The Reader’s Bill of Rights to help you make the most of that right: Readers have: The right to not read. The right [...]

One of my former students LOVED the Cirque du Freak series, long before anyone had taken a bite out of the Twilight apple. If you check out the Dog Ear blog, she gives the trailer a mixed review, stating it gives too much of the plot away. I’ll leave that up to you to decide [...]

“The time has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things: Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax– Of cabbages–and kings– And why the sea is boiling hot– And whether pigs have wings.” Let’s talk about some other things. I read Alice in Wonderland when I was an adult, long after ...

Teens read more than they let on. If you believe a scary US report, reading is on the decline. But, says Steven Johnson, it completely fails to consider the amount that we do every day on our computers.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/graphic-books-best-seller-list-july-11/ If you’re looking for some graphic novel/manga recommendations, check out this link from the New York Times newspaper. I am starting the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman, and the Batman graphic novels look interesting, too.   Authored by blog0rama. Hosted by ...