Dr. S.'s Literacy Read Aloud & Literacy Podcast

Charlotte's Web - Chapter Twenty Two - Warm Wind

Wilbur has indeed been saved from slaughter and spends a quiet winter watching over the egg sac. In the spring, as the weather warms up, the spiders hatch one by one and take off. Wilbur begs them to stay and be his friends. He persuades three to stay and they do. Year after year he makes new friends with each generation and always two or three stay to keep him company and be his friends. And they live happily ever after in the barn like that.

Charlotte's Web - Chapter Twenty One - Last Day

Everyone is packing up and getting ready to go home. Wilbur notices that Charlotte is very quiet and asks why. Charlotte tells him she is dying and Wilbur is upset he has never done anything for Charlotte. He decides he will take her egg sac with them back to the barn knowing that his is going to live there. Templeton is recruited to take the egg sac down in exchange for a promise to let him eat first from the pig's trough. Mission is accomplished.

Charlotte's Web - Chapter Twenty - The Hour ofTriumph

In which Wilbur is taken into the stadium and to the judges' table where he is given a special prize for his appearance and personality. He faints when he realizes what is happening and then the family has to get him up or else he won't keep the prize. The members of the family try dousing him with water, but it is a bite from Templeton that revives him. Everyone is happy at last.

Problem-Based Learning and Its Link to the Modalities of Language

Whenever students are collaborating on problem based learning, they are using the modalities of language - reading, writing, speaking, listening - automatically. They become a part of the process in a natural way and that involves all aspects of the process. From beginning to end, they are communicating to themselves, to each other and to others in the class including the teacher. Practice does indeed make perfect and it helps to be practicing without even trying.

Using Problem Based Learning to Cultivate Deep Learning

When students are asked to work together on Problem Based Learning Tasks, they are given an opportunity to ponder and solve challenges using the knowledge, skills and affect they already possess and integrate those with what they have taken from their reading of a book for instance. They are therefore deepening learning and mastering new skills as they progress. If you have any questions about this, just ask yourself what happens to you when you set about attempting something you have never done before. It is exactly the same process.

There Is More Than One Way To Demonstrate New Learning

One of the single most often asked questions about novel read aloud, problem based learning and culminating performance tasks is how to assess them accurately. This podcast will explore the issue of assessment of products generated in problem based learning.

Bloom's Taxonomy & Deep Learning

When we read books aloud or facilitate novel reading by students in front of us, in order to cultivate learning, we need to question students. Only when we prompt deep learning do students process the novel and its elements. Bloom's six - stage Taxonomy helps us understand how to progress from knowledge and comprehension to evaluating and creating. At the lower order thinking skills, students are not challenged to process as much as they are at the higher order skill levels. This podcast walks the listener through these stages and what they mean.

Using a Novel Read Aloud to Cultivate Skill Development

In this podcast, I try to address how I have used a novel read to a class aloud over a period of time to cultivate problem based learning which is integrated with more than two or three school subject areas. By involving problem based learning centred around issues raised in a novel, students deepen their new learning and extend their conceptual development while tackling tasks that in themselves enable formative assessment on student progress.

Fighting Words By Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

There are some topics that may be uncomfortable to read about or talk about, but still need to be put on the table for some specific students or groups of students to read about and talk about. It has to be seen as part of social and emotional development as well as literacy. Such a book is Fighting Words by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. It deals with sexual and physical abuse and the power of sisterhood and friendship as a path to recovery. This podcast deals with the outline of this book.

Those Who Read, Succeed! What DoesThat Really Mean?

When I say, as I do repeatedly, that those who read succeed, what does that really mean to imply? What does it have to do with Literacy? Why is this so important as an end goal in our educational system.?