Five Links For Friday - Five Literacy Links to Know About!

Happy National Ice Cream Day!

It's also a great day to link up with Doodle Bugs for:

This summer I'm taking a Reading class taught by Sally Grimes.  You can read more about her by clicking The Grimes Reading Institute.  One of the assignments was to do a "Website Walk" by exploring five website.  Today I'm going to share what I learned.

The first site I visited contained demonstration videos by Anita Archer showing her teaching techniques.


This is an excerpt from the web site:

Explicit Instruction

Effective and Efficient Teaching

By Anita L. Archer and Charles A. Hughes
Explicit instruction is systematic, direct, engaging, and success oriented—and has been shown to promote achievement for all students. This highly practical and accessible resource gives special and general education teachers the tools to implement explicit instruction in any grade level or content area. The authors are leading experts who provide clear guidelines for identifying key concepts, strategies, skills, and routines to teach; designing and delivering effective lessons; and giving students opportunities to practice and master new material. Sample lesson plans, lively examples, and reproducible checklists and teacher worksheets enhance the utility of the volume.

To check out more of Anita Archer's videos on explicit instruction, click here.

There's even a book you can read:

Click on the book to read more at Amazon.

 The second site I visited was    Vocabulogic..    The author of this site is Susan Ebbers who underlines the importance of "morphological awareness" -  the use and understanding of word parts like base words, suffixes, prefixes,...  Susan Ebbers has even written her first book:

Click on the book or here to learn more about this book on Amazon.

According to seminal research by Jeremy Anglin (1993), inferring word meaning via morphological reasoning predicts vocabulary growth. Anglin tested children in grades 1, 3, and 5, finding a sharp increase in word knowledge between grades 3 and 5. He suggested that this steep increase is largely due to increased awareness of the process of suffixation, in particular, the process of creating new words by adding derivational suffixes. Those students who were more skilled in this type of "morphological problem solving" performed comparatively better on the vocabulary test. - See more at: http://vocablog-plc.blogspot.com/#sthash.AyKbMnv8.dpuf

According to seminal research by Jeremy Anglin (1993), inferring word meaning via morphological reasoning predicts vocabulary growth. Anglin tested children in grades 1, 3, and 5, finding a sharp increase in word knowledge between grades 3 and 5. He suggested that this steep increase is largely due to increased awareness of the process of suffixation, in particular, the process of creating new words by adding derivational suffixes. Those students who were more skilled in this type of "morphological problem solving" performed comparatively better on the vocabulary test. - See more at: http://vocablog-plc.blogspot.com/#sthash.AyKbMnv8.dpuf

Next up was The Reading Institute.  This non-profit organization offers training classes for Simmons College and other courses about dyslexia and other reading disorders.  They are based in Williamstown, Massachusetts!

The Minnesota Reading Corps   is the largest state Americorps program.  This organization recruits reading tutors who work one on one with students needing reading support.

The last site - Reading Matters to Maine - underscored that:

     We can no longer afford to teach reading based on the false assumption that learning to read is
     like learning to speak.

All teachers need extensive training in all aspects of Reading.

I really enjoyed checking out all these websites to see what other states are doing to help their students improve their ability to read.  I'm glad that I'm taking this class because there is so much to learn!

Have a wonderful week!