DGS Literacy Harvest

October 6, 2015 Mrs. Ellis

Dunlap Grade School teachers hosted the first Literacy Harvest to provide parents relevant resources and book titles to support the development of a culture of readers in the home. As part of this evening program, teachers reviewed current and beneficial technological applications or websites and current book titles or authors for parents. Parents accessed available technological devices to browse each resource and analyze potential uses for their child.

The following applications we reviewed and serve as recommended resources for parents to access at home with their child

News-o-Matic: http://press4kids.com/ features daily news stories and current events and serves as a resource for non-fiction texts.

Starfall: http://www.starfall.com/ offers early reading activities, texts, and resources for developing readers in K-2. Vivid images and animated text makes it engaging for young learners. The navigation is simple for little learners.

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/ allows readers to document their reading life, connect with other readers, write reviews, and develop a reading plans. Students could benefit from authentic reading and writing audiences.

Kids Learn to Blog: http://kidslearntoblog.com/ provides the structure and information for children to learn to blog. Blogging provides an authentic audience and purpose for writing that can enrich students’ writing experiences or allow them to share with an audience experiences.

Read.Write.Think.: http://www.readwritethink.org/ provides several resources for home and school that includes writing templates and generators that are easy to use.

Wonderopolis: http://wonderopolis.org/ Is a favorite at DGS for students to search ‘wonders’ and find answers to questions like “What is a Hot Dog” or “How is a Telescope Made.” Students can search particular topics or ask their own ‘wonders.’ Answers provide kid-friendly responses with multi-media pictures or videos.

Word Salad: This app is available in iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wordsalad-beautiful-word-clouds/id545164778?mt=8 A word cloud generator that can support the development of a reader’s ability to determine importance, synthesize or text, or expand their knowledge of vocabulary.

Newsela: https://newsela.com/ features engaging non-fiction texts and serves as a resource for non-fiction texts that allows the teacher or parent to differentiate text by lexile level.

AR Home Book Finder: http://www.arbookfind.com/default.aspx search to determine a particular book is an AR book, determine book level, or find related books to a particular keyword.

In addition to reviewing the applications, staff reviewed ways parents could assist their child in choosing relevant and meaningful book titles. Parents “Bobbed for Books” as we provided parents complimentary copies of a few of our favorite titles and spoke to our decision for including them in why they were chosen. Of the book titles shared, we focused on the variety of ways to choose appropriate and engaging books:

Balance your reading diet with a combination of fiction and non-fiction texts across genres
Picture books may require higher levels of critical thinking and are appropriate to use across grade levels to engage learners in inferences of pictures, plot, and character development.
Texts that tell a strong story can also be great examples for other literacy elements.
Graphic Novels are popular, engaging, and appealing to readers. It is ok to encourage these.
The “Who Am I” series provides students access to biographies at a grade and age-appropriate level.
Accessing the Newberry or Caldecott honor lists can provide an instant list of books that are award winning for their contribution to children’s literature or illustrations.
Books written by the same author or included in the same series can provide students structure in character development or plot structure; however, some authors write texts that are very different in theme, level, or content.