Author Archives: ruthannhorn

In the April edition of “The Reading Teacher,” this article caught my attention.  Since evaluating the Saxon Phonics program, I continue to look for literature to review on how should we be teaching reading.  According to this article, we have a great deal of research on teaching reading which should help us get every child [...]
Read more »

Another great article in IRA’s Reading Today magazine (October/Novermer  2012).  Teachers can foster critical literacy practices by guiding students to examine the events that occurred during historical periods.  Children’s literature can be integrated through read-alouds, independent reading, literature circles, and text sets. Text sets are composed of several books on a similar topic that represent [...]
Read more »

How they croaked:  The awful ends of the awfully famous.  This is a book written by Georgia Bragg (2011) that was an IRA winner.  The written description of the book caught me right from the beginning.  This book describes the deaths of 19 of history’s most famous individuals.  It includes eye-popping illustrations as well as [...]
Read more »

When catching up on reading the IRA Reading Today magazine (October/November 2012), I came across this article that was very interesting.  It starts out with asking adults to remember what they think of when you mention children’s literature.  Most people remember a book from their childhood that left an impression on them.  It might have [...]
Read more »

Just watched this webinar on “Pioneering Literacy in the Digital Wild West: Empowering Parents and Educators, Source: Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, New America Foundation, Joan Ganz Cooney Center – Retrieved January 11. 2013. The Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, the New America Foundation, and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center have published a new report that looks [...]
Read more »

In reading an article from vol. 48 in the Reading Research Quarterly by IRA written by their current editors, this heading “Broadening the Lens” jumped out at me.  We have discussed in our classes about looking at evidences and practices through different lens, so I was interested to see what this article was talking about.  [...]
Read more »

I am enjoying digging through peer-reviewed articles searching for information on early reading.  Finding studies that examine best practices in reading is just what I needed to jump-start my school program.  My faculty is interested in my findings and in reading some of the articles.  Several teachers are interested in piloting some of these strategies.  [...]
Read more »

After getting responses back from Dr. Church on our first collaborative paper, I was excited for my group not to have any comma problems.  We had a few word choice issues, but we were excited with our results.  After working with this collaborative group, I am beginning to practice many of the writing tips that [...]
Read more »

After accepting the unfair process of being tagged by VDOE a “Focus School”, I became excited about the process of learning what’s new in school reform.  I thought that this process was going to be a renewal of best practices.  However, I’m finding out that it is starting out being a great deal of busy [...]
Read more »

Having used the collaborative writing process for an activity in 716, I was excited to begin the 711 Field Experience 1 project.  Now that this project is complete, I have a different perspective on this process.  Thinking at first that it would be quicker to write a paper with others, it turned out to take [...]
Read more »