What's the Most Useful Book You've Ever Read?

That's this week's Booking Through Thursday.

At first I was tempted to be snarky (I know, what's new with that?) and go with the phone book.  No one really uses them anymore but I definitely got quite a bit of use out of them back in the day.  Before the internets, they had the best collection of information.  Everything from maps to seating charts for theaters to school district information and more.  You could use them to show feats of strength, get a higher seat for shorties, hold down papers needing glue to dry and provide hours of entertainment for crank calls.

But you didn't really read the phone book, now did you?

I'm not one for self help or business books so none of that works for me.  I'm not religious and while I've found some useful things to ponder in various ethical writings, I'm thinking the questioner is referring to more practical matters.

I'm a teacher first and foremost and while Stephen Krashen's The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research isn't the book that made me want to be a teacher (that would have been this depressing Jonathan Kozol book), it's the first professional reading I did that really hit me.  It's useful in that it covers a whole lot of research that I've subsequently investigated that backs up his simple but powerful thesis that reading begets reading.  Not skills, not sticky notes, not workbooks.  Reading.  Finding interesting books that kids want to read makes them want to read more and by reading more they read better and hence enjoy reading.  This book, along with things I learned about literature circles and the magic of reading aloud are what that led me to be the teacher I am today.  I've told this story many times, but here it is again: the power of reading.

It's a slim book packed with great anecdotes about what works in reading, backed up by much research.  If I could make sure all teachers and librarians and administrators read one book, it would be this one.  (For parents, I'd probably go with The Read-Aloud Handbook, which also refers to Krashen).

This  book made me a better teacher.  What's more useful than that?

Critical Thinking Sunday: Consumer Protection!

Jeff Wagg, Communications Manager for the JREF, is an incredibly engaging guy and did a fun presentation at last year's science and skeptical track of Dragon*Con. He asked the audience what they thought the number one skeptical publication was.

Consumer Reports, baby! When people question the idea of skepticism and critical thinking, you can usually win them over by talking about consumer protection. Nobody likes to be scammed. How better to know what you're getting than to rely on the unbiased reviews of products scientifically tested by the Consumers Union? These guys are the best. I'm not saying that all of their reviews are perfect. Sometimes it's hard to know what and how to test certain things. I don't usually buy what they have to say about digital cameras for instance. But for overall filtering of the wheat from the chaff, Consumer Reports is a great place to start.

While not as comprehensive in scope, I do like ConsumerSearch as well. They're similar to the review aggregator I mentioned last week, metacritic. They scour reviews from all over (including Consumer Reports) and come up with the highest rated products in various categories. Always a good first place to look before buying.

For the geeky tech stuff, I personally tend to lean toward Cnet. But their reviews are also included in ConsumerSearch and unless you like going down the technical spec rabbit hole (and can steel yourself against their "must-have" attitude), then you're probably better off sticking with ConsumerSearch and Consumer Reports.

Don't buy blind. Spend a few minutes benefiting from the advice of the experts.

Not that You Needed MORE Reasons to Avoid AR

But here are 18 Reasons Not to Use AR (via Mark Pennington at the TeacherLibrarian Ning).

Last week I posted on some questionable practices regarding the shelving of AR books in school libraries. I didn't even say that many bad things about the program itself, other than to point out some compelling evidence that it's not really effective. Even Jim Trelease, who had a relatively balanced view of the program in his Read-Aloud Handbook now sees "more negatives than positives" and collects some damning evidence as well.

I got a lot of comments for that post, so here's some more meat to chew on.

The original article by Mr. Pennington has much more description, so do check it out, bookmark it, and share it around. Some of the arguments are stronger than others, but you can see that in these economically tight times, the expense of AR is hardly justified when the benefits are questionable, so many questions remain, and solid evidence of effectiveness is lacking.

Here's the basic list:

Book Selection

1. Using AR tends to limit reading selection to it's own books.

2. Using AR tends to limit reading selection to a narrow band of readability.

3. Using AR tends to discriminate against small publishing companies and unpopular authors.

4. Using AR tends to encourage some students to read books that most teachers and parents would consider inappropriate for certain age levels.

Reader Response

5. Using AR tends to induce a student mindset that "reading is a chore," and "a job that has to be done."

6. Using AR tends to replace the intrinsic rewards of reading with extrinsic rewards.

7. Using AR tends to foster student and/or teacher competitiveness, which can push students to read books at their frustration reading level or create problems among students.

8. Using AR tends to turn off some students to independent reading.

9. Using AR tends to turn some students into cheaters.

AR is Reductive

10. Using AR tends to supplant portions of established reading programs.

11. AR tends to train students to accumulate facts and trivia as they read in order to answer the multiple choice recall questions.

12. Using AR tends to take up significant instructional time.

13. Using AR tends to reduce the amount of time that teacher spend doing read-alouds and teaching class novels.

14. Using AR tend to make reading into an isolated academic task.

15. Using AR tends to drain resources that could certainly be used for other educational priorities.

16. Using AR tends to minimize the teaching and instructional practice in diagnostically-based reading strategies.

17. Using AR tends to limit differentiated instruction.

Research Base

18. Although a plethora of research studies involving AR are cited on the Renaissance Learning website, the research base is questionable at best.

Thanks, Mr. Pennington, for more ammo!

Accelerated Reading?

On my state's school librarian listserv, someone was asking about how different people arrange their AR books in their libraries. (AR is, of course, one of those book-testing-for-points-and silly-things program many schools are married to).

I have heard, but thankfully not seen, that there are school librarians who either put all the AR books in their own section or--even worse--toss Dewey and arrange the entire library by AR levels.

Some of the answers to this were great.

One said, "It is not best practice to arrange books, elementary or otherwise, by program level."

But my favorite was this one:

"This is an easy decision to make. You simply ask yourself, 'Am I running an AR program or a school library media program?'"

Oh, yeah!

There's just not even enough good evidence that AR works well enough to go re-arranging the entire program around it--not to mention that it's expensive. If I end up working in a school that has AR, I'll do my job of course, but AR will serve the students--not vice-versa.

Gary Hartzell, Research Star

Earlier this month, I asked you guys to vote on my professor's list of library-field "research stars" and you cracked me up by voting on people not on the list. Doug Johnson (on the list) voted for Joyce Valenza (not on the list) and Alice Yucht (on the list) voted for Christopher Harris, Buffy Hamilton, Deb Logan, Carl Harvey, Diane Chen, Cathy Jo Nelson and Kristin Fontichiaro (not on the list).

Thinking I had to choose someone from the list, I was going to go for Doug or Alice but since an earlier class had already gotten to pick (sheesh!) I snagged Gary Hartzell.

But then I used my ninja mind powers to convince the professor to add all the new names to the list, so there will be some new blood in the projects this year.

I'm happy with Gary Hartzell, though. I've found some great stuff on him--including a video interview--and he's great. His book, Building Influence for the School Librarian was recently named by Doug as "probably the most important book written for our profession. Bar none."

Since Dr. Hartzell seems to approve of more free-flowing presentations rather than the typical web pages or slide shows, I think I'll do a Prezi presentation on him. I'll share what I come up with soon.

Research Star

For an upcoming class I need to present about one of the following school library media research "stars." I can't decide so will leave it up to you, Internet, to vote in the comments on who you think I should sign up for. The ones I'm familiar with are awesome so I can't see going wrong with any of them. Who would you present on if it was your assignment?

Carol Kuhlthau	David Loertscher	Keith Curry Lance	Nancy Everhart	Ross J. Todd
Gary Hartzell	Marcia Mardis	Julie Tallman	Jean Donham (van Deusen)	Delia Neuman
Lesley S.J. Farmer	Gail Dickinson	Carol Simpson	Pete Hernon	Danny Callison
Blanche Woolls	Betty Morris	Anne Riedling	Kay Bishop	Doug Johnson
Dianne Hopkins	Dianne Oberg	Steven M. Baule	Violet H. Harada	Sandra Hughes-Hassell
Debbie Abilock	Alice H. Yucht	Ken Haycock	Rebecca P. Butler	Ramona Kerby
Patricia Brevik	Ruth Small	Gail Bush

Pay for Performance Backfires

I know: you're thinking "No, Duh." But you can't say it too many times.

"We find that financial incentives may indeed reduce intrinsic motivation and diminish ethical or other reasons for complying with workplace social norms such as fairness. As a consequence, the provision of incentives can result in a negative impact on overall performance," said Dr Bernd Irlenbusch of the London School of Economics.

Full report here.


(via http://twitter.com/alfiekohn)
(photo via flickr)

"My experience is what I agree to attend to."

The quotation is from William James.  It's from this article on time, attention and concentration. It's about some research in this area and a book, Rapt, by a Winifred Gallagher.  I haven't read the book, but it sounds like goes along with many of the things I've been thinking about lately and why I've been limiting my online time.

That's not true.  I've been online for the same amount of time.  I've just moved around some of the containers and removed some of the distractions.

Many people in our hyperconnected world seem to be doing fine, but many are struggling.  How much is too much and how do you draw the line?

I'm working on the answers for myself, but I think everyone has their own level of comfort.  As long as you're productive and happy and your other real-world relationships are strong, then you're probably fine.  If your girlfriend is leaving you because of your Twitter addiction then you might have something to work on.

The author of the article has set up a space for questions for the researchers here.

(image cc flickr)

Another Way To Save District Money

From Stephen Krashen's newsletter:

"Recent research done by scholars at Indiana University, UC Davis and the University of Minnesota has shown that in general state high school exit exams do not lead to higher employment, or higher earnings by graduates, nor does the presence of high school exit exams result in improved academic achievement.

In fact, researchers have yet to discover any clear evidence that High School Exit Exams benefit anyone except the companies that make and sell them.

Stephen Krashen"

Readicide

I love professional books that you can read in a weekend (and still enjoy your weekend) as Richard Allington points out in the Foreword. Readicide is a scant 160 some pages with lots of white space. If you don't mind reading online you can see it here, but you'll want to be buying a physical copy to share and mark up, I promise.

First: a definition.

"Read-i-cide: noun, the systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools."

So he's not exactly going into this as a wallflower. This is a manifesto, and a good one. I won't go into the facts and figures he lays out so clearly, but if you liked things like Krashen's The Power of Reading or Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook, then you'll love this.

After reading the Smith book, I needed to know what to do and Gallagher gives some good ideas. But first he has to lay out what we're doing wrong. He makes for points.

• Schools value the the development of test-takers more than they value the development of readers
• Schools are limiting authentic reading experiences
• Teachers are overteaching books
• Teachers are underteaching books

(Gallagher, 2009)

So what can we do? He advocates taking a stand and engaging in "hard talk" with all of the players in this issue--he even has a checklist of questions! He advocates being the "discussion director" on your campus for this most important issue. He also recommends creating a "book flood" of interesting titles in classrooms so there is plenty of engaging materials for young readers and that every student has a book to take home every night.

Gallagher also has solid instructional recommendations, but I won't take up more of your time. I think you get the idea that as soon as you finish the Frank Smith book and feel that queasy feeling of not knowing what to do, you should grab a copy of this and get fired up with more of a righteous indignation and a plan of attack.

Gallagher is a high school teacher and most of his instructional ideas are geared that way, but they are all easily adapted to any learner. For more on his other books and research, check out his own site.

Let's do whatever it takes to end readicide for our students.

Stop Investing In Scales, Invest In Nutrition

"...districts...are being forced to cut positions and reduce services in areas known to help children.

A good example of this is funding for school librarians. Studies consistently tell us that the presence of a credentialed school librarian is positively related to reading achievement.

Dumping...useless (and painful) tests would take some of the financial pressure off school districts, and allow them to restore at least some of the cuts in programs and staffing that have been shown to be beneficial for students. Let's stop investing so much money in scales, and make sure we invest in nutrition."

--Stephen Krashen


(image cc "10th March")

Recess

Turns out, it's just as important as the rest of the academic day.  How important?  We shouldn't even take it away as a punishment.

"Also, teachers often punish children by taking away recess privileges. That strikes Dr. Barros as illogical. 'Recess should be part of the curriculum,' she said. 'You don’t punish a kid by having them miss math class, so kids shouldn’t be punished by not getting recess.'"

Thoughts?

(image cc "day 51")

Great Minds Think Alike

By sheer coincidence (I swear!) yesterday Stephen Krashen sent out some remarks in his e-newsletter about a study he and Joanne Ujiie did regarding the Newbery Problem:

Anita Silvey ("Has the Newbery lost its way?" October 2008) notes

that current Newbery winners, as compared to winners in the 1990's,
are not popular among children. Our research confirms that current
award winners are not popular: We found that Newbery and Caldecott
award winners and runner-ups for 2003 and 2004 were far less likely to
be checked out of Southern California public libraries than young
reader books on bestseller lists.

Prize-winning books were not particularly popular before the 1990's,
however. Linda Lamme, in a study published in 1976, reported that the
middle school children she studied “read few Caldecott or Newbery
medal winning books and few books on a standard list of good
literature …. Only in the sixth grade was even 5 percent of their
reading in medal winning books ….". Lamme also found that those who
read more "quality" books did not read any better.

...
We did a statistical analysis of this data and confirmed that
prize-winners had a lower than average rank on the popularity lists
for 24 of the 25 years studied.

...

So again I ask, what's the point of the awards anyway?  And I'm not just talking about Newberys here. I mean awards in general.  Oscars, Emmys, Teachers of the Year.  Who really cares?

Just askin'.  Thanks.

Blind Republicans

Mary Ann over at Learning the Language has a couple posts that should be generating some conversation.  First was "Republicans See English as the 'Official Language'"  They do know that is just like the Tom Tomorrow cartoon that shows then designating the Sun as our source of heat and light, don't they?  They get Orwellian with this, "...we support the English First approach and oppose divisive programs that limit students' future potential."  Even Mary Ann, an expert on these matters, has no idea where this "English First" nonsense came from.  It sure sounds like they mean bilingualism is bad, doesn't it?

Today she has "What's the Proper Role for English in the USA?"  Turns out some nitwit unfortunately named John Lillpop thinks "...Hispanics and other advocates of bilingual mumbo-jumbo are so blinded to reality?"  They're not blinded John, you are.  I was going to sum this up, but as usual Stephen Krashen already has:

Mr. Lillpot is badly misinformed. Everybody agrees that acquisition of English is essential. That's why we need bilingual education. Study after study shows that children in bilingual programs do better on tests of English reading than children in all-English immersion programs.  Bilingual education works because it uses the child's first language in a way that accelerates second language acquisition.

Of course, maybe I have this "English First" idea from the Republicans all wrong.  Perhaps they mean they're pushing some new financial incentive and providing more funds for English Language Learning, hiring more teachers and providing the curriculum and meeting space for adults as well as school children.  If they want our new citizens to learn English, that certainly makes sense.

Study Finds No Autism Link

You don't say.

No, really?

Well, what do you know.

All I have to say is: duh.

Laetrile and Open Court

Stephen Krashen follows the evidence and notices something peculiar. Laetrile used to be prescribed to fight cancer but after studies showed that it couldn't be proven effective, it is now illegal. Now that studies have proven that the Open Court Reading program also could not be proven effective, why is it still required in some districts?

Matt has some more on this.

*italic text is edited as per comments (one from Dr. Krashen himself!)

Segregate By Sex?

While the whole "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better" thing is always entertaining, splitting up boys and girls for educational purposes doesn't work. I was kind of on the fence about this one for a while but this essay, "Teaching Boys and Girls Separately" made me think it through and I had to come down against the idea. It's a long essay, but worth the read.

Today, there is more evidence to bolster the idea that there is no real good reason to do this. This article, "Girls' Gains Have Not Cost Boys" reveals some recent research into the issue. (This one is short). The findings reiterate that poverty is the only true gap.

The ACLU is on the right side of this issue (as usual). From their blog, here's a post that sums it up well, "It's Not Choice, It's Inequality."

"Sex segregation is illegal and discriminatory, and we hope that our lawsuit results in public school districts halting these experiments and the U.S. Department of Education rescinding its 2006 regulations encouraging sex segregation in schools."

End the Education Budget Crisis

Here's an easy fix. Peter Schmidt has proven that "State High-School Exit Tests do Not Improve Academic Achievement." Here's the link.

If a Governor is interested in long-term solutions to their budget crisis, a reasonable plan is to cut and even eliminate expenses for items that don't do any good.

Start with the High School Exit Exam! California spends about $250 million each year just for remedial instruction for this exam, and millions more for administration and scoring. Recent research done by scholars at Indiana University has shown that state high school exit exams do not lead to more college completion, higher employment, or higher earnings by graduates. Researchers at the University of California Davis and the University of Minnesota have reported that exit exams do not result in improved academic achievement. In fact, researchers have yet to discover any benefits of having a High School Exit Exam.

Dumping this needless exam would save a billion dollars every few years, and might inspire similar steps for additional savings.

Ka-Ching!

(tip to sdkrashen's mailing list)

Most Popular Children's Books? Really?

Over at 100 Scope Notes, he reprints part of a list from the Washington Post. It uses data collected from Accelerated Reader to determine the most popular kids books. Go take a peek, then come back. Jay Mathews has a commentary in the paper about it as well.

All good books, right? No argument here. Stephen Krashen is skeptical, though:

"The survey was based on books children chosen for the Accelerated Reader program, a program in which children are tested on the content of books and earn points, which are exchanged for prizes. It is likely that their motivation is to earn points and get prizes. The results of this survey do not necessarily reflect what children read for their own intrinsic pleasure, but might only reflect what they read in order to earn points on quizzes and get prizes.

After reviewing the research, I have concluded that Accelerated Reader has not been shown to be better than simply providing good books and time to read.There is also evidence suggesting that providing rewards for reading results in less reading in the long term: Rewards send the message that reading must be unpleasant, and people have to be bribed to do it."

I agree, in part. I read aloud to my students quite a bit. They almost always check to see if what I've read is a an AR book. I think that list is based on what the teachers are choosing to read aloud.

Just look at the fifth grade list. Hatchet and Holes? I love those books, but I seriously doubt those are the top self-selected reading by most fifth graders. Either Diary of a Wimpy Kid doesn't have an AR test, or kids are taking tests on what they hear as well as what they read for themselves.

If 25 fifth graders took between 5 and 20 AR tests all year and they all took the one on Holes because it was a read-aloud, of course Holes will show up as the favorite.

Links for your Lunchbreak

Is it better to only blog when you have something worthwhile and original to say or is it better to throw in the occasional link post when you got nothing? I'm drained, people. That five-year-old birthday party was fun but I'm glad it's over. Until my brain cells are all firing again, though, here's some stuff worth reading.

Tap Water Is Not a Naturally Occuring Substance (it's better!)

Fallacy Files on Charlatan. Looks great.

Literary Dealbreakers. Which books/genre that another reads would turn you off of them?

After answering, scroll down to Comment #31.

Game Theory. What is it? And can it help us figure out this Obama/Clinton business?

Oh, and the best quote to show up in my inbox was from a Stphen Krashen newsletter: "You have a flat tire. A government agent pulls up behind you, and instead of helping out, takes out a stopwatch to see how quickly you can change it. That's NCLB."