Literacy Now

p: Tax Credits via photopin cc

I am really starting to think the math folks know how to celebrate their content area. Many of us were just recovering from celebrating Pi Day (3/14) when April, Financial Literacy Month, arrived. Of course, as literacy professionals, we don’t have to miss out on any of these celebrations. Financial Literacy Month provides another opportunity for us to focus on making powerful connections with literacy and the content areas.

I probably don’t need to explain why it is important that we start discussing financial literacy with our youngest of students. So many adults are struggling with debt, and it is getting worse. There are so many temptations out there. There are credit card offers, refinancing options. With the click of a computer, anyone can enter a virtual shopping mall and buy almost anything from almost anywhere. Most of the time, we don’t even have to click on a website, because the advertisements target our interests.

With the technology available, people are going to have to work harder and harder to manage their finances—and it’s never too early to get them thinking about what it means be to be financially literate. Here are some activities that can engage elementary students and introduce the topic.

Students might begin by talking about the difference between needs and wants. For many children, there is a very fine line between the two. Ask students to divide a sheet of paper in two. On the left side, needs can be listed; wants can go on the right.

Then students can take their lists and create a word shape at http://www.tagxedo.com/. At the website, students can type in their needs and select a shape from numerous ones available for the final word shape. Another option is to have the words put into the shape of the word NEEDS. The same activity can be done for their wants. Students can share their creations in groups and discuss the terms they put in the shapes.

Next, select a text to read aloud and discuss with students in order to communicate the importance of money and using it wisely. JENNY FOUND A PENNY (Harris, 2008) is a narrative text I have used with children as young as kindergarten age. Throughout the book, Jenny is trying to save money to make a purchase. As the young girl saves money, the reader can see the coins (both the front and the back) and continue to add Jenny’s savings. Students will enjoy the rhythmic writing and the rhyme found on the pages of this text.

Of course, with the current emphasis on informative text, you may want to read aloud WHAT DO WE BUY? A LOOK AT GOODS AND SERVICES (Nelson, 2010) and WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH MONEY? EARNING, SPENDING, AND SAVING (Larson, 2010). The ELA Common Core State Standards (ELA CCSS) recommend using at least 50% informational texts with children. Introducing these informational texts is a great way to reinforce key linguistic features found in the texts, increase prior knowledge about saving and spending, and build students’ vocabulary of technical terms related to financial literacy. Words such as producer, consumer, income, saving, spending, earning, and donate are all introduced through the pages of the texts.

We can also take the opportunity to create student interest in figurative language. Beginning in first grade (L.1.5), the ELA CCSS expect children to examine figurative language. The following are just a few phrases which relate to the topic of financial literacy:

Bet your bottom dollar	In the red	Nest egg
Not worth a cent	Pay an arm and a leg	Break even
Save for a rainy day	Pinch pennies	Keep your head above water
Money burns a hole in your pocket		Money doesn't grow on trees

Let small groups of students research the meanings to some of the phrases (or, with younger children, research as a class). Talk about the literal and figurative meaning for each phrase. If something burns a hole in your pocket, what happens? The object falls right through. How does that relate to the figurative meaning of the expression? What would it be like if money grew on trees? (Would there be plenty of money?) Children can also create illustrations which represent the figurative meaning and write the literal definition.

There are a couple of different ways we might choose to end the month. After the students have learned about financial literacy and saving and spending, they might create a second word shape at http://www.tagxedo.com/ to see if their thinking on needs and wants has changed. Hopefully, some of their needs may now be viewed as wants. Another possibility is having students create a class “_____ Is” poem on financial literacy, where each line defines the topic. The poem might look something like this:

Financial Literacy is…
knowing when to spend and when to save
learning that producers sell and consumers buy
important to paying bills
being able to have money left for the future
important to even adults

The goal of the culminating project is to have children reflect on the topic and what they learned.

Let’s take advantage of Financial Literacy Month to make important connections. We can create math and literacy connections so that our students are not only strengthening their literacy skills, but also building their content knowledge. These activities also enable us to connect our activities with the ELA Common Core State Standards. Finally, financial literacy month can help children connect what they learn in the classroom with their lives outside of school.

We can take this opportunity as teachers to seek powerful connections between literacy and the content areas and to create student interest in financial literacy. Students will (hopefully) realize the importance of saving money and that saving money is a lifelong skill.

Personally, I cannot think of a more valuable skill that they will need for the rest of their lives.

Jennifer L. Altieri, Ph.D. is the Literacy Division Coordinator in the School of Education at The Citadel in Charleston, SC, and the author of CONTENT COUNTS! DEVELOPING DISCIPLINARY LITERACY SKILLS, K-6. Jennifer will be speaking more about putting the L in stem as part of the Carolina curriculum leadership series at the National Science Teachers Association Conference in April. Her presentations will focus on helping teachers link literacy with science and math. Contact Jennifer at jenniferaltieri@bellsouth.net.



Putting Books to Work: Pretty Penny series by Devon Kinch

Building Classroom Community, One Township at a Time

by Judith Hayn

Baskin, R. (2013). Surfacing. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.

Maggie Paris is the focus of this character-driven novel. Her older sister Leah drowned in the family condo pool when she was nine years old, and Maggie only five. A few years later, her parents in a last-ditch attempt to deal with their grief used fertility drugs to add twin boys to the family. The bickering and mistrust at home gives Maggie little solace as she struggles to find her way as a sophomore in high school. She is a talented varsity swimmer, but her athletic gift is belittled in her own mind by her unwanted ability to get others to spill their deepest and darkest secrets to her which causes those who unload on her to distance themselves. Despite this, her best friend Julie sticks with her even when Maggie develops a crush on a loathsome senior wrestler and determines to have sex with him. Her self-destruction is difficult to endure as she makes one poor choice after another; these include luring a gentlemanly classmate in as her boyfriend so she can gain skills to impress her obsession.

This is a tale of trauma and what it does to one family and one girl’s spirit. Told in flashbacks from the day of the drowning and interspersed with Leah’s commentary, essential truths about relationships and secrets emerge. The book would be a terrific choice for teen girl book clubs as Maggie learns just how many forms that guilt and grief can take.

Dr. Judith A. Hayn is an associate professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

This article is part of a series from the Special Interest Group Network on Adolescent Literature (SIGNAL).

by Monee Perkins and Peggy Coyne

In the September issue of the Reading Today Online TILE-SIG Feature, Monee Perkins and Peggy Coyne shared their thinking about Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and literacy in a New York City classroom. At that point Monee had just learned about the UDL Guidelines, and she was anticipating applying the principles of UDL to her instructional practices. Here are her reflections on UDL in her classroom.

Using the UDL Guidelines as a framework for my instructional practices, I introduced two new tools and one instructional method, which I know have made a difference in my students’ performance. The 88 seventh grade students I teach range from below average to above average, but like many inner city students, they are not engaged with school. My greatest challenge for these students is engagement.

In the first segment of this article, I mentioned how excited I was to introduce Adobe Reader. I have not been disappointed. Students have used the annotation features to address complex text. For example, I introduced close reading of text with "Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin. I first had the students skim the article for unfamiliar words and using context clues define those words. The students were able to use a synonym for those complex words and include it in the article when they read. In addition, the annotation tool provided students with another representation for text commenting, they found it to be very efficient because they were able to use another way listen to the story.

Another tool I have successfully introduced is Wall Wisher (which is now called Padlet). My students use this tool when I introduce a theme or writing prompt. Like Achieve 3000, I have encouraged writing with a poll and have allowed students to gather literary and informational resources to further their understanding of a topic. Wall Wisher allows my students an opportunity to practice responding to a prompt and to the opinions of others in a respectable manner.

Finally, I began using Socratic Seminars as a means to help students interact and engage with the text through questioning. You can read more about these text-based discussions from ReadWriteThink. My students read Chopin’s "The Story of an Hour" twice, once to get the gist and then a second time to develop their own questions. At this point, they have eliminated Level 1 and Level 2 questions and have moved right to developing Level 3 questions.

My colleagues have also noticed my students’ increased engagement. Recently, I invited the principal and social studies teachers to observe one of the Socratic Circles. I love my principal, but she usually points out how we can improve. The day she observed our seminar she stated, "This is what school is about and should look like!"  She observed students who were 95% engaged in the text and thoughtful discussion. She watched students who were challenged taking charge of their discussion. Needless to say she was pleased.

When I think about my lessons, I always think about the UDL Guidelines: multiple means of representation, which ensure my students have many ways to access the text; multiple means of action and expression, which allow me to provide students with appropriate levels of challenge to sustain their motivation; and multiple means of engagement, which prompt me to consider how will I make their learning experiences authentic and meaningful. I am just at the beginning of my UDL journey with respect to changing my teaching practices. I look forward to moving ahead and adding new techniques through my newfound knowledge.

Monee Perkins is a 7th grade ELA teacher in the Bronx, NY.

Peggy Coyne is a Research Scientist at CAST, Inc.

This article is part of a series from the International Reading Association Technology in Literacy Education Special Interest Group (TILE-SIG).

It's a great thing to live in a storyteller's mindset and terribly useful since I write novels for a living: Hope Was Here, Rules Of The Road, Close To Famous, Almost Home, Peeled, Stand Tall, and Squashed, to name a few. It springs from my grandmother's DNA—she was a teller, a pro, quite famous in her day, even offered her own radio show (my grandfather said, “No wife of mine!”). 

My grandmother told stories to explain the world, all of the world. As a kid I struggled with the term fiction being defined as "untrue"—not my grandmother's stories! They were wondrously, gloriously true. They were in many ways the truest part of my life. 

When stories are your roadmap, the trip is a circuitous path; getting lost and found and flummoxed is part of the journey. When a writer creates a world, it's a crazy ecosystem where characters rise and fall and sometimes tell us what to do—the nerve! All day we're dealing with characters who need to mature, words that need umpteen adjustments, locations that don't always work. It can be plain annoying to try to arm wrestle a strong-willed bad guy, or to lie on a couch curled up in a blanket, pondering your subplot, and then have to convince your husband that yes, I am curled up in this blanket, but I am actually working. 

My first YA novel, Squashed, came out 20 years ago. In the two decades I've been in this business, so much has changed, including me.

But what hasn't changed is the point of writing, the focus and the fuel of it. At the end of the day, here's what it's about: Did you leave your heart on the page? Did you find something new to say? Did you squeeze your theme until all the possibilities oozed out? Did you argue with your main character, and if so, who won? 

Writing novels is about asking a zillion questions. How many times can you remember being scared, and how has that changed you and challenged you and deepened you? Where do you discover humor, and how do you let yourself laugh in the dark times? What's in your heart and what's in the hearts of your readers that will connect like super glue? Why are you doing this? Why are they reading you? Where is the you in your work and how does it change and shake and alter the landscape? How are you going to delve into that real scary truth you know needs to go in this story? Is it too much? Not enough? How could your editor not get that joke? How could she possibly suggest that chapter 12, all of chapter 12, be deleted? 

This is why being wrapped in a blanket is so useful at times. 

I try to write about issues that kids need to think about: homelessness, domestic violence, alcoholism, obsessive love, yellow journalism, fear, divorce, war, bullying, dishonor in politics. I try to show what happens when a kid finds his or her voice and begins using it in this complicated world. I try to laugh along the way, and for that reason, I don't like the box "humorous novel," because in the course of most weeks, we laugh, we cry, we shout, we're in despair, we mess up, we rise triumphant from the madness, we break open the emergency chocolate, and we get on with it. 

No adult novelist will ever hear these words blaring across a school loudspeaker: "The assembly will begin at 9:35, and I remind every student to listen and be respectful to our speaker. Let none of us forget what happened with last month's speaker." And you realize that you are the speaker, possibly in peril. You are no longer just a writer; you now wear the mantel of an entire assembly. No one ever thinks of being an assembly in career planning, but here you are. 

I'm the YA luncheon speaker at IRA this year. I will not eat much at that lunch, but I will try to provide some food for thought, some good bites of humor and truth, and I plan to be particularly insightful about my novels. Again and again I will come back to story, that glorious, frustrating, living, breathing structure that is a mirror to our lives, a friend when we are lonely, a kick in the butt when we need to pay attention. 

Decisions and choices—that's what makes a story great and what keeps it alive. And when it's alive, well, we're in for it. The moving van pulls up, out comes the furniture and the clothes, the knick knacks, out jumps the pet and that story moves inside our hearts with everything it's got, and refuses to leave. 

Joan Bauer wrote her first YA novel, Squashed, during a long recovery from a major car accident. "The laughter," she writes on her website, "helped me heal." Ten books and 20 years later, Joan continues to craft books that make readers smile. Her critically acclaimed body of work includes Hope Was Here, a Newbery Honor Medal winner, and Rules of the Road, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her latest novel, Almost Home, was released in September 2012.

Being a teacher means embracing constant change. Yet all too often, teachers are told when, how and why to change. In this monthly column, Mrs. Mimi takes on creating change for herself by rethinking old practices and redefining teaching on her own terms.

p: woodleywonderworks via photopin cc

A few weeks ago, I was watching GREY’S ANATOMY. (Of course, I was watching it while feeling guilty because it was only 9:00 on a Thursday night and I probably/should have /could have been doing something teacher-y like grading papers, planning a lesson, or selecting books for an upcoming unit. Isn’t it crazy that we feel guilty about not working at so many times outside of the school day?)

Anyhow, on this particular episode of GREY’S ANATOMY, our beloved doctor friends were (spoiler alert!) getting a taste of what their work lives would be like under a regime of new leadership at the hospital. The new focus was on efficiency, getting to as many patients as possible with little concern to the quality of doctor-patient interaction and standardizing medical procedures to be efficient rather than (always) effective.

I suddenly sat up like a shot and declared, “This is one big metaphor for the current state of the classroom!” To which Mr. Mimi replied, “Not everything is about teaching.” To which I replied with a giant eye roll. Because it is. Everything is about or can be related to teaching.

Let’s take conferring with readers. I have never met a teacher who isn’t worried about the schedule for conferring with readers. When teachers take a look at how many minutes they actually have to confer with students and then consider how long it can take to have a strong conference with a child, they realize that they can only get to two or three students a day. This means there is essentially no way they can work with every single student in their class over the course of a week. Cue the panic and a bit of guilt mixed in with some anxiety about what the administration will think.

But how can we teach anything well with the nagging feeling that we should really be moving on, checking off more boxes, and “getting to” more children? What does it even mean to just “get to” someone? Is that all we can expect to give to our students now? Is that what they deserve? Is it what we deserve?

In my experience, when I am conflicted about my practice, I am not at my best. I am distracted and unfocused and when I think about it, even the 4.5 minutes I spent with a particular student were a waste of time.

The truth is, working with students in small settings (such as the one-on-one conference or a small group) is what makes the biggest difference in a child’s learning. It is how we tailor our instruction to meet the individual needs of the wide range in our classrooms. Not only is this point based in research, which tends to make more people sit up and listen, but it is plain common sense.

Classrooms are busy and getting busier. They are big and getting bigger. But those factors are out of our control, so why do we have to alter what we know is best for children in the name of being more efficient? We know bigger classes are not necessarily better classes, so let’s not compound the issue by rushing through our time to develop our relationship with and address the needs of our students, no matter how many we have.

Teachers have a lot to do, a lot to cover, and even more to test. Therefore, I think it is more important than ever that we slow down and embrace the conference as a time to savor the moment and be present with just one little friend at a time. It is what they deserve. It is what we deserve, too.

Mrs. Mimi is a pseudonymous teacher who taught both first and second grades at a public elementary school in New York City. She's the author of IT'S NOT ALL FLOWERS AND SAUSAGES: MY ADVENTURES IN SECOND GRADE, which sprung from her popular blog of the same name. Mimi also has her doctorate in education from Teachers College, Columbia University.