Monday, April 20, 2015

Question: How do I get my third grader to read regular books?

Image courtesy of Clipartpal.com
A while ago, a parent told me her third-grade son loved to read comic books, but she couldn't get him to read regular chapter books. She was frustrated by this and asked me for suggestions to get him interested in reading the "regular books." I asked her why she felt he needed to start reading those "regular books," and her response was, "His fluency scores are terrible and he is behind on his reading scores for his grade level."

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Reinventing the Library Identity

Original post by Jae Holt
October 23, 2013

**This article was originally posted on the MamaManga website. The question, "if there aren't any paper books, is it still a library?" is still being answered. I wanted to reintroduce this article to readers and then revisit the question by inviting you to give me your answers. Please leave your comments below.
Carnation Library
In September of 2013 in the south end of San Antonio, Texas,a new library opened up. But it wasn't your parents' kind of library. This library, known as BiblioTech, does not have any physical copies of books. Its entire catalog is located online in the form of eBooks. The library also provided over 600 e-readers and computers for patrons to access these eBooks. Other cities and many college and university campuses were also embracing bookless libraries. And the question was asked, if there aren't any paper books, is it still a library?

Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Raising a "Normal" Child - Social and Emotional Learning

One day, while watching one of my son's soccer practices, I began to notice how the kids interacted with each other and their coach. If a conflict arose, there would be some words exchanged and maybe a few huffs and eye-rolls here and there. But whatever the problem was either got fixed, or it wasn't important enough to continue talking about. The ones that did require some intervention were brought up to the coach, who appeared to handle the disagreements appropriately and to everyone's satisfaction. The coach always maintained a very positive attitude and no one was ever singled out as "the problem." He was able to get everyone back on track.

So a question popped into my head: My son had difficulties getting along with other kids in his school, but he had no trouble working with his teammates in soccer, why was that?