Summer 2011
A Note From SARA President, Rosemary Rankin
Happy summer to all!!! At last the summer sunshine has come to the Sacramento area. Classroom doors have closed behind us and we are enjoying family, friends, great books and the chance to RELAX! While you recharge your batteries for the upcoming year, the SARA board is planning a fantastic year of literacy events! On September 15th, we will toast the new school year with our annual “Words of Wisdom” event at Buonarotti's Restaurant. This is your chance to hear about best practices for creating a strong vocabulary program in your classroom and reconnect with friends from all over the Sacramento area.
October 22nd will bring the fifth annual Literacy Conference at Del Dayo Elementary. A few of this year’s speakers include Dr. Freddie Hiebert, Dr. P. David Pearson and Ashley Wolff . As you may have noticed, we have moved the conference to October 22nd hoping to bring cutting edge writing and vocabulary strategies to you a bit earlier in the trimester.
This year will bring a new event to our SARA roster! We will be working with CSUS to plan a series of Saturday Writing Seminars which will allow all paid attendees to earn both college and district credits. A flyer will be coming to you soon detailing the Saturday Writing Seminars with CSUS. Space will be limited, so please register as soon as you receive the flyer.
MEMBERSHIP
Membership is crucial for the life blood and success of our Sacramento Area Reading Association. In this time of budget cuts and the drastic changes that districts are having to make, we need your support even more. As a strong advocate of literacy for our children, I am asking you to be sure that you renew your SARA membership immediately. With your support we can continue to provide outstanding conferences, featured research speakers and classroom support . Our new partnership with CSUS will bring Saturday Literacy Seminars to your doorstep.
Remember with your support we will keep literacy vibrant in our area. Don't forget to bring a friend to our events and get them involved in SARA by giving a membership as a birthday gift or a friendship gift that will last a lifetime . With each new member we can keep literacy
the goal for every chid in our area!
How can I get all of my books
into the
hands of my students?
By Judy Miranda Past President of CRA
Do You Want to raise student literacy scores??
Can you recall when your own love of books and reading began? Was it by being read aloud to? Or trips to the library? Or gifts of new books to celebrate special occasions?
How many of our students today have those kind of experiences? And if they don’t, how can we help them in classrooms?
Research studies tell us that the strongest readers tend to read as often as possible while struggling readers rarely read at all. Evidence suggests that high frequency readers are masters at word recognition, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and general knowledge. (NAEP 2002)
With the current emphasis on raising test scores and the pressure to follow predesigned reading plans, many teachers wonder about the value of a classroom library. Will it be too expensive? Will the children use the library to build their skills? Is there enough time or space to set aside a library area?
When students have access to classroom libraries that include a diversity of authors, genre, topics and reading levels, those students interact more frequently and with more enthusiasm with books of all kinds. They thoughtfully invest in the selections they choose to read, build stamina as readers, respond to literature both verbally and in written form with a greater level of understanding, and tend to build self confidence and a love of reading. Books become an obsession, an escape, a celebration and a source of self discovery.
The International Reading Association recommends that classroom libraries begin with at least seven books per student and expand by two new books per child per year. Other sources recommend as many as 500 books per classroom to include
storybooks, novels, nonfiction, poetry, magazines, and other types of materials that match the interests and reading abilities of the students.
Are classroom libraries expensive “fluff?” The research definitely proves otherwise. Are you collecting books for your classroom this summer? For your own personal library you might seek out a copy of “Your Classroom Library: New Ways to Give It More Teaching Power,” by D. Ray Reutzel and Parker C. Fawson. Here’s to good reading, lots of it and far more enthusiastic, literate children!!
SARA’s International Literacy Scholarship
This year SARA has chosen a very special project for our international commitment to literacy. With the help of a local group of former educators, PEMA, working to educate young women in Africa, SARA has provided an educational scholarship to a young woman named Olive Kathambi. Olive is a very bright young woman, orphaned by the pandemic AIDs virus which has devastated so many African countries. She lives with her Grandmother in a tiny shack along with two little sisters and a brother. Olive attends the Gikumene Girls Secondary School and is a hard working student who dreams of becoming an electrical engineer. If you would like to make a donation to help sponsor Olive or any of the other young girls or are interested in knowing more about this local effort to assist young women who are struggling to break the chains of poverty, please contact Bev Hendrickson, a retired San Juan principal at...bevhend@comcast.net
Read for the Record Day...October 6, 2011
On October 6, 2011 children around the globe will attempt to become part of a world record! In homes and classrooms over 2 million teachers, parents and children will participate in a world wide reading of Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney. The yearly challenge to participate in a global read is the brain child of the Pearson Foundation and Jumpstart. For more information go to www.readfortherecord.org/
How does a book win a
California Young Reader Medal?
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by Alanna Butterworth
The California Young Reader Medal program encourages children in our state to become avid readers. Since 1974, when the CYRM program began, millions of California students have nominated, read, and voted for the winners of the California Young Reader Medal. The purpose of the
program is to both encourage recreational reading, and to honor favorite books and the authors and illustrators who create them.
Four statewide organizations sponsor the CYRM program. They are: California Association of Teachers of English (CATE), California Library Association (CLA), California Reading Association (CRA), and the California School Library Association (CSLA). A committee of representatives from each organization coordinates the CYRM program from the nominating to the selection of the awards in each category. The
awards given each year are in five categories:
• Primary (K - 3rd grade)
• Intermediate (3rd – 5th grade)
• Middle School (6th – 8th grade)
• Young Adult (9th – 12th grade)
• Picture Books for Older Readers (All ages)
The winning book in each category is determined by the vote of young readers in California. Readers may participate in more than one category. Each reader is entitled to ONE vote in each category as long as the
reader has read all of the nominated titles in the category. To be considered for nomination, a book must be an original work of fiction published within the last four years by a living author.
The winners for the upcoming 2011-2012 year must be voted on by April 1, 2012. The nominees are:
Primary (Grades K – 3)
• On Meadowview Street written and illustrated by Henry Cole. Greenwillow Books 2007.
• Let’s Do Nothing written and illustrated by Tony Fucile. Candlewick Press, 2009.
• The Odd Egg written and illustrated by Emily Gravett. Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers,2009.
• Princess Hyacinth: The Surprising Tale of a Girl Who Floated written by Florence Heide. Illustrated by Lane Smith. Schwartz & Wade Books, 2009.
• I Need My Monster written by Amanda Noll. Illustrated by Howard McWilliam. Flashlight Press, 2009.
Intermediate (Grades 4 – 6)
• Violet Raines Almost Got Struck by Lightning by Danette Haworth. Walker & Co., 2008.
• Alvin Ho: Allergic to Girls, School and Other Scary Things by Lenore Look. Schwartz & Wade
Books, 2008.
• The Small Adventure of Popeye and Elvis by Barbara O'Conner. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009.
Middle School (Grades 6 – 9)
• Revolution is Not a Dinner Party: A Novel by Ying Chang Compestine. Henry Holt, 2007.
• Waiting for Normal by Leslie Conner. Katherine Tegen Books, 2008.
• Every Soul a Star by Wendy Mass. Little, Brown & Co., 2008.
Young Adult (Grades 9-12)
• Graceling by Kristin Cashore. Harcourt, 2008.
• Beastly by Alex Finn. Harper Teen, 2007.
• If I Stay by Gayle Forman. Penguin Group, USA, 2009
Picture Books for Older Readers
• Goal! Written by Mina Javaherbin. Illustrated by A.G. Ford. Candlewick Press, 2010
• Henry’s Freedom Box written by Ellen Levine. Illustrated by Kadir Nelson. Scholastic Press, 2007
• Wabi Sabi written by Mark Reibstein. Illustrated by Ed Young. Little, Brown & Co., 2009
To download the recommendation or official voting form, and / or to download resources for sharing the books, visit www.californiareads.org and click on the California Young Reader Medal button in the homepage menu. You can also learn about winners in each category from past years. This is a great resource for educators and parents looking for a good book to share with young people of different age groups.
SAVE THE DATE!
Sept.15th: Words of Wisdom...Dr. John Shefelbine
“The Hidden Role of Vocabulary Knowledge
in Meeting State Standards”
4:30-6:30 Buonarotti’s Restaurant
2527 Town &Country (behind the old William Glen)
by Meg Gillman
Summer is the time to grab a blanket, a map, a straw bag filled with juicy reading and head off to the nearest pool, park, beach or shade tree. Fill a glass with ice cold lemonade, spritz on the sun block and jump into a great summer reading getaway! Here are some books that I have enjoyed over the last few vacation weeks. They cross the genres but keep your heart pumping, your brain growing, your hope floating and your pages turning!
Sarah’s Keys by Tatiana de Rosnay
This book is absolutely compelling, heartbreaking and inspiring at the same time. Though historical fiction, it is a poignant account of the Vel’ d’ Hiv, the barbaric roundup of Jewish men, women and children in Paris on July 16th, 1942. This event carried out by French police against their fellow countrymen on behalf of the Germans becomes the focal point of a story that teaches the value of full disclosure of past sins. I give this book a million stars!
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
This second novel by the author of The Kite Runner also takes place in Afghanistan. Unlike his first novel, “Splendid Suns” evolves around the cultural abuses, disrespect and inhumanities faced by Afghan women. Though fictional, the book exposes both the dark side of life in a tribal culture as well as the strength of female bonding in a primitive male dominated world. I loved The Kite Runner and was pleasantly surprised to see a second well crafted story which so cleverly captures human emotion, the breadth and bleakness of the landscape as a character and, of course, the human drive to love in spite of everything.
Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn
This is a book that tears at your very being. It is brutal, well written and dovetails nicely with the SARA scholarship for Olive in Africa. In a New York Times Review Irshad Manji wrote...“Gendercide,” the daily slaughter of girls in the developing world, steals more lives in any given decade “than all the genocides of the 20th century.” No wonder Kristof and WuDunn, whose coverage of China for The New York Times won them a Pulitzer Prize, declare the global struggle for women’s equality “the paramount moral challenge” of our era.
2011-12 Save the Dates!
Sept. 15 Dr. John Shefelbine
“The Hidden Role of Vocabulary
Knowledge in Meeting State Standards”
4:30-6:30
Buonarotti's Restaurant
2527 Town & Country Place
Oct. 22 SARA Conference
“Rockin' It with Reading”
Del Dayo Elementary1301 McClaren Dr.
Carmichael , CA
Nov.3 A Taste of Literacy
We Give Thanks for Librarians and Books
6:00p.m.-8:00p.m.
Arden Dimick Library
891 Watt Ave, Sacramento, 95864
Nov. 4-5 CRA Conference
www.californiareads.org
Mar. 1 Dr. Seuss' Birthday Bash!
Read Across America
Gibbons Community Center
4701 Gibbons Dr. Carmichael, Ca 95608
April 17 Writers' Showcase 5:30-8:00p.m.
Arcade Middle School
May 17 Dr. Barbara Schmidt
“Lighthouse for Literacy”
Casa Garden Restaurant
2760 Sutterville Road
Sacramento, 95820