Another Helpful Webpage - Competency #8

As I was searching through some webpages about reluctant readers, I found this research by Paul Kropp to be very helpful. He gives suggestions on how to spot reluctant readers, ways to match them with books to that will help to encourage them to want to read and help capture their interests. He offers good strategies and organizers to help with teaching reluctant readers as well.

Check out this website for these and much more goodies about reluctant readers:

http://www.hip-books.com/teachers.php?p=155

I found this wonderful webpage by conducting a Google search on reluctant readers. It was in the 2nd page of results.

Multimedia-Competency #7
So I am not completely sure if this is a chart or graphic that is considered under the Multimedia Competency, but I found it helpful for my Blog anyways, so I decided to add it on here. I found this on the Department of Education's Website. I thought it was a good representation of what avid readers compared to reluctant readers look like. I mentioned this very webpage earlier in the blog, but went ahead and decided to have the chart actually on here for all to see.

Encouraging Reluctant Readers and Avid Readers

At a Texas Library Association Convention in 1999, Kylene Beers of the Department of Curriculum & Instruction, University of Houston outlined basic differences between avid and reluctant readers. These comparisons between avid and reluctant readers may assist when planning literature programs for your students.

Characteristics of Reluctant vs Avid Readers

AVID READERS WANT TO: AVID READERS DO NOTWANT TO: Choose their own books Write book reports Have teacher read aloud a few pages Do many art activities Meet the author Hear the teacher read the entire book aloud Buy books at a book fair Keep a reading journal Go to the library Participate in panel debates, small discussions or share books with a friend RELUCTANT READERS WANT TO: RELUCTANT READERS DONOT WANT TO: Choose their own books from a narrowed choice Meet the author Have teacher read aloud the entire book Buy books a at a book fair Compare movie to book Go to the library Read illustrated books Read for a charity Do art activities based on books Keep a reading journal Read atypical nonfiction material Participate in panel debates, small group discussions or share books with a friend

Reference: LM_NET Archives 7 May 1999

©2010 Department of Education

Works Cited: Department of Education, . (1999, May 7). Encouraging reluctant readers and avid readers. Retrieved from http://www.det.wa.edu.au/education/cmis/eval/fiction/classroom/class5.htm

Database / Competency #6

For this competency, I was to use four different search techniques in four different databases.

The search inquiry that I focused on was:
How can adults motivate adolescents who are reluctant readers?

Search #1
Database: Academic Search Complete Search Strategy: Building Block

For this search I broke my inquiry into three main components:
Readers AND Adolescents AND Motivation

• S1, readers netted 111,322 results
• S2, adolescents netted 95, 233 results
• S3, motivation netted 46, 4669 results

When I ran the three components together using the Boolean operator AND there were 16 hits. The 6th result was relevant to my search inquiry. The information to retrieve it is:

Ambe, E. (2007). Inviting reluctant adolescent readers into the literacy club: Some comprehension strategies to tutor individuals or small groups of reluctant readers. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 50(8), 632-639. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete database.

I decided to take this a step farther and change readers to reluctant readers to see if it would give more specific and relevant results. This only produced 1 hit! It in fact was the same article that I had already selected from the previous search.

Search #2

Database: Library Literature Search Technique: Citation Pearl Growing "Snowballing"

For this search I began by using the term 'reluctant readers'. This produced 214 results. After looking through the subject headings of those results I pulled the word 'adolescent' from the 2nd hit listed. When I applied it to the search it netted only 6 results. One of the most relevant from that list was:

Holt, L. (1986). Selling reading: library service to reluctant adolescent readers. Illinois Libraries, 68, 374-7. Retrieved from Library Lit & Inf Full Text database.

Just out of curiosity, I returned to my original search and rather than using the term' adolescent' as a second term, I pulled the word 'strategies' from the 3 title on the list.

This only netted 3 results, in which was a journal article that was very relevant to my inquiry.

Inglis, J. (1996). Gentle persuasion: some strategies with reluctant readers. The School Librarian, 44, 7-8. Retrieved from Library Lit & Inf Full Text database.

Search #3

Database: WorldCat Search Strategy: The Successive Fraction Approach

I began this search using the phrase, 'Motivating reluctant readers". This produced 39 results. To further limit the results I applied the Boolean operator Not to my search and took the term 'struggling' from the subject titles of my original results.

This change netted 35 results, which did not narrow it down much at all.

To gain more specific results, I applied a limiter on the year and put in the range 2005-2010, in hopes that it would produce a lower amount of results and they would be more current.

This search netted 11 results, of which I was intrigued by this book:

Gratz College., & McGovern, C. D. (2010). The importance of choice in motivating reluctant readers. Melrose Park, Pa: Gratz College.

Unfortunately this book is not housed in the TWU library.

Search #4

Database: ERIC FirstSearch Search Strategy: The Most Specific Facet First

When applying the most specific facet first approach to a database search, I began by breaking my inquiry up into three specific facets:

• Reluctant Readers
• Adolescents
• Motivation

I then tested each result individually to see if in fact I had the specificity order of each facet correct, being 'reluctant readers' as "the most specific facet first", 'adolescents' as "the next most specific facet first", and lastly 'motivation' being the most broad of the terms. I was surprised by the last result, as I thought that 'adolescents' would be more specific generating a lower number of results than 'motivation'. Here are the results of the searches:

• Reluctant Readers - 309 results
• Adolescents - 43,716 results
• Motivation - 39,229

The most relevant result from my original search of 'reluctant readers' was:

Greenleaf, C. L., & Hinchman, K. (2009). Reimagining Our Inexperienced Adolescent Readers: From Struggling, Striving, Marginalized, and Reluctant to Thriving. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. 53(1), 4-13.

Conclusion:

In using various databases and search techniques majority of the results were similar in each. Some databases yielded a larger amount of relevant results, but I think that is due to the type of database and the nature of the search inquiry. Overall I felt the most comfortable using the Academic Search Complete database. The database that I found the hardest to navigate was ERIC FirstSearch. When regarding the searching techniques, I most preferred The Successive Fraction Approach, as well as the Building Block Approach. This competency helped me to become more familiar with different structures of databases, and ways to search within them.

Tagging/Indexing/Cataloging - Competency #5

While using LibraryThing.com, I searched tags for reading, motivating reading, reluctant readers, young readers, and many more. I found the book, Puzzle Them First: Motivating Adolescent Readers With Question-Finding. This book suggests that in order to motivate young people to read, you should challenge them with questions. It offers strategies and lesson plans (that not only teachers can use) of how to help adolescents find the multiple meanings of text. This book's theories could be a great resource of ways to motivate young people and reach out to some of your most reluctant readers.

A link to identify a reluctant reader...

While I was searching through tags on del.icio.us I found a posting by the Department of Education that gave an easy-to-read chart of what a reluctant readers looks like, compared to an avid reader. I thought it went really well with my focus of this blog, so I decided to include the link here.
If you need to know some simple rules to identifying reluctant readers, check it out!

http://www.det.wa.edu.au/education/cmis/eval/fiction/classroom/class5.htm

RSS Feeds - Competency #4

So I started out by adding the RSS Feed for Tidy Books-The Children's Storage Solution. I posted this RSS feed in hopes that it would continue to have great news and reviews about Children's Literacy. When I originally found the Tidy Books Blog, back at the beginning of July I found the information to be very helpful and very appropriate for my focus of motivating young readers. However, since posting it, I now realize that there either has not been new postings, or my RSS feed is not working properly. I am not sure which one is correct, so I have now posted another RSS feed, Reading Rockets: Sound It Out in hopes that it will stay current and continue to have new news regarding young readers. Let's see what happens!

The Podcast Tools For Reaching Young Readers... - Competency #3

Sometimes as adults we don't realize where being a "reader" really begins. There are times that we need to sit back and reflect on our own lives and try to figure out at what point did we decide that reading was important? When did we decide that books can be not only a source of information, but also entertainment? Well, in doing so, Emily Manning, sits down with mothers of her book club, who wanted guidance in selecting books for their children. She used the book, What Should I Read Aloud? by Nancy A. Anderson, which is a book in which she has compiled a list of children's picture books that have made the all-time best-selling list. Through their talk, the book club discusses that the picture books mentioned were most likely selected because they are stories that kids can relate to in their own lives. They also discussed that books that have a good flow, or are repetitive are also good for young readers. Kids want to be able to "read" as much as they can even before the actual decoding of words is taking place within their minds. They enjoy reading books that evoke emotions, like silly books that can make them laugh. After listening to the podcast, I feel like one way to help solve the "young reluctant reader problem" is in knowing what kinds of books to present to kids. If you can tap into their interest and follow the suggestions from the book club listed above, you are much more likely to get their attention with the book, which then in turn could lead to them actually enjoying the reading. If they continue to have good experiences early on with reading, they are more likely to then want to continue to be a reader.

Emily also sat down with best-selling, award-winning author Jane Yolen. In this interview Yolen mentions that she thinks that literacy begins "in the crib". She goes on to say that even if you as a parent are not completely comfortable with reading, you should still read to your children to help them create that love for reading. In conclusion, I believe that it is never too early to try to start reaching out to young children and getting books into their hands. Through careful selection and modeling, the avenue to creating passionate readers can be opened wide. If we start early, the opportunity for a child to become reluctant about reading can be minimized, therefore creating a lesser amount of reluctant readers.

Here is the link to the podcast: Episode 18 What Should I Read Aloud?, a bookchat podcast led by Emily Manning, featuring Jane Yolen

http://www.readwritethink.org/parent-afterschool-resources/podcast-episodes/what-should-read-aloud-30254.html

(This podcast was found on the Website: www.Read, Write, Think.org, key word search: podcast reading. Result I chose was hit number 10.)