There’s still time to celebrate Black History Month. This week, let’s applaud African-American authors, in which I am one! In 1990, the Black Caucus of the National Council of Teachers of English created the National African American Read-In. Their purpose for creating this event was to make literacy a significant part of Black History Month. It […]
A story exists in each of us. I encourage children and adults to find inspiration to write. Ideas can come from a variety of sources: Pictures Newspaper or magazine articles Sunday school lessons or sermons Events in one’s own life Events in other people’s lives Shared conversations (with permission and without revealing sensitive info that could personally […]
As parents, teachers, and librarians, it takes a little creativity to encourage and motivate children to read. I would like to provide a few tips to inspire your young readers. Visit the National Day Calendar (http://www.nationaldaycalendar.com) for interesting themes to celebrate. You can locate themes by the day, week, and/or month. For example, yesterday, January […]
Early in my career as a teacher-librarian, I regretfully encouraged younger students to read only fiction books. I steered them away from non-fiction because I saw informational texts (Common Core term) as uninteresting compared to works of fiction. I also believed that lower grade students would not be able to handle or understand informational texts. […]