Reading to Succeed with Elizabeth Morphis

The American Library Association is hosting an event this month! It's the LibLearnX Conference and joining me to discuss the conference is the current ALA President, Emily Drabinski.

Emily talks about the conference and what to expect. There are both in-person and digital options to attend, so if you are not able to travel to Baltimore, you can still attend the different sessions. There are many relevant topics being addressed in the sessions: AI, privacy issues with younger students, building partnerships between schools and libraries – are just a few.

Emily speaks about the issues that libraries are facing and she offers an update on book bans in the U.S. She also speaks about the crucial role that libraries play in communities and the resources that they provide - these extend beyond books!

For more information check out the LibLearnX Conference here: https://2024.alaliblearnx.org/

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's the end of the year, which is a great time to think about and reflect on our literacy instruction. Elizabeth identifies five areas of literacy instruction: Reading, Books, Writing, Speaking, and Listening, and goes through a guided reflection of each of these areas.

The goal is to think about what aspects of your literacy instruction are going well, then identify a few areas that could use some modifications. The last step is to make a plan for those changes.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get ready for a fun episode! If you have students or children who enjoy reading graphic novels - then this is an episode that you must listen to! In this week's episode, Stephen Shaskan joins Elizabeth to discuss graphic novels. Stephen is the author of the fun and motivating series, Pizza and Taco. He has also written and illustrated a number of other books, including the series Q & Ray, which his wife wrote and he illustrated.

Stephen discusses why graphic novels are so motivating for kids to read. He also talks about his own love of reading comic books as a kid and how important reading comic books was for him as a reader. He also talks about the Pizza and Taco book series and the videos that he has made to go along with the books.

We end the episode with a few pieces of advice for parents and teachers when kids want to read graphic novels.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week's episode, Elizabeth talks with Jennifer McCarty Plucker about her new book Inspiring Lifelong Readers. Jennifer talks about the inquiry work that she did with students in middle and high school to support them as readers. She provides very helpful strategies from her book that can be implemented at all grade levels. Jennifer stresses the importance of helping all students find books that they enjoy reading - and she gives a roadmap to help teachers (and parents!) with that work. At the end of the episode, Jennifer gives excellent tips to parents who want to support their upper grade children with reading at home.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After receiving some questions about independent reading, Elizabeth decided to share a structured approach to this time of the day. How can we make the most of independent reading time for kids and ensure that they are using this time to strengthen their reading skills? Elizabeth discusses the purpose of independent reading, some of the ways that independent reading falls short, and tips for how to make it purposeful for students.

Next up - Elizabeth shares some Thanksgiving books that she has used with students and gives ideas about how they can be used to support kids.

She ends with a planning hack for a busy time. After going through an intense time in October and figuring out how to use her time strategically, Elizabeth shares the layered planning system that kept her going and helped her get her work done.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's episode is focused on reading skills and strategies. Elizabeth begins by discussing the definitions of reading skills and reading strategies and gives examples of both. She gives an example of how strategies can be taught when reading to kids and offers ideas for teaching practices that can help when modeling strategies to students. The episode ends on a positive note with a story of how Elizabeth used the book, Black and White by David Macaulay with her students. Black and White is a postmodern picture book, which requires a lot of thinking through the text. Her students discovered all the skills that they were implementing when reading the book!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The conversation about reading at the moment is mainly focused on decoding - or sounding out the words - to do the actual reading of a text. Decoding is essential and important. But, comprehension or understanding what you are reading is also important.

In this episode, Elizabeth discusses the importance of teaching kids to understand or make meaning of the texts that they are reading. She models a Think Aloud strategy that she used with her daughter to teach character traits. Some ideas for the classroom and at home are presented as well.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Read-Alouds are an essential component of reading instruction - at all grade levels. In today's episode, Elizabeth sits down with Dr. Molly Ness, a former classroom teacher, reading researcher, and teacher educator, who has a new book out, Read Alouds for All Learners. Molly begins by discussing what a read-aloud is and gives some helpful strategies for different grade levels. She also discusses how read-alouds fit into the Science of Reading. We end with Molly sharing a strategy to try out with your students! It's a good one!

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's the beginning of the school year, and popcorn reading has come up quite a bit in the last week. Elizabeth begins by explaining what this teaching practice is and why it is still present in classrooms. She offers five other options for whole class reading instruction rather than popcorn reading.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's the beginning of the school year and the start of September! This week is a mixed bag episode - where Elizabeth covers a few different topics. Elizabeth begins by following-up on the "I Statement" activity that she mentioned in Episode 23. She tried it with her graduate students - and it was a success!

Some of her students are planning on trying it out with their own elementary students during the first week of school. She shares some of the decisions that she made when trying out the activity and discusses possible extensions into the content areas. After that, she talks about the importance of stories and how they help our students form connections with us and with one another. Finally, the episode ends with the excitement of the new school year energy and season.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices