I am (or was) a diabetic. I now control my numbers through diet. I avoid sweets though I watch jealously as someone enjoys ice cream or cake or both. I try to allow myself the occasional indulgence. But I have to take care that it is indeed occasional. It is so easy to slide back into snacking on M&Ms (they are so little, how much sugar could they ( Read more... )

Something Chad Everett said recently resonated with me. He was responding to someone who was discussing the importance of remaining neutral in a situation. Chad suggested driving a car halfway up a hill and placing it in neutral to see what would happen. Boy, that was a perfect way to encapsulate what is wrong with being neutral, especially in ( Read more... )

Yesterday I read yet another blog post about levels, in particular leveling books. The author wavered between wanting levels to help guide kids to books appropriate for them (and I guess I missed the part of the reading level numbers and Lexile scores where "appropriate" was measured) and not wanting kids to be branded by levels ( Read more... )

I read a blog post this week about using boxes to hold the materials students are reading in school. Ideally, said box has some short pieces such as comics, articles, and other pieces that would not require a lot of time to read. The idea is that a child could read the entire piece in a few minutes if he or she finished other work with some time ( Read more... )

Act I ( Read more... )

ALA and AASL have strongly worded statements about labeling books with levels and points and Lexiles. Here is part of their statement ( Read more... )

Okay, unfair use of this phrase to catch your attention. But there is an issue here that has to do with size. I will get to it in a moment ( Read more... )

I know the post yesterday was rather abrupt. No apologies for that whatsoever. But the thought that inspired that post was a bit more complex. It struck me, as often is the case of late, while I was listening to the homily at Mass last week. The sermon was about evil, the reading about the beheading of John the Baptist. But the homilist did ( Read more... )

Yesterday, there was a post on Facebook about the reading levels of popular songs. Ling with the math was the usual wringing of hands about the decline in readability in song lyrics over time. Really ( Read more... )

A colleague and friend of mine reported that she watched kids at a book fair wandering aimlessly from shelf to shelf without making any selections. Ever the teacher-researcher, she asked the kids why they were not finding any good books to buy. The answer was jaw-dropping: the entire book fair had been leveled and lexiled. The kids were ( Read more... )