Learning about a Person's Reading History

Shared by one of our wonderful presenters
Kim Haskins

#reflective

Last week, I attended a wonderful 2.5 day IB (International Baccalaureate) Workshop on Inquiry Reading and Writing.  On our last day, we were encouraged to write an action plan to say how we would take our new learning and put it in place.  I wrote that I would share some of my new learning with the world!

So, I want to begin by walking through one of the first activities we did as a group-mapping our reading and writing lives...

Our presenters broke us up into two groups-one to write about our journey of reading and the other our journey of writing.

They got us started by playing beautiful, peaceful background music from the piano guys...I made a youtube playlist of their music...so relaxing and wonderful to write to as I journeyed through these memories...
Here's my playlist:

Play it as you write about your reading and writing journey...if you need questions to jog your memory, check out this list of questions:  Reading History

Here's collage pic of how some of our pieces turned out...

and here's how mine turned out...

A common theme among the group who shared around me was the influence of their mothers on their literacy development.  I thought it important to note how parents influence literacy development...and I read facts from this site:  50 Top Literacy Statistics

Here's Stat 6 which talks about a mom's influence in terms of vocabulary development.

Stat # 6  Researchers found that when mothers frequently spoke to their infants, their children learned almost 300 more words by age 2 than did their peers whose mothers rarely spoke to them. Huttenlocher et al., 1991. Early vocabulary growth: Relation to language input and gender. Developmental Psychology, 27, 236-248.

I remember how my mom would read to me from my "I Can Read" books.  She influenced my literacy development and I moved from the bottom to the top reading groups as I moved through the primary grades.  I developed and evolved even more as a reader once I reached fourth grade and to this day can still remember how my fourth grade teacher read aloud.  Love you still Mrs. Hunter.

So I end  this blog post-curious to know your reading and writing history-share it with the world.

What does it look like?  Who's influenced you?  How will you influence others in the world?

Share your story...

Focus and Let the Celebrating Begin

Celebrate with Ruth this week!

This week I am celebrating learning, focusing and meeting goals.   I'm celebrating accomplishment.  I'm celebrating being Google Certified Level 1!

My journey began awhile back.  I considered going for the Google Trainer Certification but then had to scale back because personal life took priority over professional life.  So last summer, I restarted with going for Level 1 since I joined up with a district team of teachers who were part of the Keys to Successful Technology Integration.  At that time, I worked on completing the first 8 units...personal life took priority again as I was dealing with my dad's hospitalization, my mom's dementia and then my dad passing away.

Finally over break, I revisited the Google Training Center.  I love the first quote you see on that page:

"Learning Never Stops"

It's really true for me-learning never stops.  I worked on completing the last five units for Level 1 Certification and then signed up to take the exam.  It truly took almost the whole three hours to complete and consisted of two parts.  One part contains the twenty multiple choice questions-not just a,b, c, d-like but hard multiple correct selections as well as drag and drop sorts.  The other part is eleven multi-step scenarios where actual use of Google's tools are put in place.

As I readied to submit my exam for grading, I sucked in a huge breath and hit submit.  I prayed to God at that moment that all of the hard work and energy I put into completing the task would pay off.

tick-tock
tick-tock
tick-tock

Seconds and then minutes passed as I waited for the email to announce whether I'd passed.

Ding!

You've got mail...

I opened the email and SURPRISE!

The notice that I passed!  YAY!

Now, on to Level 2.

Some advice for others who decide to go for it...

Studying helped.
Going through the quizzes at the end of each unit helped.
Reading the scenarios and working them out on my own helped.
Using Google Tools regularly helps (our district is a Google Apps for Education district).

Celebrate with me!  So happy to have met this goal.  I think this experience helped me find my One Little Word for the year...Focus.  However, that is another post for here in the cafe.