Category: literacy

Farcical, but Not Amusing

STATE LEGISLATURE (NCGA): Goll-lee Moses! We’re spending way too much on education! The public schools are eating up dang near 40% of our whole dadgum budget! DISTRICTS: We need money for textbooks. We need money for classroom supplies. We need more money to pay for these expensive class-size reductions that y’all are requiring, but haven’t paid for. If you won’t increase our allotments, we’ll have to lay off all of our Art, Music, and PE teachers so we can build more classrooms and hire more K – 3 teachers. NCGA: Taxpayers will have our heads when they see how much we’re spending on the schools! We’re giving y’all the same amount we gave you 10 years ago—why isn’t that enough? Where’s all that money going, […]

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How Did You Learn to Read?

When you were in kindergarten or first grade, how did you learn to read? Did you spend part of each day listening to your teacher reading to the class and to your parent reading a bedtime story? At some point, you were handed a book, and one day, you were reading independently. Just like learning to talk, reading came to you naturally…it just sort of happened! Right? Not likely. You were probably too young to be able to recall it clearly, but you and your classmates didn’t start to read independently after merely learning to sing the Alphabet Song and paying attention during Story Time. It’s far more likely that you learned to read by receiving multiple hours of instruction in letter sounds. After you learned the […]

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