7 Reasons Why We're Still Fascinated By Virginia Woolf The incomparable Virginia Woolf will be brought to life on our screens once more this autumn, in an upcoming episode of Downton Abbey. Here are 7 reasons why the literary genius still fascinates us. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. ...And her relationship with her husband was beautiful.She met Leonard Woolf in 1912, and the two shared a remarkably close bond, despite her affair with Sackville-West, which Woolf described as 'rather a bore for Leonard, but not enough to worry him'. 7. Do Kids Really Have “Summer Learning Loss”? They appear every summer as reliably as the stories about shark attacks: a rash of articles raising the alarm about the “summer slide,” or the loss of learning that grade-school students experience over the months when classes are out. Concern about this leads many a parent to stock up on workbooks and flashcards, or to enroll their children in educational camps and enrichment programs. But is the summer slide really the seasonal disaster that we’ve been warned about? A close look at the research reveals a more complicated picture. For kids from middle and upper-middle income households, for example, the summer slide doesn’t exist at all—at least in terms of reading skills. Even among underprivileged students, however, the summer slide is not universal. ( MORE : Reading Literature Makes Us Smarter and Nicer ) What makes these “outliers” different? As simple as it sounds, reading books can reverse the summer slide in literacy skills for even the poorest children.
Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming It’s important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of members’ interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. And I am biased, obviously and enormously: I’m an author, often an author of fiction. So I’m biased as a writer. And I’m here giving this talk tonight, under the auspices of the Reading Agency: a charity whose mission is to give everyone an equal chance in life by helping people become confident and enthusiastic readers. And it’s that change, and that act of reading that I’m here to talk about tonight. I was once in New York, and I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons – a huge growth industry in America. It’s not one to one: you can’t say that a literate society has no criminality. And I think some of those correlations, the simplest, come from something very simple. Fiction has two uses. I don’t think there is such a thing as a bad book for children. It’s tosh.
What Administrators Can Do to Promote a Reading Culture Dear administrators, I have been pleading with teachers for a few years to please help students become passionate readers. I have given as many ideas as I could and directed toward the great minds that inspire me as well. And yet, it is not just the teachers that have an immense power over whether children will read or not. You can believe in choice for all. You can buy books. You can fight to have a librarian full-time in your building. You can celebrate books read. You can protect the read aloud. You can promote independent reading time. You can hire teachers that love reading. You can use levels for books and not for children. You can have tough conversations. What else can you do to create a school where the love of reading flourishes? You can be a guest read alouder. You can have books in your office for students to read. You can share your own reading life by displaying your titles outside your office. You can make assemblies and other fun events celebrate literacy. Like this:
Depression makes us biologically age 'by several years' say scientists - Science - News Dr Josine Verhoeven said the cells of people who were severely depressed or who had suffered severe depression appeared biologically older than people who had not experienced depression. Dr Verhoeven, from the VU University Medical Centre in the Netherlands, worked with scientists in the US to conduct their research. Of the 2,407 they recruited to take part, more than a third were depressed at the time of the study, a third had felt severely depressed in the past and the final third had never felt severely depressed. Researchers took blood samples from all of the volunteers to examine structures inside cells known as 'telomeres' for signs of cellular ageing. Telomeres keep chromosomes stable and prevent mix-ups when cells divide. Eventually the cell freezes and stops dividing, or destroys itself. The speed at which telomeres shorten varies in individuals and biological ageing is faster in people who already have rapidly-shortening telomeres.
Reading for fun improves children's brains, study confirms It won't surprise anyone that bright children tend to read for pleasure more than their less skilled peers. But does reading for pleasure increase the rate of children's learning? This is the question Matt Brown and I set out to answer using the British Cohort Study, which follows the lives of more than 17,000 people born in a single week in 1970 in England, Scotland and Wales. Every few years we interview the study participants to track different aspects of their lives, from education and employment to physical and mental health – an approach that lets us look at what influences an individual's development over a long period of time. Of the 17,000 members, 6,000 took a range of cognitive tests at age 16. Reading clearly introduces young people to new words, so the link between reading for pleasure and vocabulary development is expected. Some people are concerned that young people today read less in their spare time than previous generations.
Stopping the Summer Slide Summer is the perfect time for students of all ages to relax, but it’s also a time when summer learning loss can occur. This learning loss is called the “summer slide,” and happens when children do not engage in educational activities during the summer months. Members of the Washington Kastles get kids moving during the Department of Education’s annual Let’s Read, Let’s Move event. The events focus on keeping children’s minds and bodies active during the summer. While summer vacation is months away, many parents are starting to plan for summer now. As you’re thinking about your plans for the upcoming summer break, we’ve gathered a few ideas and activities that you and your children – no matter their ages – can complete throughout the summer. For Elementary and Middle School Students: For High School Students:
Why Reading Aloud to Older Children Is Valuable Educator and author Jessica Lahey reads Shakespeare and Dickens aloud to her seventh- and eighth-graders, complete with all the voices. Her students love being read to, and sometimes get so carried away with the story, she allows them to lie on the floor and close their eyes just to listen and enjoy it. Lahey reads short stories aloud, too: “My favorite story to read out loud has to be Poe’s ‘Tell-tale Heart.’ I heighten the tension and get a little nuts-o as the narrator starts to really go off the rails. While reading Dickens aloud helps students get used to his Victorian literary style, Lahey said that it’s also an opportunity for her to stop and explain rhetorical and literary devices they wouldn’t get on their own. “Shared words have power, an energy that you can’t get from TV, radio, or online.” Obviously, Trelease firmly believes in the value of reading to kids of all ages. “Broadening the menu” becomes even more important if a child has difficulties with reading. Related
How to Build a Culture of Reading Posted by Jessica Keigan on Tuesday, 09/01/2015 Building a school culture is an overwhelming but important task. In 2009, my collaborative team and I read Readicide: How Schools are Killing the Reading and What You Can Do About It by Kelly Gallagher. This fabulous book discusses how schools have inadvertently killed the love of reading. Since reading Readicide, my peers and I have worked diligently to create a reading culture in our school. Teacher Buy-in Sometimes the hardest group to sell on trying something new is teachers. When we started our process of building a reading culture in our school, we had an entire common course team of English and Social Studies teachers willing to implement some sort of choice reading routine. After our first year, which had decent success, the initial group of teachers shared their excitement and ideas with other collaborative teams. Student Buy-In As Gallagher suggests in his book, getting students on board to read regularly poses some challenges.