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Stories of Our Kids
Jayden (2nd grade) as a reader has been a difficult to please. He has had a chance to read I Spy, Who Would Win, Where’s Waldo, sports stories, car stories and more. Nothing really quite hit the spot. Then Lisa tried pop-up books and he was intrigued. The second to last session of the year…
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Sold a Story
This Tuesday, a reading volunteer and I had a conversation about the podcast by Emily Sanford, SOLD A STORY. She was wondering if not enough phonics is the reason that her college students were lagging. I think it is much more complicated than that. First, what I think most kids need to deal with learning…
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Where does Partners in Literacy stand in these times of cultural battles over reading?
The news has been abuzz about learning to read. We hope the answers below give you some idea of where Partners in Literacy stands on issues amidst the complexity of educating our children to become readers. 1. What is reading? Partners in Literacy defines reading as the deep interactions of the whole child with the…
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Why is the Colorado Blue Spruce Award So Important?
The Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award was created in 1985 by English teachers and librarians to encourage Colorado teens to read. In 2020, the award’s committee could no longer sustain it. Partners in Literacy was excited to jump in and reimagine the award. The Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award is different…
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Concrete Rose
The Odyssey Dragons Concrete Rose Book Talk Odyssey Middle School Team (Elena, Iseaja, Lola, Luka, Nora) Concrete Rose follows Maverick as a teenager trying to be a better father in a system set up against him. Why did this book stick with me? (Two members read the book for the first time months ago, and…
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The Sad Story of 2 Little Free Libraries
Below is the letter I wish I could write to two individuals or two groups of people. I have never met them and never will. I just know that someone or some people used fireworks in both the Julys of 2020 and 2021 to blow up two Little Free Libraries located on the grounds of…
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“Will You Finish To Kill A Mockingbird?”
In this pandemic year, nine Partners in Literacy reading volunteers shared reading remotely with nineteen 8th graders. Seven of these kids were students who remained at home when their classmates returned to school. The rest were chosen by their teacher to read with a volunteer because they were nonflluent readers or because their voices were…
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Rush Hour in the Library
What do the five kids below have in common? Thayden, 6th grade, a student with very little focus to do the thing that his teacher is asking him to do and a tremendous amount of focus to work on his own goals. Mason, 6th grade, a student who would just rather not. Bram, 6th grade,…
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Children’s Books Take On Hard Stories
Since I began to read to my kids, children’s books have been one of my best teachers. When my kids were small, I learned about early automobiles, planes and sailing ships. Recently, I have learned the biographies, unknown to me, of influential minority heroes. This weekend, I read Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s Fighting Words. It is…
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Most Colorado School Libraries are Run by Paralibrarians
The mission of Partners in Literacy is to create communities of readers in schools. This year we fulfilled our mission in new ways. We were happy to give two remote “workshops” for 5 elementary school librarians in Cortez Colorado. (Cortez is the gateway to Mesa Verde.) Paralibrarians are required only to have a high school…
