Meet Liza. Liza was “reading” a book. The text said: I see a puppy. Liza read: “Look at the little dog.” She could match the meaning of the text to the illustrations because she heard the language pattern during the book introduction, but she was not yet ready to match her voice to the text, or to monitor her attempts phonetically. Thus, she made semantic errors (errors that match meaning). Liza was a Pre-Alphabetic reader. Young children go through different stages as they learn to read. When we figure out the stage a student is on, we can adjust...
Spring is here…Yea! Welcome to a repeat edition of Book Box. Here again is a themed list of leveled books, this time about spring. Two of my favorite authors are Kris Bonnell and Michele Dufresne. We authors of leveled readers learn from each other–and from the kids, of course! Thank you, Kris and Michele, for your wonderful books. Happy Spring, everybody!
Can you believe that it’s already September and back-to-school time? Welcome to the fall edition of Book Box. You may recall that, every season, I like to post books by my favorite leveled reader authors. Click here to read the list. I hope your students will enjoy reading these books–and that you will appreciate how helpful they are for nurturing young readers!
Have you ever heard of metafiction? I hadn’t until I read Sylvia Pantaleo’s article,“The metafictive nature of postmodern picture books” in The Reading Teacher. [i] Now I’m a metafictive picture book convert and want to share my enthusiasm with you! I know. The term sounds serious, but it’s not. Metafiction is fun. In fact, some metafictive picture books are the silliest books I have ever read, and others are just flat out creative! Kids love them, and you will, too–but first a little background information. (more…)
