The Speech Banana is a graph that describes frequency and intensity levels of letter sounds in typical human conversation. It is shaped like a banana. If you are teaching consonant sounds, and you have a student who seems to have difficulty learning particular sounds, you will do the child a huge favor in looking at the Speech Banana graph.

Summer reading provides HUGE benefits for children of all ages, especially for the practice and the self-selection that it provides. Research indicates these two factors are the best predictors of good reading and writing skills.

 During my first week as a reading specialist at primary level, I encountered a first-grade teacher who used some very unusual incentives for his reading class. Bob, the only male in our primary school, had a sly grin when I asked him how he motivated his first graders.

            As a lover of children’s literature, I believe that NO age is too old to enjoy and appreciate children’s books, even, or especially, picture books. Here’s why.            I originally expected to teach primary students when I became a reading specialist, but I was placed in an intermediate level building, teaching fifth and sixth grade struggling readers. By that time, my love affair with children’s literature was in the bewitching period, so I began to enthusiastically share the picture books I was encountering as I visited my favorite children’s bookstore on Saturday mornings. (See my previous post: Falling in Love …with Children’s Literature)           Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening (by Robert Frost, illustrated by Susan Jeffers) was the first book I shared with my students, and Hiawatha (by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, illustrated, again, by Susan Jeffers) was the second. I suppose they were a fallback to my previous life as an English teacher, but I loved these picture books, and so did my struggling, high-poverty students. With children, loving books can be contagious, if you show enough love!             When I heard that the famous Met...

           I have made a list of my most beloved children’s books, those I saved well past my retirement. The Age of Downsizing has come upon me. It is both depressing and liberating.            Why did I buy so much STUFF? I don’t know about the STUFF, but I know why I bought all those children’s books. I wrote about my love affair with children’s books in a previous post:                                    Falling in Love with Children’s Literature          My new young neighbors just had their second child, and it seems the perfect gift—a very big box of my most beloved books (used), including Tomie dePaola’s Nursery Rhymes. Previously, I wrote a post about the importance of nursery rhymes in                                          The Best Baby Gift             Here’s a list of my most favorite books to read with preschool and primary level children. I hope you’ll give one to a struggling...

My mother never read books to me as a child. Trained as a high school English teacher, I was also never made aware of the thrilling world of children’s lit. When I became an elementary children’s reading specialist, I decided that I needed to self-educate about books for the younger set.