Crashing with Stephen Krashen!

Ann Richards School

Tuesday, Feb. 5^th  9am –9pm!

Today was a LONG day!  I spent the entire library day between weeding and genre tagging.  During lunch, Shawn and I had a quick conversation about her thoughts on genre shelving.  She is in favor of it—but wants to see how students will react.  She’s been asking small groups for their feedback for months now.  She has also been asking her colleagues and tells me that Bonnie Hauser at Aikins has had great success with this model, finding that her circulation has definitely increased since switching to genre shelving.  Shawn pointed out some hesitations—like the difficulty in accurately interpreting the genre of every book.  She is also nervous about the impression that she is limiting students to a particular genre.  But overall, I think she’s ready and willing to embrace this change.  What was so interesting was that this topic was actually addressed later in the night when we attended a talk given by Stephen Krashen!!  Somehow, AISD got Stephen Krashen (yes, the famous, Stephen Krashen!) to speak to a group of educators on the topic of literacy and bilingual education.  He spoke that night at Sanchez Elementary school on the east side from 6-9pm.  And he was brilliant!  The first hour of his presentation was a discussion of his research and findings on how free voluntary reading leads to overall improvement of literacy.  He touched on a number of scholars and other researchers who support this view too including a Texas educator and the author of The Book Whisperer, Donalyn Miller.  I concur it was a terrific read and the research certainly supports how important it is for students to have access and time to read.  He spoke against skill building and in favor of whole language.  And he addressed how most students read narrowly in their favorite genre and how reading narrowly and completely is a real strength and building block of overall literacy.  The second hour and then some was dedicated to the debate on bilingual education and again how students perform better if they comprehend what they are reading and thus he supports bilingual education that scaffolds students in their native language.  It was truly an inspiring night.  Krashen was very engaging and thoughtful and I truly enjoyed every minute of this very long day.