Last night some of our family watched the new movie Ramona and Beezus, which is based on the books by Beverly Cleary. This author was one of the first I ever really took note of in grade school. I still feel a certain familiarity with her as though she were a personal friend, and it's probably been over forty years since I read one of her books. (Learn more about her at http://childrensbooks.about.com/cs/authorsillustrato/a/beverlycleary.htm.) We liked the movie very much, by the way, and it was rated G. I've been thinking about how such books shape young lives.  9 yr.old Ramona's view of the world on Klickitat Street in Portland had to have affected me as a quiet, timid 4th grader on my own small, rural street in Centerville. Her antics brought laughter back then as well as now, but most importantly a certain understanding that all can still be right with the world despite lots of well-intentioned things going wrong. I'm so glad we became acquainted early on!

Coming up this August 12th is a free webinar offered by Reading Horizons entitled "My Road to The Reading Room: an Examination of Today's Storytelling in Popular Entertainment" with Randy Feldman. Randy Feldman has been a Hollywood movie and television writer for over 30 years. He will discuss the journey that led him to write the Hallmark Channel movie The Reading Room and how that ultimately inspired him to form his own nonprofit organization, P.O.R.T.A.L. (People Offering Reading, Teaching, and Literacy). He will also examine the evolution of current storytelling trends in popular entertainment and its possible effects on this generation of learners. Randy is currently an artist in residence and lecturer at the UNLV film school. It should be a great webinar. Although it is free, you need to register in advance. Click here to go to readinghorizons.com to register.

August's issue of the Family Fun Magazine came today, and I liked Jennifer King Lindley's "The Great Unplugged Challenge". Looking at the statistics put out by the Kaiser Famly foundation showing a child's daily media use averaging now a whopping 7 and 1/2 hours, she makes a great point: that's a lot of time not being used for reading, playing outside, staring up at the clouds, or talking about  interesting things -- the staples of our own childhoods. Children do have an amazing resiliency, and the author's experience showed that to be true as her family took a challenge to go unplugged for five days. She was surprised at how quickly her kids' creativity, nourished by free time and quiet seemed to blossom. So that's encouraging. Nonetheless, I agree with Jennifer and Sarah Davies, author of the Unplugyourkids.com blog, and really the bulk of concerned moms, that it's important to make sure children have plenty of opportunities to check out the endless "reality channels" within oneself. We just need to keep reminding each other of this. And that can be difficult when we're deep into our own media cavern for how many hours each day?!

As I see the homeschooling groups share ideas for summer reading, as well as lots of other information they pass along, I imagine many other families would appreciate similar tips. Here are just a few:

1. Of course, Reading Horizons tops my list. See www.readinghorizonsathome.com/resources.aspx for such free resources as vocabulary building, games, worksheets, and an online workshop for        parents that teaches the entire Discover Intensive Phonics for Yourself methodology in a very condensed form. You can print out a syllabus at the conclusion of the training.  Also see the vocabulary
    game "Lemons for Literacy that provides opportunity for donated programs to be earned for less-fortunate students: http://www.readinghorizonsathome.com/lemonsforliteracy

2. Some free book downloads are offered on Fridays at Barnes and Nobles (www.bn.com/freelibrary). Each Friday they will have a new set, and often there are a lot of classics.
    You do not need an e-reader, since they also offer a free app for your iphone, blackberry, pc or mac. Borders also has some free ebook offers.

3. See www.homeschoolingforfree.blogspot.com for lots of learning opportunities.

4. Www.donnayoung.org has many free learning resources.

5. Visit www.about.com and go where your children's interests lie.

We had a call this morning from a customer hoping to help her child increase her fluency with the Reading Horizons program. Discussing this concern with Shantell brought up the need to stress transferring the decoding skills that students gain from the program into their actual reading on the pages of books. Those transferring skills are not obvious to everyone, and we would do well to point them out more. We'll send a newsletter in the near future about this. But in the meantime, here are a four pointers to help with transferring new decoding skills to every-day reading:

#1. Students should use a finger to track. It may slow down the student initially, but this is essential for accurate phonological processing and can be very helpful until the reading becomes more fluent.

#2. Have the student sound out each word, tracking left to right, without stopping or guessing. Have them keep their eyes on the word.

#3. Teach the student explicitly how to apply decoding strategies to unfamiliar or difficult words.

#4. Have the student again sound out the words from left to right after they have figured out the sounds of the word.