ADVOCACY

The State of Virginia is doing something new this year... it sounds right up the librarians' alley. LEXILE MEASURES" TO PROVIDE PARENTS AND TEACHERS WITH NEW TOOL TOPROMOTE READING & LITERACY ~ Addition to SOL Reports Connects Students with Challenging Books ~ RICHMOND * Governor Timothy M. Kaine today announced a new initiative that will help parents select books that will strengthen their children's reading skills. When elementary and middle school students receive their Standards of Learning (SOL) test reports next spring and summer, their reading scores will be accompanied by ac orresponding "Lexile measure" parents can use to select books. A Lexile measure ranks reading ability and text difficulty on a single scale, allowing parents * and teachers * to select books at or slightly above a student's reading level. Currently, more than 115,000 books have been assigned a Lexile measure. "Virginia must increase literacy levels if the Commonwealth is to compete in the global economy," Governor Kaine said. "Adding thisinformation to SOL reports is another way to help Virginia students develop the comprehension skills they'll need to be successful." Governor Kaine and the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) workedwith MetaMetrics Inc. to include Lexile measures in the SOL testing program to provide parents and educators with a new tool for selecting reading materials that challenge students and increase comprehension. Adding Lexile measures to SOL reports supports Governor Kaine's goal of increasing early reading skills and the Board of Education's focus on improving adolescent literacy. "This is a practical step that connects teachers and parents in a partnership to promote reading and literacy," said Board of Education President Mark E. Emblidge. "Teachers can use Lexile measures to assign and recommend books that will help students develop stronger reading skills," said Superintendent of Public Instruction Patricia I. Wright. "Parents can use Lexile measures to select texts that reinforce what teachers are trying toaccomplish in the classroom." Lexile measures will be reported with the scores of students taking SOL reading tests in grades 3-8 next spring. In the meantime, students, parents and teachers can match scores from the 2008 SOL reading tests with corresponding Lexile measures by using a conversion table available on the VDOE Web site. "Lexiles enhance state assessment programs by converting scale scores into useful information," said MetaMetrics President Malbert Smith III."MetaMetrics is proud to collaborate with Governor Kaine, the Board ofEducation and VDOE in providing this new tool for Virginia's schools and families." MetaMetrics maintains an online database of books with Lexile measures that can be searched by title, author, topic and reading level. To promote the use of Lexile measures, VDOE is providing elementary, middle and high schools Lexile charts with sample book titles grouped by Lexile range and difficulty level. The charts will be distributed to parents of students in grades 3-9 and include information on how to select books using a Lexile measure. Two Web-based training modules are available on the VDOE Web site for parents and educators to gain an understanding of Lexile measures and how they can be used to increase students' reading comprehension skills. VDOE is conducting four training sessions this fall for division-level instructional leaders, administrators, school librarians and reading specialists on how Lexile measures can be used to increase reading achievement. VDOE also will work with public libraries to raise awareness about the addition of Lexile measures to SOL reports and how teachers and parents can find out if a title has a Lexile measure. So what's the problem? WHERE ARE THE SCHOOL LIBRARIANS?!?!?!?!!? HOW COULD THEY NOT HAVE MENTIONED US>!>!!>?!>!>? I am so upset about this I can barely think straight. All I do every day, all day long, is encourage reading, improve critical thinking skills, and deliver instruction that is driven by student test data. Why should I be included? This is so ridiculous. Letters to everyone involved forthcoming...

Meetings

I have a confession. I like meetings!! I do not mind the occasional faculty meeting. Today we had our monthly librarian meeting, and it was so much fun. We laughed so hard at silly things that only librarians would find funny. Our meeting went from 5 pm until 6:40 pm, and the time just flew by. I got some great suggestions for lessons and books that are new to me, and those things alone made it worth it to me.

I Got the House All Smoky

A first grader told me just about the funniest story I've ever heard yesterday. Last weekend, he got his house "all smoky." When I asked him what happened, he told me he was making grits. My eyes got huge and I said that he shouldn't be using the stove. Well, he looked at me like I had two heads and said, "I'm not allowed to use the stove! I put them in the oven." Of course. He put grits in a pot, added some butter, and put them in the oven at 500. His brother (who is 8) turned down the oven to 200, but that wasn't hot enough, so he turned it back up. The grits got all stuck together "like a pancake" and the pot exploded, he told me. I reminded him that one doesn't make grits in the oven, and once again, he looked at me like I was crazy and said, "I've been watching my mother make them for years. I KNOW how to make grits." This was just about my favorite story ever.

Three Weeks

So tonight at my Reference & Bibliography class, we got to talking about my credentials. I realized that I had not shared my qualifications with the students. Someone asked me how long I'd been a teacher before becoming a librarian (8 years) and how long I've been a librarian (7 years), and then someone asked me how long I've been a professor, and I answered, "three weeks". They laughed pretty hard. It's true, okay maybe four weeks, but there's no way I can embellish that!