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Tolerance Grows Through Principal's Book Club
Contributed by Principal Elizabeth Nunes, Jefferson Elementary School, Everett, Wash.
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 The launch of Principal Elizabeth Nunes' book club is a story of convergences: her own love for reading, the establishment of three additional special-education classes in her Everett, Wash., school, and the gift of R.J. Palacio's wondrously popular first novel, Wonder.
The gift of a copy of Wonder, which looks at the life of a fifth-grade boy with severe facial deformities, compelled the first-year principal of Jefferson Elementary School to commit to a fifth-grade book club.
Just this year, Elizabeth's school added three special-education classrooms for children of various and varying degrees of disabilities. "It was hard for other students to see children with Down syndrome or to see kids who can't walk," Elizabeth observes.
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To Preread or Not to Preread
By Suzanne Tingley, Scholastic Administrator magazine
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 "What's being played out in front of us is a war for the soul of English/language arts." Wow! What are we talking about here? Book burnings? Censorship? Shutting down English/language arts instruction?
Hardly. It turns out that Alan L. Sitomer, California's teacher of the year in 2007, was commenting on whether the Common Core standards forbid prereading activities.
In a nutshell, the latest raging debate among educators is over how much preparation students need before actually tackling a text on their own. Those who defend the Common Core standards believe that prereading can shift the focus of instruction from the text itself to other activities somewhat related to the text. Those who staunchly defend prereading see the activities as levelers and conduits to give students without experience access to the text itself.
As usual, it's another fake dichotomy that educators love to set up.
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Dyslexia Is No Barrier to Summit Speaker's Career as Author
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 Children's author Henry Winkler, who became a household name as the Fonz on the long-running TV series Happy Days, will yet again take a starring role - this time as a keynote speaker at a Scholastic Book Fairs Reading Summit for Educational Leaders.
The author of the Ghost Buddy series will join co-author Lin Oliver at the July 12 summit in Park Ridge, N.J. (Watch an author video about the series here.)
"At one time it was so hard for me to read a book. It is so monumental for me to be able to write a book," Henry, a dyslexic, confesses in a Scholastic interview. "I want kids to be able to identify, laugh, and realize that they're not alone no matter what their learning challenge is."
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Booktalk: Warning - Excitement Ahead!
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Keep your elementary and middle school students reading over the summer with these great titles, in which imagination, adventure, magic, and danger abound!
Zoomer's Summer Snowstorm
By Ned Young
Dog Whisperer: Storm Warning
By Nicholas Edwards
Entwined
By Heather Dixon
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