On Friday morning I had the chance to visit Ross Anderson's classroom at Sligh Middle.  What a lively Plugged-in to Reading lesson was going on.  Mr. Anderson had the students listening to the CD of The Skin I'm In and taking notes, recording questions, and so forth, as a shared reading activity for the whole class.  Then they answered questions, discussed vocabulary, and ultimately read aloud the predictions they had made a week earlier when Mr. Anderson introduced the book.  Some of the students also shared their work on the "What does this face say to the world?" graphic organizer--if we can get a scan of one of these I will share it in the resources section.  The students were buzzing with their work on the "In other words" g/o; I learned some new slang myself.  

I had the opportunity to visit Plugged-in classrooms today at Armwood HS and Marshall Middle School in Tampa.  It was great to see all the materials up and running.  I got to see a vocab lesson, some student reading logs (with annotations for tracks on the Recorded Books), and a classroom working on literature circle books and roles.  One teacher had set up the plastic vertical "shoe holder" to house the CD players for the students and has been pleased with this system ("$6 at Walmart!" was her comment).

There has been a lot of discussion about these guides, which were designed as non-consumable booklets to guide kids for writing in their journals.  Some people seems concerned about letting kids use them directly and copy the contents for kids to write on.  These same pages are already available in the Resource Binder for copying.  As we look at developing additional levels of the program, I am wondering how teachers are actually using the guides.  Please share comments so that new development can reflect teacher needs.  Thanks!

I am happy to be able to register as part of this brand new professional practice community.  I am interested in the teacher experiences with Plugged-in to Reading, a program written by Dr. Janet Allen for adolescents who struggle to read proficiently.  I had the opportunity to help develop the program for my employer, Recorded Books, who publishes the program.