A return to Penrod

I am wondering about Penrod's assertion that blogging encourages fluency in writing. Surveys, both informal and those cited by authors in journal articles I have read, indicate that students find it easier to write in electronic formats such as blogs compared to writing papers or essays. If people feel more comfortable writing in a particular medium, then, by its very definition, they are increasing one aspect of fluency -- their ease.
Yet, fluency also includes an accuracy component. Given the number of spelling errors that I have seen in blogs (my own and others), do blogs or other instant-post formats really increase the writing accuracy of students when compared with paper assignments (hand-written or word processed)? If I have the time, I would like to do a quick lit search on this question. I know that Penrod asserts that writers exert more care, as well as greater length, with blogs. But, who has actually looked at this data? Personally, I remember to "spell check" my papers more consistently than I spell check my blog posts or e-mail. I don't even know if the wiki site we are using and Facebook have a spell checker feature, so I certainly haven't taken the time to spell check my entries in those formats. 
Does anyone else have any knowledge of the research or have a reaction to Penrod's idea that blogs increase the care and presumably the accuracy of their writing? For instance, in this research article on the relationship between fluency and blogging that I found just by "googling" the keywords, the authors only examined # of words written. There does not seem to be a score for accuracy of writing.

What does "Title I" mean again?

Title I schools in Fairfax County Public School system are ones where 40% or more of the students receive free or reduced lunch. Students that sign up and qualify for free and reduced lunches are supposed to be from low income families. This means that only a significant proportion of the students in a Title I public school come from low income families. It does not even mean that a majority of the students at these schools necessarily are low income.

Some Title I schools may have a majority of poor students. But there are instances, especially in Northern Virginia, where you have middle and upper middle class neighborhoods of single-family homes surrounding several high-density apartment complexes where low income families reside. The public school in such an area may have half or slightly more than half of its students who are not poor.  So we need to be careful when indicating what Title I means in a particular schools that we cite what percentage of students are from low income families in that school.

In thinking about my children's school which are designated as Title I, I do not think of them as low income schools. I think of them as schools that have many low income children, but I also know that the schools' overall economic diversity is greater than the single blanket statement of "a low income school." Part of recognizing diversity is being sensitive to when generalizations do not cover the range of what exists. It is moving beyond "majority rules" in defining communities and working to hear the range of voices in that community.  In my community schools, I hear the voices of low, middle and upper middle class families in discussions of the economic environment in which my children are educated. 
Stepping down from my soapbox for now ...

Reading, Writing & Spelling

The idea that reading levels and spelling levels correlate interests me, but I find the cases where they are not in synchrony with each other even more interesting. When and why does this happen?

I have interviewed the reading specialists at the school to which I am assigned and our ensuing discussion makes me want to go look more closely at the research on this topic. Maybe I can work some of this into some of the literacy assignments for this fall "to find" the time to begin to look into this? I have started by examining a classroom sample of DRA reading assessment results (assessment that FCPS uses with elementary children) to the same sample's spelling assessment results (DSA). Then, for a select few, may get to compare these with spelling and reading assessments I conduct. Can't wait to begin to "draw pictures" of this sample. Will then hopefully compare with a kindergarten class sample too.

Hopefully this type of literacy ponderings meets the spirit of this week's assignment. Hopefully, since I chose to do this before reading the Penrod article, it won't be one of those "oh, I should have read before completing this other task" times.

First week almost done

Have been in an elementary school for several days of the first week. Have been to all the new classes in our grad program. A lot of information in a short amount of time and the papers have not even started yet. Just how much caffeine will it take to get through this semester? Fortunately, I am loving the days in the classroom - elementary classroom that is!