RUNRAVEL

As a Special Education teacher, I often see students who struggle with longer reading passages which have comprehension questions which they must answer. Students who struggle with the very act of reading don't know how to attack a passage and be successful with it. Here is a strategy called RUNRAVEL that I have used with both special education students as well as basic ed. students:

R read through the questions first.
U underline the title and look at the pictures.
N now predict.
R run through and number the paragraphs.
A are the important words circled?
V venture through the story.
E eliminate obvious wrong answers.
L let's prove our answers.

The first things the students need to do is to flip to the back and read the questions first. The main reasons they need to read the questions before ever reading the story is so that they know what to look for while reading. Good readers attack reading differently when they are reading for pleasure than when they are reading for information. If you are reading for information, you need to know what information it is that you are looking for. Reading the questions first will let the students know what information they will need in order to answer the questions.

After they have read the questions, students underline the title. This is mainly to get the students to actually read the title. Many times students jump right into the story and never even look at the title which often gives many clues to what the story is about. After they have read and underlined the title, they quickly flip through and look at all the pictures.

The title and the pictures should give them plenty of info to make a prediction on what they think the story will be about. This can be done either orally, written in the margin or however you want. Predicting is an important skill that students will need to know how to do as they progress through school.

The students should number the paragraphs so that later on when they are proving their answers, they can quickly and easily list what paragraph they found the answer in.

Important words can be names, dates, numbers, places, etc. that seem like they may be important in the story. Students should quickly skim and either circle or underline words that they think may be important. Often students need to be taught how to skim because they don't know how to quickly run their eyes over a passage without actually (slowly) reading it. As with predicting, this will get the student's brain ready to read.

When students venture through the passage, they actually read it. Rather than jumping right to this step, all the previous steps makes students slow down a bit and prepares their brain to comprehend what they are reading.

After they have finally read the passage, as they are answering questions, students should be taught how to identify and "throw out" any obvious wring answers. For example, in a multiple choice question, there are typically 1 or 2 answer choices that are way off base. If students can mentally toss those out, they are left with only two possible answers leaving them a better chance of figuring out the correct one.

Proving answers means the students go back into the story and actually FIND the answers rather than guess at answers they think they remember. The answer, or the clues used to come up with the answer can be underlined in the text with the question number circled next to it. The paragraph number can be placed next to the question so that you can easily find their proof. By making them prove their answers, they are less likely to get questions wrong, and you can easily see why they may have chosen the answer that they did.

This strategy has worked very well for students of all abilities and walks of life. It has worked so well that I thought I would pass it along to anyone who may be interested in helping a child with reading homework!

Fay, Fay, Go away...

Rain, Rain,
Go Away,
Come again some other....well...scratch that...
You don't have to come back ever again!

Tropical Storm Fay has hit, and apparenty she likes my little area of Florida so much that she has decided to stay a while - and like a bad houseguest, she just doesn't get the hint when it is time for her to leave. Even though TS Fay was a slow moving storm from the get-go, Fay has seriously not moved all night! It started raining Tuesday morning and with the exception of the couple of hours on Wednesday morning when we were in the eye of the storm, it has rained solidly since. The news is reporting that we have had over 24 inches of rain so far, and there is more to come. A little further south of us has had over 30 inches already! They (the powers-that-be who understand these kinds of things) are now predicting that Fay will (hopefully) have moved on by tomorrow morning, but of course there is no guarantee, she was supposed to have been gone by yesterday after all. And let's not forget that Hurricane Charley a few years ago was supposed to hit Tampa as a Cat 2 but instead turned into a Cat 4 and slammed into Punta Gorda where we were living at the time. Do I seem like a storm magnet or what??

Fay first hit land in the Keys, then it hit land again in Naples, it exited Florida right over myhouse (haha) and is now heading back onto land to hit land just north of here. So far that's 3 landfalls in Florida! The weatherman on TV just posed the question, "Wouldn't it be amazing if it went over into the Gulf and back into the Florida Panhandle?" Uhmm No, amazing wouldn't be my word for it.

My back yard is flooded. Hubby announced that in walking from the porch to the shed this morning water was coming up over his boots (not cowboy boots, but military-style boots so that is still pretty high). On the other end of our yard where it slopes it is probaby at least calf high!


The sides of the road in front of my house have turned into swift moving parallel rivers where you can't tell where the road ends and the ditches begin in many places making most people who drive down my street drive down the middle where they can actually see the road. This is definately a concern for anyone who has to drive. Luckily, school has been canceled for the past 3 days and I just got the notice that it will be closed tomorrow too due to all of the flooding also so I don't have to go anywhere. However, Hubby just took 4 garbage bags of clothes/socks/towels/blankets that we gathers from around our house to the Red Cross so I am hoping that he makes the 4 miles to the center and then home again safely. He wouldn't have gone out at all except that we really felt the Red Cross center could use these things that we aren't using... and he has a big redneck truck haha!




My Aunt and Uncle called us last night to check on us and I assured here that we were doing well and still had power. I may have jinxed myself since not 20 minutes later our power went out and stayed out for nearly 14 hours! Luckily it was night and once we started up our generator (strickly for the fridge so we don't loose all the food we just bought) we were able to sleep through most of it. We camp a lot so we have plenty of flashlights, lanterns, and roughing-it-type-supplies.


Although we have a lot of water in the yard which is driving all the creepy-crawlies into the house, at least we have no damage to the house or vehicles as of yet. Having been through a Cat. 4 not too long ago, this seems like nothing more than a mild annoyance and I thank God that He has spared us one again from any life-threatening situations. It's all in perspective :)

Seeing the world through Elizabeth's eyes

A little while ago, a friend of mine, Elizabeth, wrote this blog that really got me thinking about the beauty around me and really seeing all that is around me. So many times we miss the truly extraordinary because we don't take the time to slow down and really SEE the wondrous sights there are all around us.

I work with disabled children on a daily basis and have no problem whatsoever seeing the beauty and wonders that lay within each precious child, so why is it so hard to see the beauty and wonders in my own life tat are right outside my front door?

I decided to grab my camera and take a walk outside in my yard to see what little pieces of Heaven I could find and these are the miracles that found me:

and I finally decided that this:


is where I think I would like to plant some pineapples to remind me of Elizabeth's blog which will in turn hopefully remind me to look for God's beauty everywhere on a more daily basis... not to mention eventually give us some yummy pineapples!

Hello, my name is... Michelle??

For the longest time, if someone mistakenly calls me by a name other than my own, it is probably going to be "Michelle." Why is this I wonder? My grandmother's second husband, Al, used to call me Michelle because he had a granddaughter named Michelle so it was a regular slip of the tongue. I got a High School graduation gift from a friend of my parents addressed to "Michelle" (I had to call and make sure it was for me before I opened it!), and once in a conversation on what names people look like, someone told me,without knowing my history of being called Michelle, that I look like a Michelle. I even wrote in my Senior memory book "I think I should name my daughter Michelle since everyone calls me that."

My neighbor just stopped over to ask my husband to help him move a refrigerator from his truck into his house. Since Hubby is on night shift and had crawled into bed only moments before the knock on the door came, and he wanted to pull on a shirt on before going to help. While he was changing, my neighbor, who I have lived next to and known for 3 years now, says to me, "So how've you been, Michelle?" When I smiled and corrected him, he just laughed and said, "I did it again, didn't I? I called you Michelle when I first met you too didn't I?" His daughter and I have the same name so why he messes up my name is a mystery to us all.

So why "Michelle"?? Should I have been named Michelle? I was adopted, but I've even asked my biological mother and had she kept me, she was going to name me either Lynnlee (a combo of her name and my biological father's) or Amy Elizabeth (Which she ended up using several years later when she had my sister). So no "Michelle" there.

One of my best friends recently changed her name. She always hated her name and was never to thrilled with the person who both named her nor the one she was named after. A certain name kept popping into her head and eventually she just finally went and legally changed her name. She's never been happier, and her name now suits her.

I don't want to change my name. I actually love my name, the people who named me, and who I am named after (even if I don't always get along with her - lol). In fact, if/when I ever have a daughter, I plan on passing down a part of my name to her.

I just wonder... why "Michelle"?

My reasons to run AGAIN

Nearly five years ago my family got a life changing shock. We learned that my father has cancer. He wasn't told he has just any old cancer, he has Mantle Cell Lymphoma, a very aggressive, hard to treat, terminal form of blood cancer. He was told he probably only had about 3 years to live, but he decided from day one that he was going to fight. As a "Daddy's Girl" it has been particularly hard on me to see my rock have to fight for his very life.

Then, not long after that, in November of 2004, I had yet another blow. I received a phone call right before I had to go to work. My step brother, Carl, was in the hospital fighting for his life. A tumor no one knew he had suddenly crushed his windpipe and made it impossible for him to breath on his own. He had also been diagnosed with Lymphoma. Seeing him lying in a hospital bed with breathing tubes was a hard pill to swallow. Here was the boy who only a few years before had looked up at me with innocent eyes and asked me "Can I call you my big sister too?"

Both my dad and Carl are doing great. Daddy, beating the odds, is still terminal yet still fighting and refusing to give up. He's gone through chemo, radiation, experimental drugs, a stem cell transplant, and in January was lucky enough to receive a bone marrow transplant thanks to an anonymous donor. Carl is in remission and is living life as a normal seventeen year old boy, complete with driver's license and girlfriend!

However, the circle of life continues and every day someone else receives the terrifying news that they or a loved one has been diagnosed with a blood cancer such as leukemia, lymphoma, or myeloma. Only a short while ago, a dear friend of mine e-mailed with the news that her fiance, Dominic, had been diagnosed with Lymphoma and was beginning treatments the following day.

It is for this reason that I am continuing my personal battle against these diseases by continuing to be a part of Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's Team in Training. Team in Training fund raises for LLS while training to complete endurance events such as marathons, triathlons, and century bike rides. The money raised by Team in Training athletes goes towards funding the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's mission: to find a cure for blood cancers and to improve the quality of life of patients and their families. This season will be my fourth season with this amazing group and I will be training to complete the Disney half marathon in January 2009. More than 823,000 Americans are battling blood cancers. I am hoping that my participation in Team In Training will help bring them hope and support.

Alex, a teenager in Titusville who is in remission from Leukemia, will be our team's honorary coach. Alex has worked with Team in Training for many years and is a great inspiration to all of us as we train and run our events. His smiling face is a great sight at the finishline.

My goal is to raise $3,000 or more by this Christmas. While I plan to have many fundraising events such as garage sales and bucket drops, I am also asking for the help of my family and friends. If it is within your means and in your hearts to do so, please make a tax deductible donation to the Leukemia and Lymphoma society in support of my efforts by visiting

http://pages.teamintraining.org/cfl/wdw09/nalbritton

Every penny helps and there is no gift that is too small. If you would like to see your company's logo or a personal message on the back of the jerseys of ALL the Central Florida Team in Training athletes by becoming a corporate sponsor, please let me know!

I will of course put the web site on my list of favorites on the sidebar!

How many push ups can YOU do?

To answer my own question : NOT MANY...yet. I came across hundredpushups.com and thought "maybe I can do this... maybe." According to the website, if you are faithful and determined, by the end of 6 weeks you should be able to complete 100 consecutive good form push-ups. I have always hated, despised, abhorred, and loathed push ups. I'll do any other torturous exercise known to man except for push-ups. Even the girlie-on-your-knees push-ups suck. However, I really do need do work on upper body strength and how cool would it be to be able to brag to my military hubby that I can do 100 push ups? So I shall start this program, in addition to my running, to help with my upper body strength. My only consern at this stage in the game is my rotator cuffs/shoulders. Due to an old injury...well... they aren't as stong as I'd like them to be. But we'll see how it goes. Hopefully the push-ups will strengthen them as well.

For anyone who is interested in this site, either who want more info on it or what to maybe join the challenge with me, the link is of course in this post, but I will also add it to my favorite links over there on the sidebar!

I'm a spoiled little girl buying a truck

I know I have lived a fairly privileged life, some may even say I'm spoiled. I realize this when friends my age talk about making their college loan payments and stress over filling out new financial aid papers in order to obtain further degrees, meanwhile, I've never paid for a class in my life, including the Master's Degree I am currently working towards that my father is paying for (I am buying my textbooks but he is paying tuition). My grandfather died when I was small and left my brother, cousins, and I more than enough money to go to school. It was so much in fact that I nearly outright paid for my first house with what was left over (the only part I had to finance ended up being $400 a month for 5 years and that included a new car payment as well.) That particular new car I never really had to shop for either. My first car was my grandmother's old Omni, then my parents bought me a new Cavalier for my HS graduation (with the understanding that I had to keep my grades up in college or I would take over the payments - I kept my end of the bargain and they kept theirs, I never paid a penny towards that car.) When I flipped that Cavalier (an accident in which I was deemed not at fault) my dad again stepped to the plate and found me a similar Cavalier, made the deal (after asking me if that was OK and it was what I wanted), then because I was also in the process of buying my first house arranged it with the bank to roll all of it into one nice low payment. I kept that Cavalier until last year when my husband decided to buy me a Jeep while he was deployed as a surprise for our anniversary. I've never had to deal with any of the "behind the scenes" money issues with buying a car, despite now owning my 4th car. My Jeep is the first time I've ever really had a car payment (remember, the second Cavalier was rolled into the $400 house payment).

Don't get me wrong, I know I have been very fortunate in my life and I appreciate everything that anyone has ever done for me. I don't expect my father to pay for things for me, but it is nice that he does offer. I have offered to try to pay him back on a few things and most of the time he refuses saying it is just nice to know that I was willing to. Growing up I didn't realize how much money he and Momma had. We shopped at Wal-Mart, JC Penny's and Sears for back-to-school clothes and my brother and I had to work in the orange groves on the weekends so we never felt like we were spoiled. However, we always had more than enough to eat, never went without, and when I needed a new $70 Speedo for swim team, or a new gown for prom (because I definitely couldn't wear the one I wore the year before) I got it. We didn't have a maid or anything like that. Heck, we didn't even have a dishwasher (mom would ask me why we needed one when we already had one as she pointed at me) or cable TV.

Hubby is now looking at buying a new truck for himself. I know, I know, gas prices are astronomical why oh why would he want a big truck? The answer is simple; No matter where we live or what he does for a living, you will never get the redneck outta the boy! He has wanted a big truck for as long as I've known him and now because the gas prices are so high, the prices on bigger trucks are really low since no one is buying them. The dealers are practically throwing them at us as soon as we say we are interested in a crew cab Titan. Due to my lack of experience with car salesmen, what I didn't expect is how freaking pushy they are! Yes, I know the stereotypical idea of a car salesman is for them to be pushy and lie, but man do they seem to live up to that! I understand that they are on commission and are just trying to make a living but someone needs to inform them on a little secret my grandmother told me when I was little: You get more flies with honey. Don't push me. Don't assume it is now a challenge because we said we are 'just looking today' and don't call me several times a day every day for a week to see if I still want the one we were looking at.

Lots of people, family and friends, are offering great advice on car buying which is good, because like I said, I'm clueless to this stuff. I'm not a newby car owner, just a newby car buyer. It almost seems overwhelming though. Luckily for me hubby is dealing with most of it since it is going to be his truck after all. All of this is boggling my mind! I've never been good at math and budget issues are lost on me. It takes all I have just to keep my checkbook balanced but then you want to throw in interest and all?? UGH!

Most of the time I feel all grown up and like a real adult, then we go to do something that everyone else has to do like buy a car and I feel like a little girl all over again... a spoiled little girl who doesn't know what's going on.

Wild Wild West

Hubby and I went to dinner tonight with some friends of ours. Afterwards, neither of us felt like running but we did decide to take a walk instead. This was great because we got to talk more than we do when we are running, and I notice a lot of things around my usual running route that I don't normally notice as I'm running past.

As we were walking, a guy ran past us, rather quickly. Great form, great pace, great runner. I laughed and mentioned to Hubby "He runs faster than me" with a fake pout lol. Hubby agreed that the guy also ran faster than him. I then mentioned that I wouldn't feel safe running at that time of night alone. Perhaps it is because I am a woman, or perhaps it is that I know I'm not that great of a runner and therefor wouldn't be able to outrun any would-be attackers. Hubby again agreed and mentioned that the guy looked like he was in pretty good shape and could probably take one attacker then sprint off. The problem would be that he would then have to change his running route because people nowadays can't just admit they have been bested and leave it alone, they now wait with a gun and extract a ridiculous pay-back.

This lead to a discussion about how similar life today is with live in the Wild West. I had never thought about that before. We always think about days gone by as being simpler, easier, more moral life...but if you really stop and think, we aren't far from life in the wild wild west.

Everyone seems to own a gun. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I have a gun, my husband has several and we firmly believe in the right to bear arms. Besides, if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have them, right? But there is similarity number one, anyone who wants a gun can easily get one.

The second similarity is that people will shoot you to save their honor. If you called someone a cheat in the wild west, they would most likely at the very least start a bar fight and proceed to beating the crap out of you or at the worst shoot you. If they caught you cheating, they would more than likely skip the bar fight and go right to the shooting. You were rude to my woman...BANG. You stole my horse...BANG. You run off with my daughter...BANG. Not much different from today, or at least it's getting there. People don't leave well enough alone and they can't stand to think that they were dissed or bettered in some way. Tit for tat, round and round we go, and no one wins. Too many people try to take the law into their own hands or worse yet, retaliate in the worst way when their feelings are hurt.

Off and running (literally)

Well I did it, I woke up and ran again this morning! YAY! My ankle feels great. So far so good...

I got sucked in.... again!

"Hello, My name is Cole, and I am a Harry Potter Addict."

The other day someone asked me a question about something that happened in the 6th Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince...and I couldn't remember! A professed Potter-nut-case, who ha read any of the given HP books at least 4 times (four being the least, the newer ones, the older ones I have probably read more around 9 or 10 times.) I was so boggled by the fact that I couldn't remember that I, of course, had to sit down and start reading HBP again. Well, as fate would have it, HBP turned into also reading Deathly Hallows and then starting over again with book one. I'm now most of the way through book two (Chamber of Secrets) with no end in sight! I know me, will go all the way through to the end of Deathly Hallows again before I stop :)

By the way...an update on my ankle: I still haven't tried to run on it again, part worry that it still twinges a bit and part laziness. I'm am going to attempt to get my lazy butt outta bed tomorrow morning and go for a jog. No promises but I'll TRY ;)