What's Important in the Autumn issue of the WORD Newsletter?

It's been raining newsletters around my house recently; the newest from the Washington Organization for Reading Development came to my school early last week. Things of note:

*The WORD Conference is coming to Spokane October 12th and 13th. I'll be there with my 1st grade team; I hope to see you there!

*Wayne Callender is going to be one of the featured presenters. He did a great workshop on RTI at the OSPI Summer Institute in 2006, and if that's a topic you're working on you couldn't ask for a better resource.

*Ann Teberg of Whitworth is the president of WORD this year. I had a class from her when she was teaching at Eastern; she's a neat person to listen to, too.

*The WORD Easy Grant Program is, well, an easy grant for $50. You can find the application form here.

*On the practical level, Joy Brooke of Lake Washington writes on how to make buddy reading work effectively in the classroom, Barbara Ward of WSU Tri-Cities shares strategies for classroom conversations, and Pat Mainella has a nice, concise writeup of what went on in the last legislative session.

*Finally, EWU's own Marilyn Carpenter shares some highlights of what's new in children's literature. Dr. Carpenter is a gem of a person; listening to her talk about reading and kid's books is a great way to spend your time.

Great job, WORD!

Read more here, if any.

What's Important in the September Issue of the Washington Science Teachers Journal?

Not much, if you're not going to the fall conference.

The WSTA is our professional organization for science teachers here in the Evergreen State, and they usually do a pretty good job with their quarterly journal, but this most recent issue is underwhelming. There's 20-something pages about the upcoming conference, and nothing else.

Nothing about the results of the science WASL.
Nothing from the universities.
Nothing from teachers, sharing their experiences in the classroom.
Nothing on LASER, FOSS.....nothing.

I'll give them credit for being on the ball with their conference brochure--I had to email WORD directly to get any information at all about their upcoming conference in Spokane--but it's hard to sell people on the value of belonging to their state organization when I put the magazine in the staff room and there isn't content there that teachers can sink their teeth into.

I hope the next issue steps things up.

Read more here, if any.