Companion Book to The Black Silk Path

-

 It has been a busy year. I've been working on several projects in addition to getting my CERI SLDS (Structured Literacy Dyslexia Specialist) Certification. I'm excited to share these projects with my readers over the next several months.

One of these projects has been a companion book to The Black Silk Path. Over the last year and a half, it has taken several forms. After several notebooks, writing, letting it sit, rewriting, reinventing, writing, rewriting, creating fonts, formatting, and editing, the final form (for now) is off to the editor. Whew! Writing is definitely a process. Learning to read is also a process which can take a lot of practice. 

The companion book brings the fictional story into our reality or suspends our reality as we enter Ed and Mel's world. The book is a "used textbook."  This book IS the book that Ed and Mel used to fight the communication stealing spell in The Black Silk Path. Students can hold Ed and Mel's book in their hands and study along with them. They can also read Ed and Mel's "handwritten" notes in the textbook. Many of these notes are connected to what is happening in The Black Silk Path. In addition, there is an included chapter book which covers all the skills The Black Silk Path covers.

The format is structured to help students build fluency skills while exposing them to varied sentence structure. Instructors can point out examples of simple, compound, and complex sentences. Instructors can also use the included chapter book for comprehension or story structure discussions.

I'll be sharing more as the companion book gets closer to publication.  For now, I'll leave you with a picture of some of the mess that will eventually become the formatted book.  (It actually got a lot messier.) It is a process after all.

 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Can ChatGPT Write Decodable Text?

-
Image
 Today I took my first crack at seeing how ChatGPT does writing decodable text. I can see how it is useful in writing sentences with target spellings and sounds. I had some success with writing sentences even though I had to correct ChatGPT over several steps. (New, shines, and bark are not CVC words ChatGPT. It agreed and eventually ended up with a sentence with CVC words.)  From there, I asked it to write a paragraph. I found that ChatGPT does not like to follow a scope and sequence. The closer it got to the scope I gave it, the more awkward it got. Wait, aren’t human-written decodables often “awkward?” Not when compared to ChatGPT’s level of awkward. It sounds like…a robot. Hmm. Go figure. I guess there isn’t enough decodable text it can mine from on the web.  On a separate try, I gave it a few syllable types plus a list of words it could use and asked for a mystery story. Again, ChatGPT was struggling to follow the scope I gave it. I tried to explain the scope several...
Read more

It's Here! Totally RAD Phonics Level C: Ed and Mel’s Exploration of Fluency and Syntax–A Companion to The Black Silk Path

-
Image
        It took awhile to settle on what I wanted The Black Silk Path companion book to look like. It finally took shape as a "used textbook" that exists within the story The Black Silk Path . In that story, Ed and Mel Davis have to study to regain their language which was stolen by R.L Nox's magic spell. They carry a book to help them study in their backpacks. If you peeked into one of their backpacks, you would see Totally RAD Phonics Level C . Ed and Mel wrote notes in this used textbook. Some of them are related to their studies. Others are related to their journey in as described in The Black Silk Path . Students can study along with Ed and Mel and read their notes. They can connect the notes to what is happening in The Black Silk Path. Each "Lesson" in Totally RAD Phonics Level C matches up with a chapter in The Black Silk Path . It follows the same scope and sequence as The Black Silk Path which covers closed syllables. Totally RAD Phonics Level C pro...
Read more

It's Arrived! A New Way to Find Decodable Books

-
Three things: 1. Thank you, Lexile Find a Decodable Book . Thank you. Thank you. Being able to see a decodable book in this new way will be so helpful to teachers, parents, tutors, and educators. 2. Check out Decodable Adventures through the lens of Lexile Find a Decodable Book chapter by chapter.  The Black Silk Path The Hunt for R. L. Nox The Path's End 3. There is a second new tool on the Lexile Hub. Check out my decodable passages on Lexile Decodable Passages . (Subscribe or sign in to the Lexile Hub.)   I'm am now going to go turn on some happy music and dance a happy dance. Lexile Find a Decodable Book and Lexile Decodable Passages are finally here.
Read more