Decoding Dyslexia

Oklahoma has an advocacy group to spread awareness about dyslexia called Decoding Dyslexia OK. Their website has some resources for educators if you would like to learn more.

Bookshare

Bookshare makes reading easier. People with dyslexia, blindness, cerebral palsy, and other reading barriers can customize their experience to suit their learning style and find virtually any book they need for school, work, or the joy of reading.

Infographic of a Dyslexic Teen

The Understood website has a great infographic illustrating a day in the life of a teen with dyslexia.

Lexico App

A Norman (Oklahoma) father and former English teacher, Pierre Liebenberg, has developed an app to help people with dyslexia read. Read the full story from the Journal Record.

Dyslexia Exhibit

Oklahoma Science Museum in Oklahoma City currently has an exhibit about dyslexia called "Beautiful Minds." 

The exhibition explores the minds, art, and successes of people past and present who have or had dyslexia—from well-known entrepreneurs, artists, authors, and scientists like Steve Jobs, Leonardo Da Vinci, Albert Einstein, and Agatha Christie to contemporary artists including John Gill of Alfred, New York, Mark Wittig of North Little Rock, Arkansas, and Holly Wilson of Mustang, Oklahoma.

“Many people have the wrong idea about what dyslexia actually is — in ‘Beautiful Minds’ we are using art, among other things, to show that dyslexia isn’t necessarily a learning disorder, but a learning difference,” said Scott Henderson, director of SMO’s smART Space galleries.

“Beautiful Minds – Dyslexia and the Creative Advantage” will be open through July 14, 2019, and is included with general admission.

The University of Oklahoma is celebrating the poetry and poets of Oklahoma from pre-statehood to 1941 with an exhibit called“Red Dust Oklahoma: A Poetic History.”

Drawing from the Western History Collections’ unexpectedly rich resources about Oklahoma’s poetic past, the exhibition celebrates the achievements of Oklahoma poets, featuring published works and unpublished manuscripts. Thirty-four poems are on display.

“Red Dust Oklahoma: A Poetic History” opened in October 2018 and will run through June 2019. It is located on the third floor of Monnett Hall on OU's campus at 630 Parrington Oval in Norman. The exhibit is open from 8am to 8pm, Monday through Friday. There is no admission fee. For more information about tours, see the Exhibit Tours page.

“Red Dust Oklahoma” highlights Oklahoma’s poetic history through six themes:

• OU’s role by professors and students in the shaping of the Oklahoma literary landscape
• the burgeoning oil industry and Oklahoma’s geological past
• Native American responses to changing times and advocacy for Native expression
• the Oklahoma landscape as it transitioned from a territory to a state
• military service, including during the Civil War and World War I
• expressions of love, including love of nature

K20 Learn

The K20 Center for Educational and Community Renewal is a non-profit education research organization housed at the University of Oklahoma that is focused on providing the highest quality services to education partners across Oklahoma and the United States. 

K20 LEARN is their ever-expanding repository of 115 instructional strategies, pre-built 5E* lesson plans, and professional development activities. Currently, there are 83 ELA lessons. All of these resources are available at no cost.

Here are a few sample lessons to check out right now:

• Antigone's Themes Today
• Barbie - Curse or Blessing?
• Poetry as Social Justice (written by yours truly)

*5E: Engage, Explore, Explain, Extend, & Evaluate

Korean Essay & Poetry Contest

The Sejong Cultural Society strives to advance awareness and understanding of Korea's cultural heritage among people in the United States by reaching out to the younger generations through contemporary creative and fine arts.

The 2019 Writing Competition is now open. There is an essay contest and a poetry contest. The essay contest is literary analysis in response to a novella or a folk tale, depending on the student's grade. The poetry contest is a sijo, which is like a longer haiku.

Op-Ed Writing Contest

Write the World's March writing contest is an op-ed. Students ages 13-18 are eligible to compete. The contest prompt and details follow:

Do you ever feel like you have something to say but nowhere to say it? A worthy opinion that needs to be shared? This month, we’re giving you the floor. The op-ed is founded on the idea that every person has a voice worthy of a public platform. What change would you like to see in the world? In your country? In your community? From your school’s elections to your country’s leaders to climate change; we want to hear your opinion about something that matters . . . to you.  
  
Writing Form: Opinion 
Subject Areas: Civics, Economics, Journalism, Literature/English, Science, Social Studies 
Length: 600–1,000 words  
  
Competition Opens: March 4, 2019 
Final Entries Due: March 19, 2019

The purpose of The First Line literary journal is to jump start the imagination--to help writers break through the block that is the blank page. Each issue contains short stories that stem from a common first line; it also provides a forum for discussing favorite first lines in literature. The First Line is an exercise in creativity for writers and a chance for readers to see how many different directions we can take when we start from the same place.

2019 First Lines: 

To celebrate twenty years of publication, The First Line is going to revisit the past. There are no new first lines for 2019. Each issue will be comprised of original works based on past first lines.

Were you inspired by the fall 2008 first line (Roy owned the only drive-thru funeral business in Maine.) but didn't see the sentence until 2015? Or maybe you started writing a story for the spring 2005 issue (Life would be so much easier if I were a cartoon character.) But you never got around to submitting it. Or maybe you sent a story that just missed the cut and you reworked it and want to try us again. Well, now is your chance to make up for missed opportunities.

The following is the schedule of first lines for the 2019 issues. In all, there are 60 prompts left for this year! Please be aware that The First Line is a literary journal for an adult audience, so not every first line may be appropriate for your classroom. Please use your discretion. If anything, you could use these first lines as story starters with your students, even if they don't submit anything to the journal.

Summer 2019
All submissions must begin with one first line from: 
Volume 6, Issue 1 to Volume 10, Issue 4.
Due date: May 1, 2019

• Vol. 6, Iss. 1: There were five of them, which was two more than I'd been expecting.
• Vol. 6, Iss. 2: "Why are you always so cynical?"
• Vol. 6, Iss. 3: I was born Rosa Carlotta Silvana Grisanti, but in the mid-Eighties, I legally changed my name to Eve.
• Vol. 6, Iss. 4: The inside was dark.
• Vol. 7, Iss. 1: Life would be so much easier if I were a cartoon character.
• Vol. 7, Iss. 2: As the warrior guided [his/her] horse back home, [he/she] pondered what the future might hold.
• Vol. 7, Iss. 3: Having little to his name when he died, the reading of Henry Fromm's will went quickly.
• Vol. 7, Iss. 4: "That was the best game we've ever had!"
• Vol. 8, Iss. 1: Mamma has always had a love for other people's possessions.
• Vol. 8, Iss. 2: Tessa sent up a hasty prayer for forgiveness as she slipped on the dress Mamma had bought her in exchange for a promise not to marry Al.
• Vol. 8, Iss. 4: It was her silent affirmations that kept her from going completely insane.
• Vol. 9, Iss. 4: After nine years of marriage, Mary knew that the holidays were not a good time to ask her husband for a favor.
• Vol. 9, Iss. 3: Calvin once complained that there were not enough _______ [fill in the blank] in the world.
• Vol. 9, Iss. 2: My first impression of Phillip was that he was blessed with ignorance.
• Vol. 9, Iss. 1: In Pigwell, time is not measured in days or weeks but by the number of eighteen wheelers that drive past my house.
• Vol. 10, Iss. 4: While not the intended effect, the outcome was surprisingly satisfying.
• Vol. 10, Iss. 3: Roy owned the only drive-thru funeral business in Maine.
• Vol. 10, Iss. 2: Nick had considered himself a lucky guy, until now.
• Vol. 10, Iss. 1: Sometimes the name they give you is all wrong.

Fall 2019
All submissions must begin with one first line from: 
Volume 11, Issue 1 to Volume 15, Issue 4.
Due date: August 1, 2019

• Vol. 11, Iss. 1: Herman Sligo was a bit actor who played Uncle Emil in three episodes of the popular television series The Five Sisters.
• Vol. 11, Iss. 2: For two weeks now, I've been trying to figure out if people are laughing with me or at me.
• Vol. 11, Iss. 3: "My life is a sham."
  Vol. 11, Iss. 4: Waiting for change always seems to take longer than you would expect.
• Vol. 12, Iss. 1: Working for God is never easy.
• Vol. 12, Iss. 2: Paul and Miriam Kaufman met the old-fashioned way.
• Vol. 12, Iss. 3: Three thousand habitable planets in the known universe, and I'm stuck on the only one without ___________. [Fill in the blank.]
• Vol. 12, Iss. 4: Until I stumbled across an article about him in the paper, I never realized how much Walter Dodge and I are alike.
• Vol. 13, Iss. 1: Sam was a loyal employee.
• Vol. 13, Iss. 2: "We need to talk."
• Vol. 13, Iss. 3: Edwin spotted them the moment he stepped off the train.
• Vol. 13, Iss. 4: It had been a long year.
• Vol. 14, Iss. 1: "There are a few things you need to know before we start."
• Vol. 14, Iss. 2: Rachel's first trip to England didn't go as planned.
• Vol. 14, Iss. 3: A light snow was falling as Charlie Reardon left the diner and made his way down Madison Street. 
• Vol. 14, Iss. 4: Sometimes, when it's quiet, I can remember what my life was like before moving to Cedar Springs. 
• Vol. 15, Iss. 1: On a perfect spring morning with flat seas and clear blue skies, Captain Eli P. Cooke made a terrible mistake. 
• Vol. 15, Iss. 2: I started collecting secrets when I was just six years old. 
• Vol. 15, Iss. 3: There must have been thousands standing in the rain that day. 
• Vol. 15, Iss. 4: I came of age in a time of no heroes.

Winter 2019
All submissions must begin with one first line from:
Volume 16, Issue 1 to Volume 20, Issue 4.
Due date: November 1, 2019

• Vol. 16, Iss. 1: Carlos discovered _______ [fill in the blank] under a pile of shoes in the back of his grandmother's closet. 
• Vol. 16, Iss. 2: "Please, Sylvia, give me a moment to think."
• Vol. 16, Iss. 3: Fifty miles west of Bloomington lies Hillsboro, a monument to middle-class malaise. 
• Vol. 16, Iss. 4: We went as far as the car would take us. 
• Vol. 17, Iss. 1: Fairy tales hardly ever come true for quiet girls. 
• Vol. 17, Iss. 2: Laura liked to think she was honest with herself; it was everyone else she lied to. 
• Vol. 17, Iss. 3: The old neighborhood was nearly unrecognizable. 
• Vol. 17, Iss. 4: George pressed the call button and said, "Mrs. Whitfield, you have a visitor.
• Vol. 18, Iss. 1: "Unfortunately, there is no mistake," she said, closing the file.
• Vol. 18, Iss. 2: By the fifteenth month of the drought, the lake no longer held her secrets.
• Vol. 18, Iss. 3: Mrs. Morrison was too busy to die.
  Vol. 18, Iss. 4: In the six years I spent tracking David Addley, it never occurred to me that he didn't exist.
• Vol. 19, Iss. 1: Eddie tended to drift into whatever jobs were available that would pay the rent.
• Vol. 19, Iss. 2: The plan suddenly made sense.
• Vol. 19, Iss. 3: Frank Rooney had been the manager of the Shop & Save for thirty-eight years, and he wasn't retiring anytime soon.
• Vol. 19, Iss. 4: "I'm tired of trying to see the good in people."
• Vol. 20, Iss. 1: Leo massaged the back of his neck, thankful the meeting was finally over.
• Vol. 20, Iss. 2: "I wanted you to be the first to know," Rowan tentatively confided in me.
• Vol. 20, Iss. 3: The window was open just enough to let in the cool night air.
• Vol. 20, Iss. 4: As she trudged down the alley, Cenessa saw a small _________________. [Fill in the blank.]

The ELAOK Flipgrid board is an online space to share short videos in response to various prompts. You can visit past month's topics and leave a video. Or you can respond to this month's topic:

Who is one of your teacher heroes / heroines? Why?