Teaching Adolescent Writers

In Teaching Adolescent Writers, Kelly Gallagher, author of Reading Reasons and Deeper Reading, shows how students can be taught to write effectively. Kelly shares a number of classroom-tested strategies. http://www.stenhouse.com/shop/pc/viewprd.asp?idProduct=9032&r=sb091223b&REFERER=

Read Chapter 1 on-line.

Energizers! 88 Quick Movement Activities

Energizers! 88 Quick Movement Activities That Refresh and Refocus, K–6.To learn well, children need to move! Old favorites with new twists,lively originals, and tips for weaving energizers into your school day.Read samples and view video clips.

Great Book review site with discussion questions + extras!

Here's a great site with reviews, discussion questions and extension activities for the titles listed.

Books listed after 2006 come with all these extras.

http://www.yourlibrary.ws/ya_webpage/ritba/ritbaindex.htm

For example:

The Hunger Games

http://www.yourlibrary.ws/ya_webpage/ritba/ritba10/hungergames.htm

SilverFin

http://www.yourlibrary.ws/ya_webpage/ritba/ritba07/silverfin.htm

Darkwing

http://www.yourlibrary.ws/ya_webpage/ritba/ritba09/darkwing.htm

"Order in the Library" shelving game/tutorial

Here's a simple game/tutorial to illustrate how books are arranged in the library. It might be good for your library helpers.

http://users.ece.utexas.edu/~valmstrum/s2s/utopia/library4/src/library4.html

Vancouver Olympics: Place de la Francophonie

If you are interested in some of the Francophone musicians/groups that will be performing in Vancouver during the weeks around and during the Olympics, check out this link:

http://placefranco2010.ca/fr/artistes/index.html

On-line book - Metaphors and analogies

New from Rick Wormeli! Metaphors & Analogies gives teachers the tools to create those aha! moments when students suddenly understand a difficult concept-across all content areas and grade levels. It will change the way you design lessons and inspire you to dig deep for the right metaphors to reach all of your students. Preview the entire book online!

Babar ABC book - in French - on-line

A "digital version" of the classic Babar ABC book.

Read through and click on items to see the French word and hear a pronunciation.

http://expositions.bnf.fr/livres-enfants/jeux/babar/index.htm

"SnowFlake Workshop"

A lovely, whimsical "SnowFlake Workshop"

The graphics are great!

http://www.snowflakeworkshop.com/

Google Lit Trips

Although Google Lit Trips have been around for a while, I just recently saw a blog post that reminded me how they can bring a novel to life. Here are some links to explore if you are looking at using this yourself, or suggesting it to others.

=========================

What is a Google Lit Trip?

http://www.edutopia.org/google-lit-trips-virtual-literature

Some ready-to-use Trips for grades 6-8

http://googlelittrips.com/GoogleLit/6-8/6-8.html

Some Tips for Creating your own.

http://googlelittrips.com/GoogleLit/Lit_Trip_Tips.html

The Basics for Viewing a Lit-Trip

http://googlelittrips.com/GoogleLit/Lit_Trip_Tips_files/The%20Basics%20of%20Viewing%20a%20Google%20Lit%20Trip.pdf

Cell Size and Scale

Here's a great visual aid for teaching about cells, and for understanding the relative sizes of the parts.

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/begin/cells/scale/

Slowly slide the bar at the bottom of the illustration window.

Readicide - How Schools Are Killing Reading

Readicide - How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It

by Kelly Gallagher

http://www.stenhouse.com/shop/pc/viewprd.asp?idProduct=9158&r=sb091211&REFERER=

( read the first chapter on-line.)

---------------Description---------------------------

"Read-i-cide n: The systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools. Reading is dying in our schools. Educators are familiar with many of the factors that have contributed to the decline -- poverty, second-language issues, and the ever-expanding choices of electronic entertainment. In this provocative new book, Kelly Gallagher suggests, however, that it is time to recognize a new and significant contributor to the death of reading: our schools."

International Children's Digital Library

I recently came across this link for the International Children's Digital Library:
http://en.childrenslibrary.org/index.shtml
There's a wide range of material, some good, some uneven, but if you find a good title, you can use it with a Smartboard or Projector. Many languages represented. (Some books can be read in a couple of different languages.)
"The ICDL Foundation's goal is to build a collection of books that represents outstanding historical and contemporary books from throughout the world. Ultimately, the Foundation aspires to have every culture and language represented so that every child can know and appreciate the riches of children's literature from the world community"
English Picture book sample

Daniel's Ride

Sets organized by language...

French Picture Books
Spanish Picture Books

The same designers have released an iPhone app that works with the ICDL to create stories on an iTouch or iPhone. (Blog article)

"Children writing books on mobile phones? That certainly seems unlikely - so how did we get to the point where actually built an app to support it?" (Finding the App

Looking for a place for students to publish?

For the website: "Teen Ink, a national teen magazine, book series, and website is devoted entirely to teenage writing, art, photos and forums. Students must be age 13-19 to participate, register and/or submit work. Distributed through classrooms by English teachers, Creative Writing teachers, Journalism teachers and art teachers around the country, Teen Ink magazine offers some of the most thoughtful and creative work generated by teens and has the largest distribution of any publication of its kind."

http://www.teenink.com/

You can also download PDF versions of the magazine

http://www.teenink.com/Issues/2009-December.php

Christmas Countdown Widget

If you like adding seasonal items to your library website, you might be interested in this widget from "SpringWidgets"

This happy little tree counts down the days until Christmas. If you go to the site (LINK), you can download the html code. If you're using a FirstClass website, when you paste in the code on your own page, you'll need to change the style (Look under the format menu for style) and change it to "Literal HTML". Your visitors will see the tree instead of the code.

(You'll also find other countdown widgets here: http://widgets.primarygames.com/countdownclocks/index.htm)

Streaming Author Interviews

If you click on the link, and scroll down to the "Books Alive" tab. You'll see a list of author interviews.

http://hcpsstv.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=2

Jan Brett videos

Here is a nice site for those of you doing Jan Brett stories:

http://www.janbrettvideos.com/video/video_main_page.htm

Conferring: The Keystone of Reader's Workshop - read this book online

A book you might be interested in reading or recommending to others. (See link below to read entire book online)

In Conferring: The Keystone of Reader's Workshop, Patrick maintains that the benefits of conferring are worth the effort of learning to do it well. Then he sets out to reveal how teachers can overcome their perceived obstacles and make the somewhat intangible aspect of conferring with readers tangible.

http://www.stenhouse.com/shop/pc/viewprd.asp?idProduct=9179&r=sb091204#toc

(When you go to the page, look for the "Preview Book online" link:

Polar Express (and other stories) read on-line

Another resource you or your teachers might want to use.

http://www.storylineonline.net/

Featured book:

The Polar Express - read on-line, with captions, some sounds, and images from the book.

read by Lou Diamond Phillips.

Books for Boys

Another book list site to check out.

The author has divided boys into 4 "types" and has suggested titles for each personality.

http://www.abookandahug.com/books-for-boys/

(The "Find a book" button in the upper right hand corner of the page is another place to start.)

Web 2.0 Teacher Training Videos

Teacher Training Videos

http://www.teachertrainingvideos.com/

...Russell Stannard, a lecturer at the University of Westminster (UK) has created a ton of training videos for many of the common educational technology tools; he covers Moodle, Twitter, Audacity, Wordpress, Jing, podcasting, and many more useful tools ...

Read Kiddo Read

Nicely laid-out book recommendation site written by James Patterson

http://www.readkiddoread.com/home

Ignite - A presentation strategy

I was just sent this interesting link.

http://ignite.oreilly.com/show/

"Ignite captures the best of geek culture in a series of five-minute speed presentations.Imagine that you're on stage in front of an audience of hundreds of people, doing a five-minute presentation using a slide deck that auto-forwards every 15 seconds, whether you're ready or not. What would you do? What would you say?"

I wonder if this would make a good "frame" for students giving "stand and deliver" presentations to a class? Perhaps it would put a bit more excitement into the standard Powerpoint assignments.

Visual Literacy Strategies for the K-5 Classroom

Engaging the Eye Generation

Visual Literacy Strategies for the K-5 Classroom

In Engaging the Eye Generation, library media specialist and National Board Certified Teacher Johanna Riddle draws on twenty-five years of education experience to show teachers how to update the curriculum for twenty-first century learners.

If you are interested in this topic, or know a staff member who is, you can read the Introduction and first chapter of the book on-line by following the link below:

http://www.stenhouse.com/shop/pc/viewprd.asp?idProduct=9157&r=sb091124&REFERER=#toc

Podcast of the author speaking

http://www.stenhouse.com/html/riddlepodcast.htm

“RADCAB” ™ A mnemonic acronym for information evaluation

Thought this might be useful

“RADCAB” ™ A mnemonic acronym for information evaluation.

http://www.radcab.com/

Posters and bookmarks too!

http://www.highsmith.com/search/radcab/

Booktrailers - for your library site

If you are looking for a way to spice up your library site, consider adding some links to some Booktrailers.

If you search Youtube, you can find lots of different clips, readings and professionally produced promos for a variety of levels.

If you're feeling ambitious, you can create a playlist and combine several (see link below).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfW325SWL0A&feature=PlayList&p=49E4C487E8CD82B0&index=0&playnext=1

The Chinese Experience in BC - new website at UBC

A great resource hosted on UBC library servers, for studying the Chinese Experience in BC

(Good also for Heritage Fair projects...lots of Primary Source Documents)

http://www.library.ubc.ca/chineseinbc/index.html

Chinese-Canadian communities in British Columbia have a long and rich history, dating back to the 1858 Fraser Valley gold rush. It is a history punctuated with racial tension, struggles for equality, and cultural traditions.

Click on the headings in the left-hand navigation bar to read stories and view photographs of the earliest generations of Chinese-Canadians, from 1850-1950. Illustrated throughout with quotations from the works of Chinese-Canadian author Wayson Choy, this website will also link you to the digitized holdings of the Wallace B. Chung and Madeline H. Chung Collection at the UBC Library, and the Yip family and Yip Sang Ltd. fonds at City of Vancouver Archives.

The collections can also be browsed by subjects listed in the “Search the collections” box on the right hand side of each page, or searched using keywords in the search box.

Fwd: Arts & Activities Magazine - articles and online

Arts & Activities Magazine

Articles for classroom art teachers on subjects dealing with art education, theory and practice at the elementary and secondary levels, as well as teacher education and uses of community resources.

Here's the link to the magazine in EBSCO - (to get individual articles in PDF format) (Password needed.)

http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=tfh&jid=ANA&site=ehost-live

Here's a link to the website from the magazine publisher

Publisher URL:  http://www.artsandactivities.com/

And a link to view the entire current magazine in a "flippable" format

(Previous edition articles can be accessed via EBSCO)

http://pubdev.ipaperus.com/ArtsandActivities/AADecember2009/

Free online educational-video library

Here's a good assortment of Educational, on-line videos: www.watchknow.org 

Wikipedia co-founder launches online educational-video library

Larry Sanger, who co-founded the Web site Wikipedia, has launched a site that provides free access to a library of educational videos for students ages 3 to 18. The site -- www.watchknow.org -- features links to more than 11,000 videos in 2,000 categories that include history, math, science and other subjects. Sanger described it as "YouTube meets Wikipedia."

Videos connected to kids' books

http://www.watchknow.org/Video.aspx?VideoID=13294

Mario Ramos - Belgian children's author - Website

For Immersion TLs

Mario Ramos - Belgian children's author (picture books)

http://www.marioramos.be/

Posters, a great video clip, post cards

On-line video - 26 minutes.

http://www.marioramos.be/video.php?lg=f

(The video is great...about why he does what he does, his themes, his "démarche", etc. Probably better for upper intermediate (and maybe even high school) because of the sophistication of his explanations, but some parts are fun for younger kids.)

A collection of Teen Reading Lists (SLJ)

For those of you looking for teen reading lists:

http://www.sjlibrary.org/gateways/teens/booklists/

Hudson's Bay Company's history - as downloadable PDFs

Apologies if you've seen this before.

HBC is offering downloadable versions of 3 eBooks.  (with teacher guide)

http://www.hbc.com/hbcheritage/learning/ebooks/

These could be printed and used in class, or even read from a digital projector as a "whole class" activity. With a Smartboard, you might even annotate, circle, highlight etc. as you go. (You could read it using the "spotlight" effect in Notebook10.) You could also link this to your library or class website as a resource for home consultation.

Also available in French:

http://www.hbc.com/hbcheritagef/learning/ebooks/default.asp

"We are pleased to announce that all these publications are now available as downloads from the e-books section of our website. Educators are invited to download and print them at will."

Google Books now has magazines

Many of you are aware that Google books allows full, limited or snippet view of books. (You can look at the "more" tab in a google search and select "books". You will also find a full view of a number of magazines. See the post below.

(LINK:  http://books.google.com/books?lr=&start=0&as_pt=MAGAZINES&rview=1 )

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/search-and-find-magazines-on-google.html

"Not all of these magazines are current issues--some are only for a specific time period (2007 or even earlier, but some are up to 2009)---but they might be of interest for browsing for specific content."

WWI & II propaganda poster slide show

There is a good WWI propaganda poster slide show (among many other things)

You might like to forward it to any Socials 11 teachers you know!

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/ww1posters/

Also,

WWII rationing posters sildeshow

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/ww2-rationing

Fwd: Metaphors & Analogies - Read text online

ASCD has this very interesting resource.
Browse it on-line! (see link below)
http://www.stenhouse.com/emags/0758/pageflip.html