Scholastic has a couple of new webcast opportunities this spring that you might want to check out.

April 20th – Magic School Bus Earth Day Webcast

Climb on board with author Joanna Cole and illustrator Bruce Degen on Tuesday, April 20th at 12:00 p.m. central time as they join Ms. Frizzle to celebrate Earth Day and their new book The Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, New Jersey!

April 30th – Summer Challenge Live

Join bestselling authors Christopher Paul Curtis, Gordon Korman, R.L. Stine and Lisa Yee on Friday, April 30th at 12:00 p.m. central time for the Ultimate Author Showdown, a LIVE book-trivia game show webcast where students ask the questions. Can you stump the authors?

Both of these webcasts do require you to sign up ahead of time, so be sure to sign up soon!

Scholastic has two live webcasts coming up in the next few weeks that you might want to consider sharing with your students. The first one is a live webcast with R. L. Stine, the author of the Goosebumps series. Even though it is not my personal favorite series, the kids love it. So, if you have a bunch of ghost-story-loving kids, check out the live webcast on October 28 at noon. It’s always fun to hear an author talk about his books. (Second grade – I would probably skip this one.)

Live Webcast with R. L. Stine

The other webcast is with all five of the authors of the 39 clues series! I’m pretty excited about this one. The authors of these books are top-notch, and the kids are crazy about these books (especially the fourth graders). The 39 Clues webcast will be on November 2 at 12:30 p.m.

39 Clues Webcast

Enjoy!

I hope you all enjoyed our author visit from Carolyn Crimi as much as I did. I heard lots of positive, excited responses from the kids, and Carolyn had so many wonderful things to say about our school.

As you are trying to fill the last days of school with meaningful activities, it might be fun to incorporate some of Mrs. Crimi’s writing tips for the kids. Here are a couple of ideas:

• Have the students write a “calendar story”
  Encourage the students to bring in a calendar from home that has interesting pictures (especially ones that have pictures showing “trouble”) and select one of the pictures as the theme for the story. If finding calendars doesn’t work, you as the teacher could go online to Flickr and find some interesting pictures to use as story prompts (don’t send kids to search for pictures online). I have an example of using some Flickr images as prompts on a Voicethread project I use with my eMINTS teachers. This will show you some of the interesting photos you can find online that make great writing prompts.
• Create a story idea treasure chest
  Have the students go on a story idea treasure hunt around the school (or you could have them do it at home) and collect interesting objects that they could use as writing ideas. They could bring in shoeboxes and decorate them and add the objects to their box. Of course, have them select one of the objects to use to write a story.

Again, I hope you enjoyed our author visit and found it beneficial to the kids. I hope to continue bringing in an author each year. Sell that Cookie Dough and bring in Community Cash!

Your Library Lady,

Cindy