Lit Picks and Tech Tips

Teachers, today is the last day for students to qualify to vote for the Mark Twain Award and Show Me Award. Please email me the names of any students who qualify by the end of the school day today!

Also, don’t forget that tomorrow is Family Reading Night. I will be providing dinner at 5:00, and then we will head over to the East gym to get ready for the fun!

See you tomorrow night!

This website is a fabulous resource for finding books that kids will love to read. ReadKiddoRead was created by author James Patterson when he discovered that his own son did not like to read. Now, he and his wife scour the land of children’s literature and find books that hook kids on reading, and they categorize them by age level and genre. The database is also searchable, so if you want to find great books about dogs, just type “dogs” into the search bar. I hope you find this site useful. Comment back and let me know what you think!

Most of you know that I am on our state’s Mark Twain Readers Award committee. I have been reading hundreds of books over the last year to help decide if they would be good books for the Mark Twain Readers Award. Our committee narrowed down our list of hundreds to a list of 25. Several of our students and teachers became reader selectors and read the 25 books and ranked them to help come up with what is now the final list of 12 books for next year! I’ve been so excited to share the list with you, and now it is official! Here is the list of next year’s Mark Twain Readers Award nominees. Teachers, I will be doing the summer Mark Twain Book Club again this year, so let me know if you are up the challenge of reading all 12 with me this summer. We always have a great time!

Teachers, you’ve got to check this one out! This is a fabulous science site created by the Lawrence Hall of Science at the University of California Berkeley.  Their LHS Kids page has tons of great interactive science activities, and they have no ads, which makes this library lady very happy.

Take a look at the different activities and let me know what you think!

Enjoy!

Are you looking for resources that take advantage of the interactive nature of your SMART Board? Check out iBoard.  This site has several interactive activities for younger students developed specifically for use with interactive whiteboards. Be sure to check out the literacy category for several story activities you can use with your classes, including fairy tales and folk tales. Let me know what you think!

For those of you who like to plan ahead, I thought I would let you know about a great Thanksgiving site from Scholastic. In the past, teachers have been able to sign up to receive letters from the Mayflower, and can still do that this year. But this year, they have added something new! There will be a live video cast from Plimoth Plantation on November 16. You do have to sign up for this, so be sure to check it out soon. There are lots of great activities on the site that would make for a great history lesson.

I thought this site might be useful to use with students who need some basic phonics help. Here’s what the site creators have to say about their program:

Progressive Phonics is an all-in-one reading program that is easy, fun, and totally FREE—that’s right, totally and completely free! And with Progressive Phonics, ANYONE can teach a child to read and write in just a few minutes a day, which makes it ideal for parents, teachers, tutors, volunteers and home-schoolers.

• No experience necessary. Just pick a book and start reading it with your child/students.
• Matching handwriting worksheets and activity sheets for each book — when children write what they learn, they learn it better.
  
• Also teaches the essential sight-words (phonics rule-breakers) that most phonics programs fail to teach.
  
• Instant access — download and use today. (Free registration required, but there are sample books you can look at before registering.)
  
• Our books can be read on-screen or printed on your color printer. Each book takes 4–8 minutes to print and uses as little ink and paper as possible.

This might be a great resource to use with parents who want to do some extra practice at home. Be sure to check it out and leave a comment to let me know what you think of it.

Here is an online resource that might helpful for your students who read at lower reading levels or for your ESL students who are new to learning English. It has leveled readers, phonics activities and more that you can download and use on your computer. Here’s what the site creators have to say about Literactive:

“Literactive is the leading provider of reading material for pre-school, kindergarten and grade 1 students available online. The program is comprised of carefully levelled guided readers, comprehensive phonic activities and a wealth of supplemental reading material which gradually develop a child’s reading skills in a sequential and enjoyable manner. Developed and approved by teachers and parents across the United States, Literactive is the acknowledged leader in early learning online. All the material is available for free from this site but you need to register. “

You do have to register to use the site materials, and the files are .exe files which might be blocked for downloading at school, so you may need to download them at home and bring them on flash drive to install. If you find the site useful, I can talk to the tech department about having access to the files unblocked. Let me know what you think about it!

“For the first time ever, all seven of The 39 Clues authors unite to answer kids’ most pressing questions in a LIVE webcast event! Tune in as the New York Times bestselling group of author-agents inspire readers with behind-the-scenes information on the Cahills, provide insight into their favorite parts of the Clue hunt, and even reveal explosive new information.”

The last book of the 39 Clues series arrives next week! Be sure to catch the live webcast on Tuesday, August 31 at 3:00 to see all of the authors of the books. If you can’t watch it live, it will be archived immediately following the broadcast so you can view it at a more convenient time. I have copies of all of the books in the series in the library, and they have great history connections.

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!