In Focus: Three Ideas for Summer Writing
We're looking for young, creative writers and filmmakers to participate in our Exquisite Prompt "Write It, Film It" Summer Video Contest. Seven authors from the Exquisite Corpse Adventure inspired our prompts which encourage kids to flex their creative writing and visual thinking muscles while exploring specific genres including silent movies, animation, superhero action, and historical fiction. Prizes include a Flip HD video camera, book and DVD collections, and movie tickets! Learn more > When engaging in writing, young children often mirror what they see around them: adults and older children writing lists, notes, and thank you letters. For some kids, writing with a purpose keeps them writing. Read article > See related blog post > What's more interesting than reporting on the goings-on in your neighborhood? With sports, travel, food, comics, movie and book reviews, weather mapping — not to mention some good old fashioned investigative journalism — there's something for every interest and skill level. Read more > See related article >
Books & Authors Editor, publisher, essayist, children's book advocate, and the author of 100 Best Books for Children and Everything I Know I Learned from a Children's Book, Anita Silvey has devoted 35 years to promoting books that inspire children to become enthusiastic, lifelong readers. In this interview, find out what Silvey thinks about the future of the book and listen to the thrilling real-life anecdote about the creators of Curious George. As she says, "every children's book tells a story, but every children's book has a story behind it." Watch interview > Meet "Mighty Jackie, the Strike-Out Queen" and other baseball greats, learn baseball basics from A to Z, or re-visit the classic ballad Casey at the Bat — beautifully designed as a vintage scrapbook. Sharing these books about our national pastime with kids is like finding the prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jack™ box. See baseball booklist >
Ideas for Educators School's out for summer but you may already thinking about new ways to create more effective learning spaces for all the different learners you'll have in next year's class. The wiki "Dare to Differentiate" offers a rich collection of resources for organizing flexible groups, creating group lesson plans, making groups inclusive, encouraging independence, assessing group work, and much more. Go to wiki > Video book trailers can be a wonderful way to create excitement about a classroom read aloud or reading assignment, scaffold story narrative, and model literary techniques like cliffhangers, foreshadowing, mood, pacing, and tone. When kids create their own, they're learning how to write storyboards, work with images and sound, and shape strong, compelling narratives. Discover more about teaching with book trailers > For lovers of crossword puzzles, anagrams, Scrabble, etymology, Boggle, slang, portmanteaus, rhyming words, and the like, "50 Coolest Online Tools for Word Nerds" is a goldmine. You'll find lots of games and ideas for classroom activities when the new school year rolls around. Just dig in… Go to website >
Ideas for Parents Higher order thinking (HOT) goes beyond basic memorization and recounting simple facts. It's the deeper kind of thinking that requires kids to do something with the facts: understand, infer, connect, categorize, manipulate, assemble in new ways, and apply. This article describes several simple ways that parents can encourage children's complex thinking. Learn more > July is National Parks and Recreation Month and you don't need to travel far to celebrate. Use all five senses to "hunt" for natural treasures in your backyard, neighborhood, or any green space. In these download and print activity sheets from the National Wildlife Federation, you'll find a scavenger hunt list, wildlife observation checklist, animal homes tally sheet, and lots more. For older kids, why not try geocaching — high-tech treasure hunting that connects kids to a worldwide community of enthusiasts. Go to scavenger hunt webpage > Go to geocaching website > This comprehensive list describes apps that support reading, writing, communication, organizational skills, and much more. A homework tracker, alphabet flashcards, American Sign Language, and visual whiteboards are just a few specific examples. Browse the apps list >
Research & News What happens when kids get the individualized intervention, prevention, and enrichment services they need? City Connects, an innovative program in 11 Boston elementary schools, has shown remarkable improvements in reading, writing, and math achievement with a simple, relatively low-cost idea: ensuring that existing school and community services actually reach under-served students. Find out how they do it and see details about the very encouraging outcomes — especially for their English language learners. Read article > Quest to Learn, a new public school in New York City, built their curriculum and school culture around game theory and a child's natural motivation to learn the "rules of the game." Game design and complex systems thinking are core elements. "The big idea of the school is we looked at how games work — literally how they're built and the way they support learning — and we thought could we design a school from the ground up that supported learning in the way games do," says Katie Salen, one of the executive directors. Learn more > We Give Books, created by the Penguin Group and the Pearson Foundation, enables anyone with access to the Internet to put books in the hands of children around the world who don't have them, simply by reading! Just choose the literacy campaign you want to read for and select the books you want to read. For each book you read online, a book is donated to the literacy group on your behalf. Go to website >
"Little Sal picked three blueberries and dropped
them in her pail…kuplink, kuplank, kuplunk! —from Blueberries for Sal, Robert McCloskey's 1949 Caldecott Honor book. Rediscover this timeless story with our Family Literacy Bag activities.
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