Cindy Dobrez and Lynn Rutan, middle-school librarians and longtime Booklist reviewers, prove that two heads are better than one when it comes to discussing YA and children’s books.
Join Team Buzz for a book-group bounty: tips, reading guides, news, helpful links, and more.
Interactive Tutorials | |||
| Credible Sources Count! — Outlines some questions to ask yourself when evaluating what you find on the web. |  | ||
| Research It Right! — Describes the steps of the research process from finding a topic to the final product. |  | ||
| Searching with Success! — Demonstrates how to better approach searching the web for information. |  | ||
| You Quote It, You Note It! — Explains the basics of avoiding plagiarism by learning why, when, and how to cite. |
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| Ralph Fletcher Item No.: WEU-0783 |
This set of professional learning modules supports schools to understand the reading, writing, and mathematics standards and how they relate to the New Zealand Curriculum.
1. How do the texts that we select and the tasks that we plan support students’ development and use of reading and writing as interactive tools?
2. How do we use texts and tasks to explicitly teach the knowledge, skills, and strategies that students need?
3. Do the programmes and texts that we use reflect the needs of different groups of students? For example:
Here is the banner I had hanging outside my ‘room’ wherever I worked:
L inking
I deas
B etween
R eaders
A nd
R esources -
I nforming,
E nriching,
S haring!
Note that it says Ideas, not just Information, because Imagination is just as important as factual content. Also note that there is no mention of format, since it’s the content of those ideas that is more important than the container that encapsulates them. Isn’t that what libraries — and librarians — are all about?
Here is a screenshot of Tagxedo - have a look at the gallery for more examples...
Reading Next (2004) is a cutting-edge report that combines the best research currently available with well-crafted strategies for turning that research into practice. Informed by five of the nation's leading researchers, Reading Next charts an immediate route to improving adolescent literacy. The authors outline 15 key elements of an effective literacy intervention, and call on public and private stakeholders to invest in the literacy of middle and high school students today, while simultaneously building the knowledge base. download >
Writing Next: Effective Strategies to Improve Writing of Adolescents in Middle and High Schools (2007), commissioned by Carnegie Corporation of New York and published by the Alliance for Excellent Education, discusses eleven specific teaching techniques that research suggests will help improve the writing abilities of the country’s 4th- to 12th-grade students. Along with reading comprehension, writing skill is a predictor of academic success and a basic requirement for participation in civic life and in the global economy. download >
At the end of her blog post, there is a link to another blog Educating Alice by a teacher who read this book to her 4th grade students (Year 5 / 6) http://medinger.wordpress.com/?s=when+you+reach+me&searchbutton=Go! and also their blog post responses...“Teens love to read thematic lists. This year’s lists will be popular with a wide range of teen readers,” said J. Marin Younker, committee chair. “There is everything from the hot topic of sex to an update of the well-read PPYA sports list from 1999. Also added to the mix are titles about the many forms of family and books for the obsessed fantasy fan. Enjoy!”
http://ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/booklistsawards/popularpaperback/08ppya.cfm
If I Stay by Gayle Forman. Dutton Juvenile, 2009. 9780525421030. Reviewed by Flemtastic Mia has a great family, a burgeoning music career and a sensitive boyfriend. Then her family dies in a car accident that leaves her severely injured. In the ICU, she has an extended out-of-body experience. Mia must decide whether to stay on earth, in pain and uncertainty, or to follow her family into the unknown of death.
Why I picked it up: It was nominated for the 2010 Best Books for Young Adults and I serve on the committee.
Why I finished it: This is a memoir told through flashbacks. It is told so gracefully that its genuine sweetness really stands out. It is not a morbid, torture-porn book. Mia's ability to observe her community's response to her accident is never explained, but it doesn't matter, because we are so involved with the characters. The reader is left to wonder right up until the end what decision Mia will make. Tissue Alert - this one is a tearjerker!
I'd give it to: Girls who are in band/orchestra will love the musical angle--Mia is a cellist and her boyfriend, Adam, is in a punk band. Kim, who is rebounding from a bad relationship and needs to know that good guys exist.
"Libraries are far more than a market, however. Libraries create readers. They are the test bed, the petri dish for books, a place where people can discover a passion for reading as children and indulge it as adults and where passionate readers can sample new authors. Librarians are the ultimate handsellers of books (though they call it readers' advisory), and increasingly they put their considerable technical skills into making library web sites rich interactive social networks for book lovers.
Many library users are also book buyers. Tim Spalding of LibraryThing noticed that when he mapped the location of bookstores and libraries in urban communities, bookstores often cluster near libraries, benefiting from the proximity. But libraries are much more broadly spread throughout the community. They bring books to places where future, and current, readers live but where no bookstore will go.
If there is one blog I mention to every teacher, librarian, and parent I meet, it is Jen Robinson's fantastic blog, Jen's Book Page. With weekly book reviews and links to scores of literacy-related articles and blog posts, Jen's blog is one-stop shopping for busy readers who want to stay abreast of the latest news in the kidlitosphere. I have discovered more new books and authors in one summer of visits to Jen's site than I could find in a year of web-surfing.
Jen, co-founder of a software company, with a PhD. in Industrial Engineering, started her blog because she loves children's books and believes that more adults should read kid lit for personal enjoyment and share books and reading with children.
A self-proclaimed "literacy evangelist," Jen champions literacy programs across the Internet. She co-hosts the Share a Story/ Shape a Future annual blog event, votes on the Cybils Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards Panel, and writes a regular column for PBS Parents' Booklights blog, "Tips for Growing Bookworms."
Run, do not walk, over to Jen's Book Page. Comb through her archived reviews and lists. Visit the well-chosen links on her sites. Enjoy her wild abandon for all things literary, and find another book crazy friend.
