Rockin' In My School Shoes ....

What was the last song you had stuck in your head?

Well, I know what the next song stuck in your head will be ...



While visiting Smith Farm Elementary School media center on the first day, I overheard a read-aloud and the song to go with it!

You probably guessed that it was a Pete the Cat book!

I have had "rockin' in my school shoes" stuck in my head for three days!

(Wonderopolis today calls things that get stuck in your head Earworms!)

My coworkers smiled at first when I sang those words and hummed the tune and then added their names ....

Then I think it became a bit much ...

But I just kept going because it was stuck in my head ...

I think I have decided that needs to be a theme song ...

I think all the things we (I) do each day should be worthy of

Can you think of things you have done that would qualify you to rock in your school shoes?

Can you think of things you can do?

That is my challenge!

Go rock those school shoes! :)

Read More

Let's Celebrate Children's Book Week!

Did you know it is Children's Book Week?




In celebration of Children's Book Week, Here is a list of 10 sites which offer children's books online )most of the offer a read aloud option too):

• Online Storytime from Barnes and Noble
• Online ReadAlouds for Kindergarten
• Read To Me
• Speakaboos
• Online Picture Books Read Aloud
• Between the Lions from PBS Kids
• SillyBooks
• Mighty Book
• Online Read Aloud Stories
• Mem Reads Aloud

Read More

Taking It to the Next Step Along With TPACK

• 
  

The reading teacher in me has been quiet and is ready to come back out ….

While reading is a great way to help a child grow in vocabulary and imagination, it is what you DO with what is read that really encourages and supports critical and creative thinking skills!

Technology can be used in many ways to support and encourage the many things that can be done with reading ....

Here are a few ideas of activities that can be used to support higher order thinking skills:Make a collage which might be found hanging in the bedroom of one of the characters and write a brief explanation of each item selected.

• Write diary entries that one of the characters might have written during the course of the story.
• Write a poem or a song that expresses one or more of the characters’ feelings.
• Create a piece of original artwork that interprets one of the themes in the book.
• Write and perform an original skit based on the book.
• Write letters that two of the characters might have written to one another about what was happening in their lives.
• Create an original board game based on the book.
• Write and record an original news broadcast about the events in the book.
• Draw a timeline of the book, complete with illustrations and commentaries about each event on the timeline.
• Create a cause-and-effect continuum of how and why the main character changes as a result of the events and situations that occur.

Did you notice the differentiation embedded in these activities? 

Children would be able to utilize their strengths to demonstrate their learning …

Choice could even be involved if you gave an assignment similar to this one:

• Choose a book (online or from the bookcase)
• Read the story
• Select and complete the activity that most appeals to you and/or best fits the story you read
• Explain why you chose the activity and how you completed it 

With the added explanation part, you are jumping into that metacognition area … asking children to really think about their thinking!

That is taking it to the next step!

You can look at the WSFCS TPACK Activity Guides to see possible technology tools that can be used for activities like this!

Click on a area and then you can find possible activities in the table along with suggested resources to use!

Read More

Reading is Great!

Here are some great reading resources. These resources can be a great resource to share with parents also.

Remember Reading is Fundamental? The website reads books to students. There are reading logs, activities, games, and lesson plans. Parents will have to help students under 13 to join the RIF club.

We Give Books is a resource that teachers can use to read books on IWB (interactive white boards). Teachers will have to join (it is free) in order to read all the books. Here are some activities that go with this web site: http://www.wegivebooks.org/resources.The activity that I liked the best is an Information Text Scavenger Hunt.

Two websites you might be interested in looking at are ReadWorksand LearnZillion. These websites are correlated to common core. Teachers will have to register for both of these, but they are free. Find reading passages for the holidays this month: Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving.

My very favorite online reading resource is Mrs. P Magic Library. When you first click on a story to have read to you, Mrs. P introduces the story and then makes a connection to it. I love listening to the way she reads the stories.

There are many more online reading resources that are free for teachers and students.

image created in Wordle 

Read More

What Are You Doing This Month?

What is your favorite type of book?

I am a big fan of picture books for children or all ages (even adults)!

According to the School Library Journal, a group of authors and illustrators banded together to declare November 2011 as the first Picture Book Month:

Picture Book Month is an international initiative to encourage and celebrate literacy with picture books, says founder Dianne de Las Casas, an author and storyteller, who along with authors/illustrators Katie Davis, Elizabeth O. Dulemba, Wendy Martin, and author Tara Lazar have joined forces to spread the word that picture books are alive and well, especially in this digital age where an unprecedented amount of picture books have been made into ebooks and are on ereading devices such as the iPad, the Nook, and the Kindle.

Since it is Picture Book Month again in 2012:

• I could make an extra long list of my favorite picture book and/or authors of picture book.
• I could develop a list of reasons for teachers to read picture books with their students.
• I could look through my writing resources and provide a list of picture books to use to highlight certain writing skills for students.
• I could approach this from an art perspective to describe the importance of the pictures in picture books.

Look at all these resources (all the sites listed are content partners of Thinkfinity):

Wonderopolis

• #254 Why don’t all books have pictures?
• #340 How many different ways can you read?
• #376 Where is the Hundred Acre Wood?
• #226 How can you become a better reader?
• #210 Who was Mother Goose?
• #150 Who was Theodore Geisel?

ReadWriteThink (I was surprised how many resources I found for middle and high school)

• The Children’s Picture Book Project
• Picture Books as Framing Texts: Research Paper Strategies for Struggling Writers
• Using Picture Books to Explore Identity, Stereotyping, and Discrimination
• Creative Writing Through Wordless Picture Books
• Inclusive Stories: Teaching About Disabilities With Picture Books
• Using Picture Books to Teach Setting Development in Writing Workshop
• Using Children’s Literature to Spark Learning
• Postmodern Picture Books in Middle School
• Females in the Spotlight: Strong Characters in Picture Books
• Comparing and Contrasting: Picturing an Organizational Pattern Using Picture Books as Mentor Texts
• Preparing for the Journey: An Introduction to the Hero Myth Using Picture Books

ArtsEdge 

• Set a Poem to Music:  After exploring a “singable” picture book as a class, each student examines a personally selected poem for rhythm to determine its musical meter. Using previous musical skills, students set the poem to music. As a final reflection, they create a two-page spread of a picture book that contains their “singable” poem.
• Map it Out:  Explore how illustrations contribute to the telling of a story by creating illustrations to accompany text, and then creating text to accompany illustrations. Students will explore picture books (without words) and discuss the specific elements of the illustrations that “tell” the story. They will learn to “read” illustrations as they look at the ways in which pictures reveal information about the characters, setting, and plot of a story.
• Animal Habitats: Pre-readers are introduced to animal habitats through story, song, and dramatic play using children’s picture books. Students use chronological ordering and phonics to reinforce beginning literacy skills. Students explore a non-traditional method of book illustration and create their own story page

Let’s Celebrate Picture Books this month and all year long!!

What are things you can do to celebrate Picture Book Month?

*I created the word cloud by copying and pasting a list of picture book titles using Wordle.net (I used a tilde ~ between words to keep the words in the titles together)

*Title Image created using LetteringDelights.com

Read More

Who is your favorite?

Part of my classroom library one year

Do you have a favorite author?

How many books have you read by that author?

Did you enjoy reading one book by that author so much that you went in search of other books by that author?

I admit that I do that as an adult reader. I greatly enjoyed reading Walking Across Egypt by Clyde Edgerton, so search for other books written by that author. I have enjoyed most of the books I have found, and I have found many books I would not have in any other way.

I often use that as an example when I hear students say that they don't know what to read next.

Looking back, I can't tell you how many Baby-sitter's Club books by Ann Martin I read growing up ... that was an author and series that I enjoyed reading. Judy Blume was another one of my favorite authors.

Do our children have favorite authors?

Do they know how to find other book written by that author?

Do they know how to find interesting bits of information shared by that author?

Do you know many authors of books for children and young adults share ideas, upcoming books, frustrations, and even things to laugh about using various types of social media?

Many of the authors and publishers have facebook and/or twitter pages. I have found better information on some of the publisher pages. There are also a large number of author who share things on their blogs (and sometimes you can even find contests and projects for students on those blogs).

On a day of learning at Simplek12, I attended a webinar about connecting with authors on the web as a way to motivate readers.

Here are just a few of the author with things out there for you to explore:

• Cynthia Leitich Smith (her webpage offers an EXTENSIVE list of info about authors on the web)
• Kate Messner (was a teacher, has a twitter acct, and an awesome blog post about starting a new book) She has a list of authors who skype with classes on her website!
• Grace Lin (has certain things she blogs about each day ... on Mondays she writes about what it on her desk and she shares fortune cookie Friday)
• Dan Santat
• Mo Willems

My challenge for you this week is to find a book you enjoy reading and then see what other information you can find on the author (and/or publisher) of that book.

Read More

Dr. Seuss Day

March 2 is Dr. Seuss Day. Who could ever forget those crazy rhyming books? I think my favorite has been One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. My favorite movie is How The Grinch Stole Christmas. What are some of your favorites?

Here are some resources for teaching about Dr. Seuss on Dr. Seuss day:

BrainPOP Jr. has a movie of the week on Dr. Seuss. 

Wonder of the day # 150 asks "Who was Theodor Geisel?" Find out more information about Dr. Seuss from Wonderopolis. As always, Wonderopolis has some great vocabulary words that go along with their "wondering". ReadWriteThink extends the lesson with "Reading Everywhere with Dr. Seuss".

Seussville has books, games, activities for students to try.

Dr. Seuss unit activities and lesson plans to go with the books you might read to your students.

Here is a free SMART Board Dr. Seuss theme that you can download to use on your SMART Board. 

Thinkfinity has several lesson plans for all grade levels on Dr. Seuss. Check them out here. I also went and checked out the calendar entry for March 2 in Thinkfinity. Here are some more interactives and lessons about Dr. Seuss.

Both SMART Exchange and Promethean Planet have lessons already created for Dr. Seuss. Click on the links above and type in Dr. Seuss in the search box to find a notebook file or flipchart you would like to use. Remember, you must be logged into SMART Exchange or Promethean Planet to download a lesson.

Image: 'Reading is Fun!' http://www.flickr.com/photos/7759477@N05/4405102135

Read More

Crazy Adventures ....

Last week my daughter brought home a picture she drew after her class read a Curious George book in the media center. While she was telling me all about her picture, I realized she was giving me a pretty good summary of the story. (She also told me the list of words on the side of the picture are words you are supposed to find in the picture on the other side of the picture .. but that is a topic for another post). I later found out from the teacher that they were focusing on setting and characters when they completed this activity.

I wondered if I could find other things related to Curious George that might interest her. I went to one of my favorite resources, Thinkfinity.org, to do a search and found a great k-2 lesson from ReadWriteThink:

Taking Photos of Curious George: Exploring Character Through Images:

What would Curious George do if he visited your school? What crazy adventures would he have? These and many other questions provide the framework for students to create a digital class book about Curious George’s adventures in their school. In this lesson, students begin by exploring a familiar character (Curious George) by using books, a website, and a graphic organizer. Students extend what they have learned by imagining what George would do if he visited their school. Students work in pairs to discuss locations in the school George might visit and what he might do in each location. Next, students take George on a trip to each location and take a photo of him posed in a humorous way. After taking pictures of the funny monkey in a variety of poses and locations, students work together to create a storyboard and then a digital "book" that tells their story.

I see ways the ideas in the lesson could be used with other storybook characters besides just Curious George. Have students think about the main character in the book he or she just read and consider some of the questions listed in the description above ... and then build off of that.

The  ReadWriteThink  lesson plan pulls in the possibility for using many technology tools (adapt this lesson to use the idea with the tools you have):

• digital camera 
• computer with internet access
• digital storytelling sites
• presentation resources/sites
• websites 

Many of the ideas in this lesson go along with the Information and Technology Essential Standards as well as the ISTE NETS for Students, while also meeting various reading and writing standards.

Think about all the creative thinking this would encourage ... and even require. In my mind, creative thinking is a form of critical thinking as well.

Just because this lesson is designated as a k-2 lesson, that does not mean that it would not also have wonderful results with older children. This could be used as a great prompt for the creation of a story and some digital media.

Imagine all the crazy adventures that story character could have with students ...

Read More

Read ... Write ... Think ...

My daughter is in Kindergarten. She amazes me each day with the words that she says (and uses correctly). I know that her verbal vocabulary is much greater than the words she can read and write. She also has a very active imagination (hmmm ... wonder where that comes from?).

After talking with her teacher, it is clear that she has a good understanding of letter knowledge. She can the identify letters and tell you what sound that letter makes individually. It is when you put the letters together to make words that is causing a bit of trouble right now. We need to work on her ability to put those sounds together. She also really enjoys the way words are spelled. She will "read" a string of letters to me to find out what word they spell.

So I have been looking for some ways to work with her. Since my job is in Instructional Technology, it would make sense for me to look for some technology options (I also have a background in Reading Education).

The other day I came across some information on Thinkfinity about Puzzle Me Words from ReadWriteThink:

Puzzle Me Words is an exciting new interactive from ReadWriteThink.  Students in grades K-1 learn about language by combining letters to form words based on the pictures that they see.  A talking school bus named Scootie reads the words aloud and further reinforces letter sounds for young learners. With each new round that is completed, students earn a new puzzle piece toward their prize puzzle: a coloring sheet they can print, color and display proudly at home or in school.  Try it with students today!

Although I thought that description was interesting, the way that I saw and heard my daughter interact with this activity made it so much better. I think it would be great to use with students in a classroom.

ReadWriteThink is more than just a website; it's a community of educators working to improve literacy learning for every student. ReadWriteThink is sponsored by IRA (International Reading Association) and NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English).

I wonder how Puzzle Me Word and many other resources from ReadWriteThink would be on an Interactive White Board (IWB) in a classroom for a small group of students as a center activity?

image source

Read More

How do you share book info and activities?

Do you ever assign projects and activities to go along with the books your students read in class?

Do you ever share information about the author of those book?

What about projects other students have done related to that book?

I enjoyed sharing that type of information with students when we were working with a book. I think knowing the background information and seeing how the book was interpreted by others adds to the comprehension ability.

I did have trouble deciding how to share all that information. At times, we used journals, posters, powerpoint presentations, and even 3-ring binders. If I had new things to add or needed to make changes to what was there already, then I ran into issues. Then I started just adding links to a webpage or a wiki (but that did not look very nice ... or as nice and colorful as I wanted it to).

I found that with GlogsterEDU, I could pull all of my ideas and links together in a creative and colorful way. There is a free teacher account available. Below is an example of a project page I used with my students. The pink circles that show up on some pieces are links.

I was able to add a video from SchoolTube that I found. I added links to information from the publisher about the story elements. I added instructions and links to activities for the students to choose to complete. I added background information on the author and the setting. I feel like I was able to pull things together using this type of presentation. GlogsterEDU was just the tool that I used for this project. There are many other great ones you could use to pull together the information you want to share.

Read More

Is a Tall Tale really tall?

Recently a Wonder-of-the-Day from Wonderopolis really got me thinking (but I guess that is what it is supposed to do): Why do they call it a "Tall Tale"?

Focusing on reading genres, like Tall Tales, was something I really enjoyed when I was in the classroom. We would do genre studies where we would explore many examples of a certain genre type and then talk about the similarities and characteristics we found. I also liked to introduce a variety of vocabulary words that could be associated with the genre. Wonderopolis has done a great job of pulling all those thing together! I could have used their help several years ago when I was trying to do all that. :)

I did a search on ReadWriteThink to find resources on Tall Tales:

• A lesson plan: Thundering Tall Tales: Using Read-Aloud as a Springboard to Writing
• A tall tales booklist
• A writing rubric for students to provide evidence that the stories they have written contain elements important in a tall tale
• A sequencing activity: Did Paul Bunyan gouge out the Grand Canyon before or after he dug the Great Lakes? Students create a life-sized timeline showing the sequence of events in this tall tale.
• A podcast: Gifts come in all shapes and sizes, and the characters in these four tall tales have plenty of unusual gifts to keep you reading all winter. Listen in to hear about them and to meet Ingrid Law, the author of Savvy and Scumble.

I also searched for Tall Tales resources on ArtsEdge:

• Tall Tales Today: Where have all the heroes gone?
• Exploring American Tall Tales: What can our tall tales tell us about the American spirit?

*Wonderopolis, ReadWriteThink, and ArtsEdge are all Thinkfinity Content Partners!!

image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/65172294@N00/4285640113

Read More

Explore Books in 60 Seconds!

Instead of "boring" text-based book reviews, 60second Recap offers teens engaging book summaries in 60 second video segments. Why 60 seconds? If you only have 60 seconds to get your point across, you have to think about whats essential and relevant for the reader to know. The Recaps provide a great way to generate class discussions about books and various literary concepts. What makes 60second Recap valuable?

• The videos are relevant, engaging, and to the point! (60 seconds or less)
  

• The Recaps deepen the meaning of a story in a way the reader can understand

• Videos segments are broken down into categories making it easier to find what you are looking for (an overview, plot, theme, motif, symbols, etc.)

• Their library offers a lengthy collection (including some of my favorites like Night and Animal Farm) to teachers and students
  

• There is a video gallery to help students understand complex literary terms like allegory, satire, motif, and many others
  

• Their "Recap Resource" provides writing resources like "How to write a paper that won't put your teacher to sleep..."

While you are enjoying your summer, take 60 seconds to explore a new book or refresh yourself on a classic. 60second Recap is worth a look!

Read More

A Book Treasure Chest

I grew up with a love of reading. I saw my parents reading. I saw books in our house (my dad's office is overflowing with books with folded corners and notes written on pages ... hmmm I just realized that may help explain why most of my books have folded corners and notes written in them). I remember stories being read to me, for some reason I really remember hearing Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst (one of my mom's favorite authors). I enjoy reading and learning about reading and books. I enjoyed teaching reading and writing when I taught 4th grade. I especially enjoyed connected reading and writing as well as helping students make those connections.

Even though I now work in Instructional Technology, I still love learning about reading and finding great children's books (I also have a 5 year daughter who I hope will enjoy reading too). I was delighted on day to find Anita Silvey's Children's Book-A-Day Almanac. Each day on her site, a book is presented along with some background of the story and/or the author. Anita Silvey has a nice way of telling just enough to get you interested but not giving away the whole story.

Daily children’s book recommendations and events from Anita Silvey.

Discover the stories behind the children’s book classics . . .

The new books on their way to becoming classics . . .

And events from the world of children’s books—and the world at large.

But there is more to look at that just one story each day! There is always an image of the book/story she is going to focus on the next day. You can also search the book archives by age group, book type, subject, date the book was showcased and more. I decided to look at the book searches and see what I could find!

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo was one of my favorite books to read and study with my 4th grade students (here are a few of the projects they did with this book). In that book, one can find some many opportunities to introduce, practice, assess, and reinforce so many reading and writing skills. (Not only did I enjoy reading it with students, I just enjoy the book too!). You can find this book discussed on Anita Silvey's site by looking for fiction books. You could also find it in the elementary school category.

As someone who likes to say that I try to learn something new each day, I am so glad to have found Anita Silvey's Children's Book-A-Day Almanac. Not only does she introduce a book each day, but a reader can find a box on the side with information about other events that happened on that day in history related to books and reading.

Since I wanted to remember to check her site each day since I was sure I would find lots of great information. I wrote to Anita Silvey and got her permission to place the Children's Book-A-Day Almanac's logo on the sidebar of my blog. (I added a picture gadget and then linked it to her site). I am glad she agreed because I love looking at the book treasure chest she is creating ...

Read More

Do you need to teach Reading? Writing? Thinking?

The ReadWriteThink website is a great place for teachers to find resources and ideas. ReadWriteThink is partners with the International Reading Association (IRA), National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and Thinkfinity. ReadWriteThink offers Classroom Resources, Professional Development, as well as Parent and Afterschool Resources. There are a number of Student Interactives available to support learning. This morning on twitter, I saw a tweet about one of those Student Interactives called FlipBook.

Here is the overview describing FlipBook:
The Flip Book is designed to allow users to type and illustrate tabbed flip books up to ten pages long. Students and teachers can use the flip book for taking notes while reading, making picture books, collecting facts, or creating question and answer booklets. Students can choose from nine different layouts for the pages of their books (shown left). A blank flip book is available for demonstration and planning.

I think FlipBook is a neat idea and I enjoy looking at the sample book, but I found myself wondering: What are some ways teachers and students could use a resource like FlipBook?
I continued looking at the page where I found the overview and was pleased to find lessons for various grade levels that use this interactive.

Here are a few of the lessons that caught my attention:

• Shared Poetry Reading: Teaching Print Concepts, Rhyme, and Vocabulary (grades k-2)



• Using Children’s Natural Curiosity to Lead to Descriptive Writing (grades k-2)
  


• Question and Answer Books--From Genre Study to Report Writing (grades 3-5)



• Characters in Because of Winn-Dixie: Making Lists of Ten (grades 3-5)
  


• A “Cay”ribbean Island Study (grades 4-7)



• When I Was Young In...A Literature to Language Experience (grades 6-8)



• Swish! Pow! Whack! Teaching Onomatopoeia Through Sports Poetry (grades 6-8)



• Students as Creators: Exploring Multimedia (grades 6-8)



• Blogtopia: Blogging about Your Own Utopia (grades 9-12)
  

image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/35240403@N02/3857853340/

Read More

Sounding like Shmoop?

For some unknown reason, this primarily elementary school person has been spending time learning about resources for middle and high school. Most of the sessions I attended at NCTIES were related to middle or high school, and I have spent the first three days of this week at either a middle or a high school. I wonder if someone is trying to tell me something ...

In the workshop I did today, I asked teachers for resources they thought would be useful to other teachers so I could include them in a teacher resource my school system provides. After one session, a teacher asked me if I had ever heard of Shmoop. I had to tell her that was one I had not heard of (and in my mind I was wondering about the site based on the name). That teacher said that site was shown to them last year, and when she starts a lesson series on The Odyssey, she visits Shmoop. She showed me that Shmoop has learning guides and teacher resources. According to the website, it is a collections of "lively learning guides by experts and educators."

For The Odyssey, I found information on the characters, quotes, themes, assignments/activities, setting, analysis, music/video/photos, as well as a summary and even more. They are even sections on certain types of quotes (ex. lies and deceit quotes). When I kept looking, I found a section of the challenges, pitfalls, and opportunities of teaching The Odyssey and with a guide to the Homer writing style in The Odyssey. Wow!

Here are the Popular Learning Guides listed on the site:

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
2. The Scarlet Letter
3. The Crucible
4. To Kill a Mockingbird
5. The Great Gatsby

6. Beowulf
7. Catcher in the Rye
8. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
9. Love the Way You Lie
10. American Revolution

Here are the New Learning Guides listed on the site:

1. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest
2. Titus Andronicus
3. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
4. Sound and Sense
5. The Wanderer

6. Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister
7. To Brooklyn Bridge
8. To the Virgins
9. Teaching The Aeneid
10. Teaching The Tell-Tale Heart
11. Satisfaction by The Rolling Stones

There are areas in Shmoop devoted to Literature, Poetry, Shakespeare, Best Sellers, US History, Civics, Economics, Biography, Music, Pre-Algebra, as well as exam prep and College 101. I was impressed by the high levels of information and background building materials to support critical thinking and analysis skills.

image from the shmoop site

Read More

Can you read me a story?

A few weeks ago, my 4 year old came home from daycare telling me about If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. I told her that I would try to find that book for us to read at home. Even though she kept asking about it, I kept forgetting to look for that book. (I think it may be in my boxes of "teacher stuff" in the basement) Over the last few weeks, I have been working to correct some (lots and lots) broken Learn360 links in WSFCS Learning Village (our county's curriculum warehouse where we want teacher to go for resources and ideas for planning lessons). One day I noticed something about Reading Rainbow and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie on Learn360. One hundred fifty-three Titles from Reading Rainbow have recently been added to the content available in Learn 360. I knew I had found a solution to my problem (or at least something that would give me a little more time before searching in all those boxes downstairs). My little one would probably love hearing the book read aloud and seeing the illustrations on the computer screen. That got me thinking about how teachers could use some of these titles with their Interactive White Boards (IWBs). Imagine how students would react to having that large of a screen to view a book! Hearing and seeing the story appeals to multiple learning styles.
I searched through my delicious bookmarks (and a few tweets on twitter) to see what else I could find to provide students with similar storytelling experiences.
Here is what I have found so far:

• Storyline Online
  
• StoryBee
• StoryCove - A World of Stories
• Topsy Turvy Tale
• LoudLit
• Smories
• Mrs. P's Magic Library
• StoryNory
• Signed Stories
• BookHive
• Big Universe
  

Please let me know what other sites can be added to this list!

image from Phillip Martin ClipArt

Read More

Big Universe

"Instill the love of reading, writing, and learning."

I think that statement pretty much sums up what I think education should do for students. Those were my goals as a classroom teacher, and finding that statement as the heading on a website made me like the site before really even looking at it!
Big Universe is a place to "read, share, and create books online" that uses the above statement on its homepage. I have enjoyed reading and sharing some ideas from there on twitter (@biguniverse). Since I enjoy many of the ideas they tweet, I decided to go look at their site. There is information there for parents and educators, as well as an informative video. The reading teacher in me started thinking of some ideas, but then I wondered about the quality of the stories. so I decided to try them out. My 4 year old daughter crawled up in my lap while I was looking at the computer(21 inch widescreen monitor), so I thought I would read some stories with her. We started off looking at the FREE member-created books. My little one enjoyed naming the animals in the The Wild ABC's by Reaghen West. She wanted to read more. I started thinking about how reading and even creating alphabet books like that could be used as a great project at school for younger students learning the alphabet but also a project for older students to see what they had learned at the end of a unit.
My little girl did not want to stop, so we looked for more. This time we looked at one of the Premium Publisher Books (not free, but there is a free trial): What Really Happened to Humpty? My little one loved all the characters that she recognized, and I liked the more complicated mystery story line that would interest older elementary school students. The illustrations for this story looked nice. I liked the way you could "turn the pages" with the click of a mouse to make it even more like a book. I kept thinking how nice it would be to use a story like that on an Interactive White Board. The teacher could "write" on the story to emphasize and teach certain skills. Students could circle the parts of the story/pictures that helped them predict what would happen next. The story would be large enough for all to see.
I let my little one choose one more story. She wanted a pirate story, so I decided to try out the search box (keyword, category, reading level, age, subject, genre). When I typed in pirate, there were three choices. She chose The Pirates? The Princess (those are her two favorite things right now). This was another Premium Publisher Book, but this one had a read aloud option with it. My daughter and I were both impressed with the read aloud since the characters had different voices, there were some songs, and the words in the story changed color as they were read aloud.
Both the parent and the teacher in me really like this site, the quality of the stories, and all the other things it has to offer involving both reading and creation of the stories (there's over 7,000 images available). Even though I am a big fan of FREE things, I could see myself paying for this.

image from http://www.biguniverse.com/

Read More