Summer is a great time to explore, dig into things that fascinate, and learn something new — through books! Here you’ll find stories about aliens, ghosts, dragons, detectives, and adventurers. You can travel the world through food, experience nature through poetry, become an expert on facts about our world (including the world’s smallest creatures), and much more. We hope you’ll have fun exploring!
Some students identified with autism can participate successfully in whole-class rich literacy experiences, with the right kind of support. Learn about strategies for designing lessons that are appropriate, engaging, and challenging for every learner in the inclusive classroom.
Tanya Lee Stone writes a little bit of everything — science, history, biography, poetry, and fiction — for kids and teens. She’s written middle grades biographies of pioneering women in the NASA space program, Amelia Earhart, and Ella Fitzgerald; picture books about suffragettes and artist Alexander Calder; and a series of books about animal camouflage. She throws herself into her research to provide context for the facts and to make her stories come alive. As Stone herself says, “A book isn’t the end of information on a topic, a book is the beginning of a conversation.”
Creative writing plays an important role in a child’s literacy development. This article makes suggestions for the instruction and evaluation of children’s stories.
Say the name “Shel Silverstein” aloud and adults and children alike think of clever, sometimes subversive, poems with comic line drawings and lots of laughs. You know that when you pick up a book by this writer and poet you’re in good hands. Find familiar and less familiar books on this list — and celebrate language, poetry, and an astute creator of books for children of all ages.
It’s a new year and things are on the move! Visit a firehouse, put on wings and fly through poetry. Take a trip to the moon. Travel by train — old or modern. You can do this and more in the pages of these books suggested here.
Thinking about the sounds in words is not natural, but it can be fun. Here are some games children can play to develop phonemic awareness, as well as a method for segmenting words that prevents children from distorting the pronunciation of the phonemes.
How your classroom is arranged can have a big effect on your ability to effectively manage your class. This article discusses some ideas you should keep in mind as you set up your classroom.
April 22nd is Earth Day, an annual celebration dedicated to environmental awareness. Discover five ways you and your family can participate in Earth Day while also practicing reading and writing skills.
Nikki Grimes was born in Harlem, but grew up in many different parts of New York. As a foster child from a broken home, she moved from place to place, always saying goodbye to new friends. Reading and writing became her survival tools. When she had no one else to talk to, Grimes wrote poems and stories about the things that were bothering her. As an avid reader, she checked out library books by day and read at night by flashlight.
While parents understand the importance of reading to children, it is often a struggle to read to two. How can parents negotiate the “book wars,” when one child only wants to read chapter books and the other insists on reading picture books? What can parents do when one child wants to read about dinosaurs and the other wants to read about ballerinas?
Greg Tang is on a mission to improve the quality of math education and understanding in the United States. Each year he travels the country, giving hundreds of workshops and presentations for teachers and students. With a background in economics, business, and math education, Tang is intent on developing “a more intuitive approach to math, one that combines problem-solving and arithmetic and integrates math with language and art.” In addition to writing engaging picture books such as The Grapes of Math and The Best of Times, Tang also develops teaching guides, workbooks, flash cards, and math games.
