It has been an incredible week of sharing … personal stories and reading journeys’, triumphs and stumbling blocks; and literacy ideas for home, school, just about anywhere. I cannot put into words how thrilled I am to *see* so many new faces and to have found some new literacy passionistas. Thank you one and all!  So before I devolve into total gushiness, here is today’s lineup. Jen has things broken down very nicely, and I am (unabashedly) pasting them in here.

Addressing some fundamental questions

• Dawn Morris shares “Am I a failure if I don’t read with my kids?” at Moms Inspire Learning. Dawn says: “Parents are juggling so much these days, and they may not have the time, the patience, or the desire to read with their children. How can they prevent themselves from dropping the ball of literacy? Let me count the ways…”
• Mary Ann Scheuer shares “How do I help my child learn to love reading if I am not a great reader myself?” at Great Kid Books. Mary Ann says: “If you want your child to enjoy reading, start by making reading time and story telling pleasurable. Think back to your own childhood. What memories bring warmth and a feeling of connectedness?”
• Amy Watson will be sharing ”Help! My Reading Interests are Different from my Child’s” at Literacy Launchpad.

Managing expectations and reading levels

• Melissa shares “Kicking it Up a Notch: When Children are Stuck in a Reading Rut” at Book Nut. Based on her experience with her daughters, Melissa shares some ideas for getting kids who can read, but choose to spend their time doing other things, interested in books.
• Mary Lee Hahn shares “Trusting Your Child to Make It through His/ Her Current Reading Phase” at A Year of Reading. Mary Lee says: “As a parent, you will only live through your child’s fourth grade year one time. As a teacher, I’ve lived through fourth grade more than 20 times. Trust me when I tell you that in almost every case, your child will make it through “That Reading Phase.”"
• Kate Messner shares “The Trouble with Great Expectations: Should kids be pushed to read more difficult books?” at Kate’s Book Blog. Kate says: “If we respect kids as readers, they come to trust that they can count on us to offer them the right books at the right time. In my experience, that’s the best way to nurture kids to become passionate, lifelong readers.”
• Dawn Little shares “Resisting the Urge to Create a Reading Superstar” at Literacy Toolbox. Dawn says: “These days, moms should really have the title of “Supermom”.  Not only do we have to juggle work, kids, husband, and maybe a little time for ourselves, but we also feel the pressure to make sure our kids are ready to read, if not already reading, before they begin kindergarten…  As pressures mount on parents these days, resist the urge to create a reading superstar in just two simple steps!”

Keeping things fun and fresh

• Esme Raji Codell shares “After the Love Has Gone: Read-Aloud for the Young and the Restless” at Planet Esme. Esme says: “I am … riffing about that unthinkable time when your child doesn’t want you to read aloud any more. Maybe they are busy “tweenagers.” Maybe they think read-aloud is for babies. Maybe they want to do it themselves. Maybe there is a divergence of interests. Sniff-sniff! What to do? Here are some strategies to bring even the biggest or busiest kid back to the book.”
• Pam Coughlan shares “Reading is Boring (Sometimes)” at Mother Reader. Pam says: “So, reading to your kids. It can be a wonderful experience, a chance to slow down in the busy day and share something together. I dare say that often you will find it a nice thing to do. My point isn’t to tell you that reading to your kids is boring, but instead to give you permission to sometimes feel like reading to your kids is boring. Because when we as mothers set ourselves up to a certain expectation to how something Should Be, we can fail to work with How It Is. “
• Sarah shares “Let the Sillies Out: Reading to Babies and Young Children” at In Need of Chocolate. Sarah says: “when it comes time to read to your child, grandchild, niece, nephew, or young friend, most adults feel ridiculous roaring like a giant or mooing like a cow.  How do we get over our embarrassment at making barnyard noises or pantomiming an elephant sneezing? I have some suggestions that may help you make small changes in how you read and lead you to eventually roar and yelp and baa and crawl around like the silliest of adults.”
• Joyce Grant shares “Getting Your Video-Kid Reading” at Getting Kids Reading. Joyce says: “Your child loves video games but isn’t a big reader? No problem. Here are some tips that will get your video-loving kid reading.” She follows with seven wide-ranging tips.
• Caroline Lennox shares “Princess Books? Give Me a Break!” at Learning Parade. Caroline says: “Encouraging my daughter to develop a love of reading has luckily not been too difficult for us; developing her reading interests beyond “Princess Books” has been the hurdle. You know the books we’re talking about here – the pink, the frilly, the ‘life is sweet’ type that sometimes offer a free tiara and the like.”

Thank you all for joining us this week. There is lots of new stuff still happening at the Share a Story-Shape a Future blog.  There is one more day of Writing about Reading, with three questions related to building a reading bond with kids. We have also opened the polls for the RIF Multicultural Books giveaway, the PicPocket Books giveaway is still open, and, in honor of “the future” (as in young readers) we have announced our Bedtime Stories giveaway.

When I was seven years old, I got my first watch … An Alice in Wonderland watch. I still have it.  I didn’t know Lewis Carroll’s classic tale (or even the Walt Disney-fied version), but I knew that Alice was a girl in a book. Eventually I saw the movie, and I liked it. But I never got around to reading it. So last year, when I received an updated copy to read and review, I thought it was the perfect time to pull out this classic and share it with my daughter. I didn’t like it and eventually we abandoned it. I was shocked, I thought the fun of what I remembered (mostly the White Rabbit) would come flooding back. It didn’t. I tried to continue reading after Catherine lost interest, but I just never warmed to it, in large part, because I found the language stilted.[Image credit: ebay auction, now closed.]

In each generation there are books that are timeless and books that are frozen in time.  Societies change, mores change, “modern day life” evolves, yet there are stories we loved (some with life lessons, some without) that we want to pay forward to kids. We want them to be hooked on books, embrace the journey, enjoy the thrills that we did. But how?

Today, Donalyn Miller is hosting Reading through the Ages: Old Faves and New Classics at The Book Whisperer blog.  Donalyn says it best: “We have been readers since childhood, you see. Someone special shared a story with us once, and shaped our futures as lifelong readers. Through our posts, we will reminisce about cherished childhood classics and reading experiences, and share newer books that might be classics someday. Post comments about your reading memories and book titles for Share a Story readers.”

• Read favorite “First Lines from Children’s Books” and contribute your favorite first lines at The Pen and Ink blog.
• Danielle Smith at There’s a Book blog, invites authors and readers to share childhood favorites in When I Was Young: The Books That Got Them Started.
• Tess Alfonsin offers her own Classic and Contemporary Favorites at the Reading Countess blog. I know that Tess will add at least five more books to my to-read pile before the end of her post.
• Author, teacher, and blogger, Kate Messner discusses Dystopian Science Fiction,” both past and present, at Kate’s Book Blog.
• Paul Hankins, blogs about Nurturing the Now to Nudge the Next: Read Alouds in the Secondary Classroom, and reveals how this historically elementary school event engages his high schoolers. (You must sign up for the RAWIncK ning to view the post. The ning is free.)
• Professor Nana, Teri Lesesne, identifies The New Classics: New Books for Tweens on Classic Themes.
• Last but not least, Donalyn will have her own Something Old, Something New post that pairs timeless favorites and new books for readers looking for a similar book.

I will be adding any/all updated links to the Share a Story ~ Shape a Future blog. Today’s Writing about Reading prompts all focus on going back to our childhood to talk about some favorites.

Off to do some reading, I’m late, I’m late …

Received: 18
Read: 41
Reviewed (new): 26

Favorite Re-Reads

Reading Beyond the Books

Crossword Puzzles [image credit: Wikipedia]

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Bilingual Books (All Audiences)

Picture Books (All Audiences)

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Easy Readers (for New and Developing Readers)

Even though it is a picture book, Happy Valentines Day, Mouse! is an excellent candidate for this category. This is also true of In My Grandmother’s Garden.
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Illustrated Short Chapter Books

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Middle Grade Chapter Books (Fiction and Nonfiction)

Mia the Magnificent

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Young Adult Chapter Books (Fiction and Nonfiction)

Scars by Cheryl Rainfield

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Book Talks Updated with Teen Reviews

(Links go to Reading Tub website review.)

>Book cover images link to Amazon.com. When you buy a product via one of our links, we earn a small commission from the sale. You are under no obligation to purchase through them.

… I know you’ll have a ball
Just turn off the TV and read them all

drama and art all make you smart
with a book you’ll be so entertained
fill up my mind with nonfiction
let’s get the facts and
use them up
collaborate
graduate
feed you brain
and then we’ll just keep on reading
This book’s gonna be a good book to read!

(song: I Gotta Feeling, with new lyrics 2010)

When we think of kids in reading, we often default to fantasy, adventure, mystery – action-packed stories that can wrap themselves around kids. But what we’re learning more recently is that nonfiction can have that same hook. We read lots of nonfiction, and I can tell you that it looks nothing like the junior textbooks I grew up with. Yes, there are some “dry” books to be sure, but we’ve explored nonfiction pop-ups and interactive stories, too. These are exciting times.

Today, Sarah Mulhern – the Language Arts teacher I wish I had – is hosting The Nonfiction Book Hook at The Reading Zone today. In addition to her own post about pairing nonfiction with fiction in the classroom and some reviews of a few science/nature books for use in middle school, she links you to great ideas by other nonfiction lovers.

• Anastasia Suen talks about sharing nonfiction with new readers at 5 Great Books;
• Dawn Little, who is talking about Real World Reading with Preschoolers … at the Literacy Toolbox;
• Monica Edinger is offering information about educating alice;
• Jessica talks about Hooking Reluctant Middle Grade Readers (You Choose and Wicked History Series) at 26 Letters;
• Melissa is talking about finding books with childhood memories a little later in life with After Little House, what? at Kidlit History;
• Natasha Maw is talking about nonfiction for early readers and their parents at Maw Books blog; and
• Amy Mascott is talking about Everyday Nonfiction Newspaper Reading at Teach Mama.

Today’s Writing about Reading prompts ask you to think about some nonfiction, your favorite place to read, and books that turned your dormant reader(s) into rabid ones.

[Share a Story - Shape a Future logo created by Elizabeth Dulemba]

So today we’re jetting to Australia, where Susan Stephenson of the Book Chook is hosting Literacy Your Way, Literacy My Way Down Under. Thanks to the always-on-top-of-cool-things Travis Jonkers at 100 Scope Notes, I was add a little creativity of my own to my post today. It’s a book (Diary of a Wimpy Kid) … it’s a movie (ditto)  … it’s a graphic (avatar) … it’s a 21st Century Wimpy Me! You can wimpify yourself, too! Just go here.

As I’ve mentioned a few times – most frequently in the monthly roundup of new resources – Susan is always on the lookout for ways to engage kids with literacy. As she often explains, literacy is more than just reading. It is the way we share ideas and knowledge, how we express ourselves, understand one another, and solve problems. Susan also understands that we don’t all learn or process information in the same way, so when she plays with researches – a tool, she looks for all of the creative ways it can be used.

Today at The Book Chook blog she is covering the full gamut of literacy, from traditional storytelling to fun and games to 21st Century tools (aka Web 2.0). It’s already afternoon in Australia, so hurry along … you don’t want to miss out. I am posting the lineup here and  adding live links over at the Share a Story ~ Shape a Future blog.  If you can’t wait, Susan already has them up in Literacy My Way at the Book Chook. Don’t forget to check out Writing about Reading Day 2 … our questions help build on the themes Susan and her guests talk about.

We hear stories before we read them, so it only seems natural that Susan opens the day with a pair of interviews with storytellers. Join her for her chats with Francie Dillon and Helen Evans at the Book Chook. Then *hear* some more stories …

• At Saints and Spinners, Farida Dowler shares ideas for Stories in the Bathtub;
• At Dulemba.com, illustrator Elizabeth Dulemba talks about the future of reading in an article called Beyond the Printed Page;
• Last November, Rebecca Taylor talked about sharing family stories and Family Stories Month at Lost in Books;
• Franki Sibberson talks about digital storytelling in a pair of posts at A Year of Reading. First up, her February post Discovering the Possibilities of Stopmotion in Grades 2-5. She also talks about making Tricky Videos with Klutz;
• Dawn Morris helps us understand that literacy is more than just reading and writing. Head over to Moms Inspire Learning for the Circles of Literacy; and
• At Chatel Village, Kim Chatel shares more about Storytelling in a Multimedia World.

Sometimes we have to be a little creative when it comes to getting kids interested in activities related to reading. If you’re looking for ways to sneak in some literacy …

• Join Joyce Grant at Getting Kids Reading to get ideas on ways to Get Active Kids Reading.
• Pull out all stops. Amy Mascott shares some of her tips for getting a little sneaky at Teach Mama.
• Think pictures. Rebecca Taylor talks about Combining Art with Literacy in the Early Childhood Environment at I’m Lost in Books.
• Grab a puzzle. Jen Funk Weber offers an off-the-beaten path way to literacy in her discussion of puzzles as a literacy tool at Needle and ThREAD: Stitching for Literacy.
• Get sticky! At There’s a Book, Danielle Smith (aka The First Daughter) makes the case for using activity and sticker books.
• Stacey Shubitz at Two Writing Teachers talks about Linking Reading and Writing.
• S-I-N-G! Catherine Oehlman (the “Squiggle Mom“) shares why good little singers become good little readers in through her topic Linking Music in the Early Years.
• Add to the story. Valerie Baartz explores Simple Story Extensions for Preschoolers at her site The Almost Librarian.

We hope you’ll join the conversation … or better yet grab an idea and go “off line” to enjoy the fun. Just as we did yesterday, we will be tweeting posts using the #SAS2010 hashtag. We’d love to hear from you! Tweet your ideas, too … as long as you are sharing for the greater good, not promoting a product.

We selected the theme It Takes a Village to Raise a Reader because this is a job bigger than what a parent, teacher, or librarian can do alone. It takes all of us.  To help illustrate that point, our opening theme today is The Many Faces of Reading. This is a walk around the proverbial village … parents, teachers, librarians, and hopefully you, share ideas on ways to connect kids with books …  (image credit: created by Susan Stephenson using toondoo.com)

Updated: Adding links as they go live.

NEW: Just checking in and not sure where to start? Then head over to Tif Talks Books. Tif has superb summaries of each post ready to help you.

At home

• To kick off our morning Lee Wind starts us off with Dads! He shares the 3 Secrets of Reading with Your Daughter.
• Greg Pincus tells us how sharing a story is the gift of a liftetime at Gotta Book.
• Melissa Taylor offers a win-win-win with parent-child book clubs at Imagination Soup. Don’t tell anyone, but this is the best book club you’ll ever join.  From Melissa: “PS, Oprah, I’ve got one on ya. You forgot the kids.”
• We can’t talk family literacy without Just One More Book . I wrote Andrea Ross a note, thinking she and Mark had done a podcast about reading together, but she reminded me that I was thinking about her article The Family that Reads Together … What’s In It for Me? She wrote this as a guest blogger for the Children’s Book Review.

In School

• Sarah Mulhern will talk about the teacher-student relationship at The Reading Zone. This morning she is talking about social reading.
• NEW: M Dahms talks about the parent-teacher relationship and how they view books and reading in About Readers Workshop: The Faces of Reading at A Reader’s Community blog.
• I am sharing my experience as a volunteer reading tutor here at Scrub-a-Dub-Tub.

In Our Communities

• At Eva’s Book Addiction, Eva Mitnick is going to tell us about the Grandparents and Book Volunteer Program in the Los Angeles Public Library. The “GAB Program” started as a pilot in one library is now in 72 branches of the Los Angeles public library.
• Carol Rasco, President of Reading is Fundamental, talks about the who’s and why’s of community readers in partnerships in Why So Many Faces? at Rasco from RIF.

• NEW: Marge Loch-Wouters celebrates the Frequent Reader Club at Tiny Tips for Library Fun.
• NEW: Think libraries don’t matter? Susan Stephenson explains why you’re dead wrong at The Book Chook blog.

We’d also like to encourage you to head over to read about, vote for, and promote Everybody Wins USA’s National “Read to Kids” campaign. This is a project that brings together all of the stakeholders in the proverbial village. From the proposal: “A national ‘Read to Kids’ campaign could engage national and local literacy organizations, schools, teachers, parents, authors, publishers and nearly every sector of business and society that understands that our nation’s future depends on our children’s literacy skills.”

With that, I’ll leave you to start your walk around town. I am so excited to have the global village coming together for the event. We have bloggers in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom (Ireland and Great Britain), and the United States this year! If you joined us last year, I’m so glad you’ve come back. If this is your first time following the tour, I hope you’ll join in. Each day we have a theme, with a group of bloggers writing about topics related to the theme. Our daily host will link you to her guests, and you can also follow along at the Share a Story blog.

If you’re usually a lurker, be brave and leave a comment at a blog or two. If you have written a post on the topic or are inspired to write a post, be sure to add the link in the comments. New this year we have added daily writing prompts. If you’d like to write something but don’t know what, hopefully these questions will do the trick. Whether you leave the link on the host’s blog or Share a Story, I will add it to the master index throughout the week.

As has been our practice, we will update the direct links to the individual posts as they go live. You can also follow the discussions (or start one!) on Twitter. We’re using the #SAS2010 hashtag.

Welcome … we’re glad you’re here and would love to have you share your story.

For them, it isn’t only first grade or just second grade. It is the set of experiences that are the foundation of their attitude toward learning for the next ten years. Aside from reading with our kids at home, school offers the greatest opportunity we have to connect kids with books and help them become successful readers. For kids who don’t  read with Mom or Dad, it is likely to be the ONLY chance to engage them as readers. Reading mentors can help eliminate the gap that keeps kids from reaching their full potential.

For five years now, I’ve been a classroom volunteer. First as part of the Book Buddies program the Charlottesville City School System, and more recently at my daughter’s school. Spending time each week one-on-one with Kindergartners, first, and second graders ranks right up there with “mom” as one of my favorite jobs! So what have I learned? I am so glad you asked!

• I am better prepared to help my daughter. I started volunteering as a literacy tutor before Catherine started formally learning to read, so when the time came to start identifying books and looking for word patterns, I knew how to guide her choices.
• My Literacy Toolbox is filled with new ideas. There are lots of ways to make learning to read fun. I learned some new rhymes that can help kids remember letter-combination rules; I have some games and gestures that reinforce learning; and I added some new “tricks” to understanding how words work and how to help kids decode them.
• There is a method to the “madness.” In the Book Buddy program, we have a structured lesson plan for working with our student. Each lesson builds on the previous one, and over the course of a year you see how it all comes together. If I hadn’t had that experience, helping Catherine would feel like one step forward, two steps back. There is a reason why, as a first grader, she would bring home books that were “easy” for her. It’s about confidence.
• I have more realistic expectations about success. This is especially true of spelling. Just because kids can read a word, doesn’t mean they can spell it correctly. That has helped here at home when Dad frets that Catherine’s spelling is “awful.”
• I’m a rock star. Because I work one-on-one with students for a full year, you get to know them … and you’re sad when summer comes and you won’t see them next year. But whenever I am walking the halls and one of my reading buddies spots me, they yell for me, come give me a hug, and tell me all about how great they are doing.

On a broader scale, being “in the trenches” as it were has helped me in my role as literacy advocate. The road to helping kids become successful readers is not a simple, single path. School systems have different “methods”; students acquire skills at different paces; and students and teacher bring different attitudes to the process. I admit there were times when I wasn’t sure I was doing much good.

Each fall, when I met my new first grader Venable Elementary, I had a student who struggled with reading – and knew it. S/He would be pulled from class to work with me, so everyone knew they were getting “special help.” For a while, they would bring their I-don’t-like-reading attitude with them, but over time, the relationship would change.  Several times throughout the year if they met a specific goal, they could pick out a free book. They got SO excited about having a book all their own! In the spring, each Book Buddy receives a picture dictionary to take home. My students may have tired of Henry and Mudge, but they LOVED exploring the dictionary and doing the searches that were set out for them.

Participating in my community as a reading tutor (I prefer mentor) has been a wonderful experience … just ask Susan Thomsen. She recently wrote about her volunteer tutoring at Chicken Spaghetti. Volunteering as a reading mentor is most definitely a two-way street! I have learned so much from the students and teachers I work with. There are no age restrictions on being a reading mentor, and you don’t have to have any specialized experience … just an interest in reading. You also don’t have to have a child at your local school. Tutors come from all walks of life. Our common bond is that we want to strengthen our communities and give children the best start possible.

Sometimes there are gaps that need a bridge – Mom and/or Dad aren’t available to help with reading; teachers have lots of students … lots of reasons. Even investing just a little bit of time, makes a BIG difference. If you are interested, there are programs like Book Buddies in communities all over the country. We have some of them listed on the Literacy Organizations Page of our Wiki. If you know of others, please feel free to list them below.

photo credits: Picasa Web Albums. Click on image to take you to the original link.

The cover story for this week’s Parade magazine is What America Cares About, which is covered in the article “Compassion Counts More than Ever,” by Michael J. Berland. It is very heartening to see the great numbers of people volunteering in their communities. According to the Parade.com poll, “Ninety percent [of parents] said that they are working hard to teach their children the importance of activism.” What is not so heartening is that when Americans were asked how they would donate $100,000 for charity, literacy comes in13 of 16. Wow! So many of the higher-ranked problems – research to cure disease (2nd), poverty relief/job assistance (6th), public health (10th), would significantly benefit from eliminating illiteracy. Don’t get me wrong, these are very important issues that take all of us, it is just disheartening to see the perception of what literacy is and how it impacts our world.

I wish I had an excuse to head to Massachusetts. The Wavepaint Gallery, Ipswich MA is hosting “The Illustrator Show,” a display of works by children’s book illustrators Jarrett Krosoczka, Ed Emberley, Jamie Harper, Andy J Smith, Mary Jane Begin, Pat Lowery Collins, and Julia Purinton. The exhibit includes original illustrations will be presented beside their printed books. The Exhibit runs from March 1 to April 23. There is an illustration lecture/reception on April 23, 2010, from 4 to 7 pm). The Gallery Della-Piana in Wenham will have their own exhibit of children’s book illustration at that same time, so grab the kids and have a fun afternoon traveling up or down route 1A admiring art for children’s literature. Maybe I’ll luck out and some of my Northeast-based blogging friends will visit and tell us more … or maybe there will be a virtual gallery, too. (via Andy J. Smith on JacketFlap.com)

In today’s Charlottesville Daily Progress, librarian Jacqueline Lichtman tells us about the Tumble Book library at the Jefferson Madison Regional Library.  “Tumble Book Library, an online collection of animated talking picture books, … includes animated boos, reading comprehension quizzes and educational games. Kids love the movement and the voices, as well as reading along.” I’d love to link you to her article, but I couldn’t find it on DailyProgress.com. Grrr! Bottom line: TumbleBooks is purchased by schools and libraries, but is available for FREE to students and patrons. There are 30-day free trials ont he TumbleBooks.com website.

We had an Olympics oops in our house … opening night, no less. (image source: 2010 Winter Olympics on Wikipedia). It’s one of those “funny thing happened on the way to the Coliseum” type stories, so bear with me a sec.

For weeks before the event, every time we saw a commercial about the Olympics, Catherine would twirl about pretending to be an ice skater. Having told her about all the pageantry, she wanted to see that, too. That first night, she was over the moon about being able to stay up late to watch the Opening Ceremonies. Here we are thinking she’ll get to see all the beautiful stuff and learn about Canada.

And what do the organizers do? They move the parade of athletes to the TOP of the program so the athletes could see it. Shift gears. The colorful uniforms were good for a little bit, but then Catherine wanted know when Team USA would come in, since “U” is near the end of the alphabet and the skaters would be right after that. Having listened to the stadium announcer introduce each country first in French, then in English, we assumed (ahem concluded) that everyone was entering the stadium using the French alphabet. SO-O-O thinking that we would be the États-Unis d’Amérique, we told Catherine she could stay up until the American team entered the stadium. Silly parents …

We were W-R-O-N-G, but there was no backing off that promise. Team USA didn’t enter the stadium until about 10:30, and as soon as we got the commercial break. The TV went off.  By then Catherine was too tired to argue to see the show, and off to bed she went. The next day, though, our 21st Century girl asked if we could pull up the videos of what she missed.  So we found the Opening Ceremonies Encore on MSNBC. [Note: Link takes you to the Encore on the MSNBC website. NBC/MSN make you downoad "Silverlight" to watch the videos.]

About five minutes after settling in at the computer, Catherine came running out of the office asking for paper and a pencil.  She wanted to create a list so she could remember “all the weird things I see.”  Writing because she wants to? All right! She was busy writing for an hour!

Snow indoors … totomes (totems) …  whales coming out of the floor … waves really making a circle and turn to samen (salmon) .. and turn to totemes … guy with tatoot belly … leaf exploshon (explosion) …

and so on.  She filled both sides of a page and was so excited to read to us everything she saw. A gold medal performance. There are lots of lessons in this story, but my favorite is that you just never know where inspiration will come from. Even a video can be a writing prompt …

Was Catherine the inspiration for this month’s Prompt Idea post at Booklights? Well, head on over and tell me what you think …

Image source:

Opening Ceremony, Vancouver Sun

Team USA and Vancouver 2010 logos – Wikipedia

Welcome to the third Roundup of New Resources for the year.  The RoNR is published during the first week of each month and is a collection of linksto and ideas for tools that parents, kids, and teachers can use to help kids add more skills to their literacy toolbox.

Franki and Mary Lee at A Year of Reading are my go-to gals for everything 21st Century Literacy. I have been enjoying Franki’s series on using video tools with students. If you’re not sold on the value for literacy, then listen to this: “I think if you walk in and see what kids are doing, it looks like it is just a fun thing. But in reality, I think creating video can be a key to becoming critical readers and viewers. As I continue to reflect on documents that help us think about how literacy is changing and growing as the tools change and grow, I am trying to figure out ways to get this into our kids’ days.” Click here to read the full post and check out how some of those tools are working. You can also learn a lot from their recaps of the 2010 Dublin  Literacy Conference, which has been going on … wait for it … yep! 21 years.

Creative Literacy for Kids

Thanks to Educationtipster Kathy Stempke for introducing us to Guardian Angel Kids, a new interactive eZine for kids.  ”Children will the love the mascot, an adorable angel gecko named GAK. Stories, games, puzzles, activities, videos and more to entertain and delight your youngsters. This is a site you and your children will want to return to again and again.”

The Book Chook does it again! I’d say that February was a Book Chook techno month, but that’s true all year long! First, Susan introduced us to StoryJumper, which she describes as “another exciting webspace where children can write stories for an authentic audience.” The emphasis is mine – I like the idea that the kids can share their creativity or collaborate with “co-writers.” In a post about Word Clouds, she introduced us to The other site is ABCYa, a free website with educational games for elementary-aged students. “ABCya! educational games are free and are modeled from primary grade lessons and enhanced to provide an interactive way for children to learn.” (emphasis creators) The games were created or approved by certified teachers.

Rather than repeat all of Kathy Stemke’s hard work … I’m going to send you to Educationtipster and her collection of interactive websites for kids. That is one awesome list.

Literacy and Reading Tools for Parents

Carryout Text – This one is good for ANYONE! It is a FREE text-to-audio converter.  The  potential is limitless … newspaper and magazine articles, books, oh my! (via LarryFerlazzo)

Fruitphonics.com – I found this on at the Scad blog in a post about Mennell Media’s efforts to build interactive online educational tools.  ”The aim of the site is to provide all of the basic 44 phonemes and 20 or more more additional ‘blends’ together with the 100+ highest frequency words in the English language.” The videos can be used to help kids with letter sounds and pronunciation.  This could be particularly valuable for complementing work with speech therapists and ELL educators.

The Kidlitosphere Yahoo! group doesn’t get many props, but man it is filled with some of the coolest people. One of the new members who just introduced herself is Elizabeth, who goes by the moniker TinyReader and has a blog of the same name. She created the blog to share the ways her roles as mom and teacher overlap. “A new mom brings what she knows about literacy research and teaching to the world of mommies and daddies.” Do check it out. You’ll love her theme posts, like this one with songs of love and peace.

Literacy and Reading Tools for Educators

In the course of clicking through a Google Alert about a literacy study, I found Mendeley Research Networks, which describes itself as “like iTunes(r) for research papers.” It is a FREE research management tool that you can use for organizing, collaborating, and sharing research. You can add additional work to your “library” from anywhere.

Kim Cofino teaches a technology class that helps sixth graders that emphasizes independent learning through project-based activities. She’s laid out the entire class in a post at Always Learning. In addiion to offering the basics of using computer programs, Kim also engages the kids in “digital citizenship” and understanding the ethics of 21st Century literacies. (via the 20 February 2010 edition of The Big Fresh, the Choice Literacy newsletter).

In case you missed it, Abby the Librarian and Kelly Jenson (Stacked Books) have launched AudioSynced, a monthly MEME to talk about audio books. So, what are you listening to? They wanna know!