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"A free new social networking platform aims to encourage elementary school children to read more books. BiblioNasium is a pilot virtual reading village for children aged 6-12 and their friends, parents, and teachers. The site enables young readers to catalogue, share, and exchange their book recommendations. It also offers reading-level-appropriate book recommendations using the Lexile Framework for Reading."

Children in the Mehlville district may have the chance in two years to attend an elementary school with an alternative curriculum - one that uses real-world problems to help students learn and without the restraints grade levels sometimes place on learning. It would be a school that parents would choose, and there would be no admission requirements. If more children apply than there are seats available, the district would hold a lottery. That kind of competition for classroom seats has largely been limited regionally to the city of St. Louis. There, district magnet and choice schools, along with independent charter schools, offer language immersion education and schooling that focuses on science, engineering, technology and math. Mehlville Superintendent Chris Gaines received preliminary approval from the district's School Board last week to move ahead with a "Choice School of Innovation" that would be the only of its kind in St. Louis County.

"Just look at the fourth- and fifth-grade students at Dater Elementary School. They participated in a "Global Progressive Story," collaborating with students from 200 schools in 21 states and eight countries on 18 stories that are featured on the website writeyourstory.wikispace.com."

"Sara Shaw, an elementary school teacher in Avon, Mass., realized she needed to teach online research skills several years ago when her students kept turning in projects riddled with misinformation. The flawed material often came from websites the students used. They took the information as fact, when it often was just someone's personal opinion."

"We recently spent a day in a district with a highly experienced and motivated leadership team. They were exploring an interest in a district wide STEAM shift. On the team was a young, newly appointed elementary principal. With the simplicity of a beginner's eye, she asked us to clarify the difference between buy-in and commitment. It gave us reason to pause. We answered in the moment but the question has stayed with us. In educational change efforts, we frequently talk about...and seek...buy-in from our various constituencies. But there is a vast difference between buy-in and commitment. What if we sought commitment instead?"

"At Harriet Tubman Elementary in Newark, New Jersey, 5th grade teacher Yvonne Copprue-McLeod teaches a lesson about reading comprehension and answering open-ended questions using textual evidence. Ms. Copprue-McLeod's strategy for her lesson is to have students work in groups, using specific details from the text to draw inferences and answer questions about the main character in the text. This lesson is aligned with multiple 5th grade Common Core ELA standards (RL.5.1, RF.5.4, SL.5.1, SL.5.4)."

Blended learning perspectives...

""We need a really strong, powerful question," he says to a couple dozen fourth graders at John B. Russwurm PS 197, an elementary school in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem. The students, who are scattered cross-legged on the floor of the classroom, eagerly shoot their hands into the air. Mitra calls on a boy in a t-shirt. "Let's hear your question.""

Math Video Podcasts

"Sprinkled throughout the newly reauthorized version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act are references to an instructional strategy that supporters think has enormous potential for reaching learners with diverse needs. The next thing to do, those proponents say, is getting more educators to understand just what it means. Called universal design for learning, or UDL for short, the strategy encompasses a wide set of teaching techniques, allowing multiple ways for teachers to present information and for students to engage in lessons and demonstrate what they know.