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I often have parents of 7th and 8th graders contact me wanting to know what we read freshman year (I think with the intent of getting their child "ahead" by having them read the books over the summer). I share the information with them, but try to steer them away from dictating their child's reading list. I usually refer them to the ALA's YALSA lists http://www.ala.org/yalsa/booklists/bbya. I have added this website to my list of resources this year. Anyone else have good resources for incoming freshmen?

Possibility for class web site that offers easy posting (via email) for text AND attachments. The hassle of posting anything to Edline keeps me from using it as much as I want to. If this site is as good as it sounds, I may try this next year.

If you want to look at another option, feel free to join one of my Edmodo sites. It does the same sort of thing, and (to the students' delight) it looks exactly like Facebook. You can join and see what we're doing by: 1. Go to www.edmodo.com and get an account 2. Enter the class code to join one of my classes and see everything: freshmen code is fifkl6 and sophomore code is u3rpzo. You can put up links, attachments, quizzes, photos, videos, polls, etc. They can also turn in papers on Edmodo, which is fun for something different once in awhile. I don't require them to use it, it's just "extra" and we use it in class sometimes just for differentiation.

Videos on everything from literature to author's backgrounds to grammar concepts. I love Shmoop!

Narrative essay--too advanced for freshmen?

Eager to throw off my nerdy past and reinvent myself at college, I wrote "party animal" on my roommate application form where it asked incoming freshmen whether they wanted to bunk with a smoker or a non-smoker.