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"Popular children's literature is paired with historical primary sources from the Library of Congress to extend learning across the curriculum. Linking primary sources to literature, making books more relevant, and promoting inquiry based learning can create motivating and enriching learning experiences for student of all ages. Check out the newest ready-to-implement resources for your classroom or use these examples to create your own."

Inspired by the Best...Creating 6 Trait Writing Lessons Inspired by Literature. For the first time, the lessons on this page were shared and workshopped with teachers from many schools. As part of the class, these participants each proposed a lesson idea based on a piece of literature or a classic poem not yet represented on this page. The thirty lessons you find posted here came from the summer workshop and our Fall inservice in 2007.

"Educators and parents all agree that reading is one of the best ways for students to build their vocabulary. Reading has been addressed by many traditional schools with giving suggested book lists to their students at the end of each school year. Not all schools, though, participate in this practice."

"Parents often ask us to suggest good books for their kids -- ones that will engage, entertain, and maybe even enlighten them. So we've scoured our recommendation lists and consulted with teachers, librarians, and book critics to assemble what we consider essential titles for your home bookshelves or to download to your ereader, smartphone, or tablet. From the classics to more recent must-reads, fantasy to funny, we have more than 150 great book suggestions for your kids and teens, from bedtime stories to chapter books to true literature, and more. Just search our themed categories, and you'll find all of our picks arranged by age groups."

Ever heard of an Exquisite Corpse? It's not what you might think. An Exquisite Corpse is an old game in which people write a phrase on a sheet of paper, fold it over to conceal part of it and pass it on to the next player to do the same. The game ends when someone finishes the story, which is then read aloud. Our "Exquisite Corpse Adventure" works this way: Jon Scieszka, the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, has written the first episode, which is "pieced together out of so many parts that it is not possible to describe them all here, so go ahead and just start reading!" He has passed it on to a cast of celebrated writers and illustrators, who must eventually bring the story to an end. Every two weeks, there will be a new episode and a new illustration. The story will conclude a year from now.

About five months ago, I posted about the possibility of using Goodreads.com in the classroom in a post titled Goodreads: Another Classroom Resource Possibility. Once you're on Goodreads, it's addictive, similar in social networking terms to things like Facebook and Myspace. However, Goodreads is focused solely around literature experiences. What I did was set up a private classroom group under my profile, and set up accounts for my students. I monitor their accounts closely because they're registered under e-mail accounts that I control in the classroom (I did this through epals.com, they offer free e-mail for classrooms that can be teacher monitored).

"LoudLit.org is committed to delivering public domain literature paired with high quality audio performances...Putting the text and audio together, readers can learn spelling, punctuation and paragraph structure by listening and reading masterpieces of the written word. Read and listen via your web browser or on your mp3 player. Regardless of how you enjoy the audiobooks (audio books), they are free."

Check out the point of view activity with Poe's "Cask of Amantillado" from three different lenses. Audio included to support students who will have difficulty with the reading.

"Throughout its history, the BBC has aimed to help audiences delve into the imagination of writers. This collection of interviews with some of the 20th Century's most read authors reveals something of those imaginations and the personalities which lie behind some of the greatest modern novels. "

"Lit2Go is a free online collection of stories and poems in Mp3 (audiobook) format. You can: * Download the files to your Mp3 player and listen on the go, * Listen to the Mp3 files on your computer, * View the text on a webpage and read along as you listen, * Print out the stories and poems to make your own book." An abstract, citation, playing time, and word count are given for each of the passages. Many of the passages also have a related reading strategy identified. Each reading passage can also be downloaded as a PDF and printed for use as a read-along or as supplemental reading material for your classroom.

Written from a first-person perspective, some argue that the poem chronicles its narrator's rapid descent into madness, paranoia, and the macabre after a strange encounter with a ghoulish raven. His brooding melancholy is the result of losing a beloved "Lenore," whom we presume is dead because, after all, this is Poe we're talking about. In short, we're dealing with a moody, recently bereaved protagonist who loses his marbles after experiencing a supernatural visitation. If that's not a recipe for a Shakespearean tragedy of the highest order, we don't know Hamlet. And, with that, we present the story of Shakespeare's Hamlet, to the beat of Poe's "The Raven"

School Library Journal's Battle of the (Kids') Books is a competition between 16 of the very best books for young people published in 2009, judged by some of the biggest names in children's books. There are some fantastic reviews of books that would be fun for our kids to read. It looks like the books are probably geared to our 3rd to 8th graders.

Elizabeth (Betsy) Bird, NYC public librarian, Newbery Award committee member, and book reviewer extraordinaire, writes prolific posts about new books, literacy programs, and the publishing world at her blog for the School Library Journal, A Fuse #8 Production. She is widely considered the most powerful blogger in kids' books.