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Held annually during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of intellectual freedom and draws attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted banning of books across the United States, including books commonly taught in secondary schools. Here are ideas for celebrating Banned Books Week -- with your students, your children and anyone who believes in having "the freedom to read."

how reading changes on an iPAD or tablet. How could we being using this? when will my school get ereaders? Even I resist carrying my 4 pound book home.

Anglo-Saxon poems translated and read out loud by folks like Seamus Heaney and Billy Collins.

Jim Burke shared this article by Nanci Atwell on the Myths of Independent Reading.

if we aren't doing this, we are missing a great opportunity. Robin Bates writes one of the best teaching blogs I read. 

Lesson ideas for English

"A few weeks ago, I received an urgent e-mail: The National Council of Teachers of English is looking for volunteers for an ad hoc task force whose charge is to gather evidence about why literature should continue to be taught in the 21st century."

Romeo and Juliet IWB lesson ready to go.

College syllabus for Wuthering Heights. Some good lecture and discussion material.

English Teachers

Something to focus on in English class:  good summarizing

Book Drum is the perfect companion to the books we love, bringing them to life with immersive pictures, videos, maps and music.

It has been a great tool for close reading in my AP Lit class. Love Bookdrum!

Thanks so much Really exceptional and so interactive..

AwesomeStories is a gathering place of primary-source information. Its purpose - since the site was first launched in 1999 - is to help educators and individuals find original sources, located at national archives, libraries, universities, museums, historical societies and government-created web sites. Sources held in archives, which document so much important first-hand information, are often not searchable by popular search engines. One needs to search within those institutional sites directly, using specific search phrases not readily discernible to non-scholars. The experience can be frustrating, resulting in researchers leaving key sites without finding needed information. AwesomeStories is about primary sources. The stories exist as a way to place original materials in context and to hold those links together in an interesting, cohesive way (thereby encouraging people to look at them). It is a totally different kind of web site in that its purpose is to place primary sources at the forefront - not the opinions of a writer. Its objective is to take the site's users to places where those primary sources are located. The author of each story is listed on the preface page of the story. A link to the author provides more detailed information. This educational teaching/learning tool is also designed to support state and national standards. Each story on the site links to online primary-source materials which are positioned in context to enhance reading comprehension, understanding and enjoyment.

Digitial images from the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The page image are available in 3 sizes and can be easily read online.

We set out to create a better way to read on-line; our goal was to make something different, engaging, intelligent and digital. The concept was born, as many good ideas are, on a crumpled cocktail napkin late one evening in 2006, and we've been working to