"Welcome to a new edition of the Orvis News Friday Fly-Fishing Film Festival, in which we scour the Web for the best fly-fishing videos available"

Two websites that illustrate how Shakespeare has influenced our language.

The Vocab Film Festival challenges students and filmmakers to create and share their own vocabulary video and photo projects for a chance to win over $20,000 in monthly and grand prizes.  Entries must meet our monthly challenge and illustrate the meaning of a vocabulary word listed below. The Festival closes 5/31/11, so there will be a total of 4 monthly challenges Could be an interesting way to engage kids in vocab.

For the high-schoolers reading To Kill a Mockingbird today, America is a very different place than it was when Lee wrote her novel 50 years ago. Lee's story of Scout Finch and her father, Atticus - a small-town Southern lawyer who defends a black man unjustly accused of rape - came out just as the nation was fighting over school desegregation. To Kill a Mockingbird didn't change everyone's mind, but it did open some. And it made an impression on many young people who, like Scout, were trying to get a grip on right and wrong in a world that is not always fair.