"Figment is an online community where young adults and teens come together to create, discover, and share new reading and writing.
Figment is also an innovative, exciting teaching tool, already being used in classrooms, libraries, and other educational settings around the country to inspire and engage young readers and writers.
And what are Figment Groups?
Figment offers two types of groups-public open groups for our general users to connect over anything from poetry writing to Bieber-mania; and private closed groups for our educator community.
Private groups look very similar to the public groups, but with added benefits. You can limit membership to your class, library, or organizational community, and other Figment users can't see inside your group.
Through these user-friendly, intuitive virtual writers' workshops:
Students can create and revise writings in the safe space of a private group, sharing their works-in-progress, as well as commenting and reviewing, only with other members and their teacher.
Teachers can post and update assignments, share links to relevant materials around the web, and monitor student writing.
Using the group discussion tool, students and teachers can have class discussions, ask questions, and share outside resources.
Once complete, students can publish their writings to the entire Figment community, therein taking advantage of one of the largest authentic audiences for student writing on the web."
TeachingBooks.net is an easy-to-use website that adds a multimedia dimension to the reading experiences of children's and young adult books. Our online database is developed and maintained to include thousands of resources about fiction and nonfiction books used in the K-12 environment, with every resource selected to encourage the integration of multimedia author and book materials into reading and library activities.
"ead With Me is a new mobile application that makes student reading fluency assessments easier to administer. The benefits of using Read With Me includes: a library of passages ready to use; fast and accurate calculations of words per minute read, number of errors; easy to share reports to parents, students, and staff involved in student's educational progress; and an all digital solution avoiding endless piles of photocopies."
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.
There are six ways to get started with Lit2Go:
1. Browse by Author: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
2. Browse by Title: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
3. Browse by Reading Level (Flesch-Kincaid*): K 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
4. Browse by Subject Matter: African-American Literature, Florida, Mathematics, Science
5. Search Database. You can search the collection by title, author, or keywords.
6. Launch iTunes. If you have iTunes software installed on your computer, you can download many of the selections directly into your iTunes library. The free iTunes application for either Macintosh or Windows computers may be downloaded directly from Apple, Inc. "
"The basic idea is that teachers and librarians can upload and share all of their lessons by re-creating them (cutting and pasting sometimes) online and then sharing them with the public. It's a bit more time consuming than just uploading your lessons, but that allows all of the lessons to be searchable and organized. I've been using it for awhile now, and while there aren't many library lessons out there now, there are more added every day. As an added bonus, for every 50 lessons you upload and share, you can get a $10 Starbucks gift card!"
"1.Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
My son's school year started off with the wonderful classic Charlotte's Web. In an era where school's budgets are being slashed and creative arts are first to land on the chopping block, it's nice to see that many of the books on this list have themes of a creative talent saving the day. In this case, it's Charlotte's artistry with web making as well as her knowledge of words!
My son said, "Charlotte's Web is about how Fern's pig Wilbur was going to be killed but then Charlotte (the spider) met Wilbur the day before he was going to be killed and made a plan to save Wilbur. I liked the book and my favorite character was the Gander goose." (My son seems to love the minor characters as you'll notice in his reviews!)
2.Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo
If you ask me what my favorite childrens' book in the entire world is, I'll always say this one. It's a perfect chapter book in my mind where whole adds up to much more than the sum of the parts. Every character is memorable with a story to tell and somehow all these stories meld together into a satisfying ending with an uplifting message.
My son says, "Because of Winn Dixie was a extremely good book and when we read it, had everybody in the class wrapped inside the book. (not literally). When we watched the movie, I liked the book a lot better because I got to see my own vision of the story and my favorite character was Otis from Gertrude's Pets."
3.The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate
My oldest's third grade teacher flagged me down two years ago to tell me how much she loved this chapter book. It then went on to win the Newbery. She said that what stood out for her was voice. She's right. Ivan the Gorilla's voice draws you right in. He's like an old soul that you can't help but befriend.
In some ways this book reminds me of Charlotte's Web so I like the pairing so kids can compare and contrast. Both books revolve