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SpineOut is a new exciting online magazine for Young Adults, brought to you by the Good Reading team. It's a special place for Young Adults (YA's) to express their ideas and thoughts and to share their creativity in words, art, film or music. Schools and colleges subscribe to SpineOut on behalf of their students, providing access from school or home. Students are encouraged to be part of this new fun online resource by submitting reviews of newly published YA books that we provide, book trailers, poems, short stories, music lyrics, videos and art work. It is our aim that our Young Adults take this magazine on as their own, feeling free to express themselves in whichever form they wish, and then to experience the thrill of being published.

he Swedish fairy tale "The King's Choice", published on the Web site Whootie Owl's Stories to Grow By, is an excellent tool for teaching students to make predictions. Print out a copy of the story to read aloud to students. Before reading the story, you might mark the following places in the story where you will want to pause to ask What do you think will happen next? You might have students share their predictions orally, or you might have them record their predictions in writing on a sheet of paper or in their writing/reading journals. Pause after the opening paragraph, which ends Any of the councilors could rise to become a fine leader, thought the King, but which one had the necessary inner strength? to ask students which of the King's councilors they think might be best suited to take the King's place. Pause after paragraph 7, which ends The wind whirled about, wrapping his woodcutter's garments tightly around him. Meanwhile, the boat nearly tipped over and the voices on board shrieked. to ask students to predict what will happen next in the story. Pause after paragraph 18, which ends The King continued, "I will announce my decision at a royal banquet to be held the day after tomorrow." to ask students to predict what will happen the next day? Who will show up for the King's royal banquet, since all of the councilors have already committed to being at the woodcutter's feast? Who might be chosen at the royal banquet to take over the King's role? Have students record the next -- final -- prediction in writing; they should record the reasons behind their predictions, including information from the parts of the story already read that lead them to think that way. Pause after paragraph 27, which reads An hour later, a frazzled Lukas was led before the King's throne. to ask students to predict what might happen next in the story. After sharing the fairy tale "The King's Choice" with students and giving them several opportunities to predict what will happen

"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."