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Welcome to my workshop! Here you'll find writing tips, strategies, and challenges to help you write a book review. Once you've completed my challenges, try writing and publishing a review of your own. When you've completed your review and this workshop, you can write your own book review and publish it online.

"A Mohawk writer from the Six Nations territory in southern Ontario, Janet was born in Vancouver British Columbia January 29th 1963. She began her creative career as a visual artist, and started writing in 1996. Since then, she continues to stretch her abilities as a writer working and studying in the genres of poetry, short fiction, science fiction, play writing, spoken word performance poetry and video poetry. "

Teachers are busy, so I get right to the point. Monday through Friday I post a new picture book on this blog with a 1 or 2 line plot summary (no spoilers!), a short quote from the text (in italics), and a writing activity for one of the six traits.

"This is a book that works for all sorts of folks for all sorts of different reasons. I always get a little wary when a bunch of folks like a new book and start recommending it to me. I worry that their opinions will raise my expectations too high and then I'm bound to be disappointed. That said, I can't help but agree with anyone and everyone who has raved about this. It's got kid appeal, amazing writing and storytelling, and a friggin' merman. Consider it a story worthy of the hype and one that's gonna win itself a whole new crew of Kathi Appelt fans. Plus it made me cry."

I want to read this book! Read the full review to ensure that it is compatible with your school - and then order it anyway!!

This is an amazing assignment! "One of our grade 7 Humanities teachers, Dan McWilliam, just finished a project with his grade 7 students. In order to understand the concept of perspective in historical accounts, Dan had his students re-write a 'picture book' on colonialization from an alternate perspective."

Alexie won the $15,000 award for War Dances, a collection of short stories about ordinary people on the brink of change, interspersed with poems. From the story of a famous author whose father is dying a "natural Indian death" from alcohol and diabetes, to the tale of a young boy writing for his local newspaper's obituaries pages, judge Al Young - California's poet laureate - called it a "rollicking, bittersweet gem of a book".

"For the students and scholars who use Kindles (or other e-book readers) when writing papers, the next question becomes, how do I cite material I read on a Kindle? "

is it too early to start thinking about supporting students when they use ebook readers?

This is a great resource tying in picture books to the Six Write Traits.

From writing graphic novels to creating math comics, bring your class assignments, student projects, and course materials alive with 21st century approaches to communication. Regardless of whether you prefer Mac or Windows, you'll learn to use free online tools as well as inexpensive software to produce graphic novels, illuminated term papers, visual science reports, photo essays, and other engaging alternatives to traditional reports and student products. These concrete products reflect student understanding and provide an alternative to traditional forms of assessment

From accounts of civil rights heroes, to harrowing (and hopeful) stories about contemporary teenagers, to picture books that perfectly capture friendship, curiosity, or flights of fancy, 2009 held a treasure trove of wonderful reading for children of all ages and interests. Narrowing them down to just 30 titles wasn't an easy task, but we believe the following books stand out for their remarkable writing, indelible characters, and arresting artwork.

The Unquiet Library Celebrated the National Day of Writing and Teen Read Week with our first ever virtual author visit via Skype!  Our special guest was the amazing Sara Zarr, National Book Award finalist and author of Story of a Girl, Sweethearts, and her latest book, Once Was Lost.

Your ELA teachers might like this site.

The Exquisite Prompt is a series of monthly writing challenges designed as a classroom activity for kids in grades K-12. Teachers can engage their students by selecting just one of the monthly challenges or try a new challenge every month.

Offers effective teaching strategies, activities, lessons, lesson plans, worksheets, exercises, skills, tests, assessments for reading comprehension, language arts, literacy, fluency, phonics and phonemic awareness for children, especially those with dyslexia and other reading difficulties.

grammar checker, online proofreader, plagiarism detector)