Group items tagged

American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture.

Inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, National Poetry Month is now held every April, when publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture. Thousands of businesses and non-profit organizations participate through readings, festivals, book displays, workshops, and other events.

Book promotion- Wonderstruck, connection: An all new and richly engaging website for classrooms, Teaching with Brian Selznick, launches today with a virtual field trip to the American Museum of Natural History , the setting for Selznick's newest bestselling children's book, Wonderstruck.

10 popular children's classics and the reasons why attempts were made to remove them from circulation:

Flying Words Project is an American Sign Language (ASL) poetry troupe comprised of Deaf Poet Peter Cook and hearing coauthor Kenny Lerner.  The goal of Flying Words is probably the same as all other poets, to play with language.  As luck would have it, ASL is a language of moving pictures.  So Kenny and Peter
juxtapose imagery you can see in creating their work.

El Día de los Niños-Celebrating Young Americans is a gift from the Latino community to all children. Many nations throughout the world, and especially within the Western hemisphere celebrate "Día de los Niños" on April 30th to honor and celebrate children-who represent the hopes and dreams of every community.

"The American Association of School Librarians (AASL) presents 30 Second Thought Leadership: Insights from Leaders in the School Library Community, a new video podcast series delivering brief and practical advice from respected school library leaders on important questions about school libraries today and in the future."

"Welcome to the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) Standards for the 21st-Century Learner Lesson Plan Database, a tool to support school librarians and other educators in teaching the essential learning skills defined in the AASL Standards for the 21st-Century Learner." You can both utilize and contribute lesson plans. http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/guidelinesandstandards/lessonplandatabase/lessonplandb.cfm

I can see amazing potential here for amazing resources!

"There are some remarkable efforts underway in American schools to invest the next generation of students with the literacy skills needed to innovate, solve problems, and meet unprecedented challenges. Until now, there has been no way to connect these initiatives, to provide models for advancing literacy learning in every subject, to collaborate in identifying and pursuing critical research questions about literacy teaching and learning on a consistent, sustained basis. That's about to change. The National Center for Literacy Education (NCLE) is building a coalition of stakeholders representing the premiere education organizations, policy analysts, researchers, and foundations who are working together to identify and share the plans, practices, support systems, and assessments used by educator teams working to improve literacy learning. NCLE will celebrate the work of successful school teams across the country that are achieving remarkable results in advancing literacy learning, and share what is learned with education policymakers…NCLE is providing the Literacy in Learning Exchange as a free resource to all educator teams. All educators are invited to use the free site to build or further develop a team in their school, district, or across schools/districts, or in their out-of-school setting. Educators that embrace the challenge of sponsoring and supporting a team will be eligible to apply for recognition and support as Centers for Literacy Education." Does your school have (need) a literacy team? If so, hopefully library staff is involved. Centers for Literacy Education, or collaborative groups/teams working toward capacity building for literacy: http://www.literacyinlearningexchange.org/about/centers-literacy-education

Most nominations for AASL awards and grants are due in January or February.

"The Coretta Scott King Book Awards Donation Grant was created to help build collections and bring books into the lives of children in latchkey, preschool programs, faith-based reading projects, homeless shelters, charter schools and underfunded libraries." Applications are usually due in late January.

Standards for the 21st-Century Learner offer vision for teaching and learning to both guide and beckon our profession as education leaders. They will both shape the library program and serve as a tool for school librarians to use to shape the learning of students in the school.