Group items tagged

Having completed four years worth of "Best of" lists for picture books, I was finally inspired to compile a list of the  best middle-grade and chapter books I have read in the last year. Maybe I didn't want to be forced to pick any favorites, or maybe this was the first year that I felt like I had actually read enough newly published books in a given year to compile a fair list. Either way, although I remain dedicated to working through that massive pile of older books that I want to share with my readers, I am very excited about this list and passionate about all of the books that made it on to this list. If you were to encounter me in my workplace and ask me about any of these titles, I would gush, most likely somewhat embarrassingly, about any or all of them, if you gave me enough time. 

In the Share a Story-Shape a Future introductory entry today, I indicated this posting would be a list of blogs I hope you will find useful in your efforts to become more familiar with a wide array of multicultural books and customs. The list is not comprehensive, but it is a list I can indeed recommend to you given my familiarity with these blogs. Let's get acquainted!

Time Search is a good general resource for history teachers and students. Simply enter a year, press "go" and you're shown a list of significant events that happened in that year. Scroll up or down the list to see events that happened early or late in that year. Time Search offers options for refining event lists by theme or region in addition to the obvious date refinement option.

Curate Lists!

Nice list of quality picture books.

Charles R. Smith- wonderful poet, list of his books. One of my favorites! Book List

The grade levels you see here are only a general recommendation. I've seen middle schoolers get excited about Brown Sugar Babies and first graders enjoy Rimshots. This is only a guide of where to begin.

Last week Google announced another round of service and product closures. The popular image editing tool Picnik was included in the list of services that they're shutting down. I've had a few people ask me for recommendations for alternatives to Picnik, so here's a short list of alternatives to explore.

Share a Story 2012: A Quick Look Back

We had several notes over the weekend from folks who were "just now" catching up on Share a Story - Shape a Future 2012 and reading the posts. We hope you're still basking in all that great, positive energy!!

We also had a couple of other items and additions that I wanted to highlight. I'll be adding them to our Comprehensive Index of Posts and List of Contributors, but I also want to share them here.

Annotated list of poetry books for 6th-8th grade

Poetry Books for Grades 3 - 5 Annotated list!

Let's put our hands together for SLJ blogger Betsy Bird who spent the last six weeks sorting through 200 titles to bring you the Top 100 Picture Books and Chapter Books of all time. Dying to know who topped the lists? Maurice Sendak's classic Where the Wild Things Are made best picture book, while E. B. White's Charlotte's Web ranked the best chapter book.

Summer vacation is just around the corner and teachers and librarians are freaking out. It has nothing to do with lost books or late report cards. It has everything to do with reading. After spending months working to get students into the habit of reading, myself and many of my colleagues are concerned that much of that hard work (on both sides) will be undone by two months of (much needed) summer distractions. To help students keep reading in the summer, I've been showcasing several websites with my K-6 students to encourage to keep those reading skills sharp. Below is a list of five of the best websites to help kids keep up their reading this summer.

Some of the text below applies to the 2013 event, but the site's URL stays the same year to year. "World Book Night 2013 is a celebration of literacy by publishers, bookstores, libraries and individuals who love books and reading. On World Book Night 2013, 25,000 'book givers' will each give away 20 copies of a specially-printed, not-for-resale WBN edition of book they have read and loved (from a list of 25-30 titles selected by librarians and booksellers) to complete strangers - people who may never have owned a book of their own. To promote this literacy event, libraries and bookstores - as organizational participants in the event - form a nationwide advocacy and distribution network." Last year was the inaugural event, which happens on April 23rd. If you want your library to participate as a distribution center, fill out the attached application by October 1, 2012. Specific responsibilities of official participants are outlined in the application. The deadline on the form indicates September 1st, but according to discussions on ALAConnect, it was extended by a month. Sign up for the mailing list to learn when applications go online annually: http://www.us.worldbooknight.org/component/forme/?fid=3

Universal Design for Learning. A categorized list of free technology resources to provide improved access and accommodations for learner differences

a nice list of online digital resources and tools for creating, collaborating, researching, and sharing

This page lists a variety of "free" software. Truly free and open source software is marked with an asterisk. Items without asterisks are no-cost proprietary software (for a definition of the difference, see this page.) Also see: Our Favorite Tools & Sites, and check out the free download for starving students at SoftwareFor.

Read aloud book lists. Young.

poetry books recommended for 2011

The Battle Commander and the Commentator read furiously throughout 2011, reread, looked at what others were admiring, read more, argued, reread, agreed, disagreed, read some more, and by early December (in order to give time for our SLJ man-behind-the-curtain to begin recruiting judges) came up with our contenders. Then we had to keep it a secret from all of you for weeks and weeks!  So here we are mighty chuffed (using last year's winner's lovely term) at last to be announcing this year's list. (The brackets can be viewed here with a downloadable version available here.)

A school librarian created a list of resources related to holidays.