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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.

Website credibility

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.

Information in quotes was taken from Ann Scheppke's post on Libs-Or. The website "is the culmination of more than two years' work by staff at the University of Oregon Libraries, in collaboration with the Library of Congress, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a number of state agencies and stakeholders" and was partially funded by an LSTA grant. Users have access to "historical materials originally published by Oregon journalists between 1846 and 1922. The website includes more than 180,000 pages of digital content drawn from historic newspapers that include the Salem Capital Journal and the Portland Oregonian." K12 lesson plans are available, although that section is still being developed. http://listsmart.osl.state.or.us/pipermail/libs-or/2011-July/010667.html

Highlighting the need to improve literacy rates and provide access to educational opportunities for all children, LitWorld will host the third annual World Read Aloud Day on March 7, 2012. Last year, World Read Aloud Day united 200,000 people in 60 countries. Show your public support for this important literacy initiative and promote reading in local and global communities by participating in World Read Aloud Day. Suggested activities and other resources are available on LitWorld's website.

A few days later, the three of us have a present for you. A lovely little family that we call the "Go Away" Dust Jacket series. We wrote a bunch of snarky "leave me alone" messages, I designed a few fancy covers, and now we want to share the entire batch with you.

Let me tell you about our Floor-etry. First, floor-etry is a poem on the floor. That's it. It's simple and vastly influential in the process of creating an early literacy environment.  We here at the Allen County Public Library  got the idea from Saroj Ghoting's website for early literacy. In a presentation put together by Dana Bjerke, Joanna Redman and  Kelly Wussow from the Hennepin County Library, you can flip through different slides and see inspiring ideas that make words accessible to even the littlest of patrons. We thought, "We can do that!"

And we did! We wrote a poem that is actually just a string of similes so the reader can start anywhere in the circle and the poem makes sense. We typed it up in HUGE, easy to read font, printed it out on bright paper and cut out the words. After cutting out the words, we laminated each one and added Velcro to the back for a temporary hold. We placed the poem in the front of our department in the shape of a (yellow) sun!

Another poem a day resource! National Poetry Month is April and we can thank Poets.org for wonderful materials to help us celebrate. Visit their extraordinary website as a place to begin. Listen to a favorite poet, download lesson plans, find out whether there are any special events scheduled locally, and examine the National Poetry Map.

Dipity is a free digital timeline website. Our mission is to organize the web's content by date and time. Users can create, share, embed and collaborate on interactive, visually engaging timelines that integrate video, audio, images, text, links, social media, location and timestamps.

ALSC (ALA's Association for Library Service to Children) announced the redesign of the Great Web Sites for Kids site. Newly evaluated and accepted sites are added to the database three times a year. The committee also reviews all sites within the database twice a year to guarantee sites are still relevant, appropriate and accessible.

Classroom library linky party- numerous inspiring classroom library pictures, other inspiring components on this website too!

Banned Books Week is an annual event drawing attention to the concept of intellectual freedom and is celebrated during the last week of September. In 2011 ALA introduced Banned Websites Awareness Day to draw attention to problems Internet filtering can cause. For those who want to promote the event, the ALA Store has posters, bookmarks, t-shirts, and more. http://www.alastore.ala.org http://bannedbooksweek.org/

Wonderful website celebrating Roald Dahl.

Hi, welcome to robertmunsch.com. I hope you enjoy this selection of my work, as well as the creative art and short stories donated by kids and teachers.

Studying about the Oregon State Capitol but can't afford a field trip to visit? Or, do you live too far away from the Capitol to visit? Then consider touring it via a series of short videos posted on the Oregon State Legislature's website. View 2- to 3-minute video segments labeled Rotunda and Seal, Capitol Marble, Tower and Grounds, Senate Chamber, and House Chamber. There's also an 8-minute video about the Golden Pioneer.

"The Awards target innovative and content-rich programs and websites that augment the classroom curriculum and improve teacher productivity, providing parents and teachers with the technology to foster educational excellence. Some selection criteria are academic content, potential for broad classroom use, technical merit, subject approach and management system. Winners are selected from titles submitted by publishers around the world."

This list began in 2009 and is updated every summer. Former "best sites" are available in the archives. http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/aasl/guidelinesandstandards/bestlist/bestwebsitespast.cfm

This is from the website's About page: "The world is now more social. We share, we like, we tweet, retweet, link and generally exchange information on the social web. But how do you keep track of the things you like? Trunk.ly takes care of that for you. By connecting into your social networks, Trunk.ly monitors and collects the links that you find interesting across the social web. More importantly, it indexes the web pages these links point to and builds a personal search engine, so you never have to tag or describe a link again, you just search and Trunk.ly will find it again for you."

The United States Department of Agriculture updated their dietary guidelines in 2010, and My Plate is the new graphical representation instead of the Food Pyramid. Are there books and other resources in your library with this new information? Note that the USDA's website is not fully updated yet. The sections for kids and preschoolers still reflect the former Food Pyramid information but should be updated by the end of summer 2011. http://www.choosemyplate.gov/specificaudiences.html

The website's About Us section states that the "goal was to create a simple to use and easy to learn tool to help people organize their ideas in a way that make sense to them." Click on Help in the top right corner of the homepage for tips on how to use the site.