SLAVConnects

"Pre-teen gifted readers often run into a problem around the age of ten: as younger children they read everything in children's literature that they could get their hands on. By the time they reach ten years old, they're starting to run into roadblocks when looking for appropriate books. Some ten-year-olds are ready to go on to Young Adult fiction, but most aren't. Young Adult, with its focus on teens' changing bodies and questioning of their place in the world, is often inappropriate and sometimes very upsetting for "tweens" who have outgrown children's books but are looking for meaty reading to satisfy their literary cravings."

"By the age of ten or eleven, gifted children are apt to be more sensitive and demanding readers than their peers. They've already read everything on the last book list. What will satisfy their hunger for complex, lively stories without teen-focused relationship issues that come up in so many modern novels for teen readers? This post offers a list of books recommended by parents and teachers of kids in this age range"

"This list was created with the help of parents who wanted a list of books appropriate for young readers (through 7 years old) who are ready to read long chapter books but are emotionally sensitive"

There are many tools available for students to publish their ideas to in the year 2015 and you no longer need a great knowledge of HTML and CSS. With the surge of online blogging and publication systems, students now have many opportunities to express their thoughts and ideas with the added chance of getting global feedback on those insights. The author of this post offers a list of some of the online publication tools they recommend that enable students to post their creative impressions on."

"Design Make Share is a method for integrating MAKING in the classroom. This method applies to 3D printers and any other type of MAKING from cardboard and scissors to laser cutters and CNC machines."

"The English hallway transformed into a brightly colored Avenue of Literature by teachers. Each of the 189 lockers that line the hallway - unused for more than a decade - has been painted over to look like the spine of a popular book. The project was spearheaded by a group of teachers, who decided to devote their summers to creating an environment more conducive to a love of learning than a procession of defunct storage units. Teacher Elizabeth Williams explained, "We want students to come back to school in August and walk on the hallway and be absolutely amazed with what we've done and be curious. We want that to be the driving spark for reading in our classrooms." In deciding which titles would earn a spot on the Avenue, the Biloxi teachers tried to draw on a wide range of genres, interests and reading levels. Each novel in the Twilight series is represented, but so are Watership Down and Johnny Tremain"

Digital citizenship is (or should be) about positive behaviours and needs to be an essential topic that is addressed in the classroom. Often dire warnings and trying to restrict student access results in the opposite effect to what you're trying to achieve. Teachers need to find a way to integrate digital citizenship lessons within the school day. post with ideas and links

To assist with motivating readers this site offers some printable reading logs that can be coloured in as books are read.

There have been a few e-Learning frameworks and roadmaps. They can be useful guides and have gained some popularity. The one here is from The National Centre for Technology in Education (@ncteireland) in 2011. it is a good example, although it is contextualised to the UK and Ireland. Offers a few downloadable versions

"The 2015 Best Websites for Teaching & Learning foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration. They are free, Web-based sites that are user friendly and encourage a community of learners to explore and discover. "

The first edition of Synergy for 2015 is now live.

First up is a tutorial on Jellybean Writer. The video is embedded below. Jellybean Writer is a free tool for creating picture books. Students can import pictures from their computers then write captions for each image. All stories can be saved online or downloaded and printed. If picture books are too simple for your students, they can skip using pictures and select one of the text only templates for the pages in their books. As you will see in the video below, teacher can create and manage student accounts in Jellybean Scoop.

The Open Library is a part of the Internet Archive. It is a collection of more than one million free e-book titles. The collection is cataloged by a community of volunteer online librarians. The ebooks in the Open Library can be read online, downloaded to a computer, read on a Kindle or other e-readers and embedded into other sites. Some of the ebooks, like Treasure Island, can also be listened to through the Open Library.

"Education reform must include support for school libraries"

From the old KWL it has developed into the KWHLAQ chart. It offers one framework to promote Reflection as Part of the Learning Process, Not as an Add-on. In the visual in this post langwitches shares ideas of how to embed the KWHLAQ framework in analog and digital activities.