Nerdy Book Club: Using Picture Books to Introduce New Units

If you don't follow Nerdy Book Club, you should. You'll find more than 70 bloggers there, so you'll be able to hop right over to their blogs to see which of them will be invaluable to you!

The post I'm featuring today is Top Ten Picture Books To Introduce Units Of Study, by Kari Allen. In it, Kari describes how she used ten favorite books to introduce math, science, and other units to her second graders. Here's an example:

 

Library Mouse written and illustrated by Daniel Kirk

She says, "...it was the foundation for our writing (which we did in all subjects.) I started the year off by sharing this book with students." The next day "students would discover tons of stapled blank books that the Library Mouse left," and thus began their "yearlong (hopefully lifelong) inquiry into writing."

I've long believed, that with the emphasis on reading and math that new standards have required, science and social studies could best be taught by using integrated units. How better to do this than to use books and stories to teach both reading and content?

Enjoy Kari's ideas, and may they lead to many more of your own!

Nelson Mandela 1918 - 2013

The world has lost a great warrior in the quest for freedom and justice. Please don't let this moment go by without engaging your students in reading, researching, discussing, and writing about "Madiba" - Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.

I linked to the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory in a post last July about the book Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Today I'm adding resources that offer retrospectives on his life and work, some of which include lesson plans.

A lesson plan from PBS: Remembering Nelson Mandela

From the New York Times: The Life and Legacy of Nelson Mandela: 1918-2013, a collection of resources that includes

• an illustrated timeline of his life
• a slide show
• images of the anti-apartheid struggle in posters from 1967 - 1994
• memories of Mandela
• his major speeches
• his obituary
• reactions from public figures and NY Times readers

Freedom Fighters, a lesson plan comparing the work of Nelson Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Listen and Read: Read-Along Books from Scholastic

I love Scholastic for many reasons; the newest is their Listen and Read site, where they provide 54 FREE nonfiction read-along ebooks for primary students. Your kiddos can access them on a computer or tablet, or you can use them with a group on an interactive whiteboard. They are sorted by subject and by level, with a good mix of science and social studies topics.

So why is it called Listen and Read? Because each of the ebooks is also an audiobook - by clicking on a "listen" button, your beginning reader can hear the words on the screen as she reads along. A nice feature at the end of each story is a list of vocabulary words.

Here's a sample page from a story for 2nd graders:

I learned about this great resource via a Facebook post by Charity Preston, who writes the Organized Classroom blog. Charity's post linked to a Pinterest pin by Carolyn Wilhelm, who operates the Wise Owl Factory. Both of these sites offer a ton of free resources themselves, and are definitely worthy of a visit.

Enjoy, and have a great weekend!

Cures for the Common Core Blues: BOOKS, Vol. 8

Today is Nelson Mandela's 95th birthday, and in his honor I'm suggesting that you read Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom with your students. Amazon's book description says that the book "offers a glimpse into the mind of a great leader, admired across the globe for his dedication to the struggles against apartheid in South Africa. Now the youngest readers can discover the remarkable story of Mandela's long walk from ordinary village boy, to his dynamic leadership of the African National Congress, to his many long years in prison-and, at last, his freedom and astonishing rise to become the leader of his country."  The American Library Association recommends the book for 2nd - 6th graders. 

Today is also Mandela Day, which seeks "to inspire individuals to take action to help change the world for the better, and in doing so build a global movement for good."

If you study this modern-day revolutionary hero, you can incorporate essential skills in geography with history and the government of South Africa where, after 27 years as a political prisoner, Mandela was president from 1994 until 1999. I can imagine using the book to kick off a nonfiction unit for 7th and 8th graders to culminate in a writing assignment that compares/contrasts the struggle to end apartheid with the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. Citing evidence after close reading and perhaps using graphic organizers to organize ideas? Common Core to the, well, core!

For more resources, check out the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory website, which includes digital archives and multimedia resources.

Enjoy learning along with your kiddos, and please, let this book and others in the series help cure your CC Blues!

An Excellent Find: E is for Explore!

You are going to LOVE the site I have to share with you tonight! I came across it via a science activity posted to Pinterest, and was I ever amazed and delighted when I followed the link to Erin Bittman's blog, E is for Explore!

Erin blends graphic design, her original career, with her current path toward becoming a teacher, to "develop unique learning activities, search the internet and compile additional great ideas from other sources." Her site is chock-full of manipulatives and activities useful across the curriculum, from literacy to math and engineering, and she provides easy links to sites that she shares.

Since Easter is coming soon, I'll show you images from one of Erin's posts, wherein she shares activities from inferencing to fractions using Plastic Eggs: 

Great, huh? Click on over to Erin's blog, where "all 'E is for Explore' activities conform to state common core curriculum standards."

And you're welcome! :-)

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

On this 57th Inauguration Day AND Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, here are some of the best online sources for teaching your students about Dr. King. And since there are only ten days until February, what a great lead-in to Black History Month!

The Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service

The King Center in Atlanta, Georgia

The Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University

The NAACP

Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 1964:

Cures for the Common Core Blues: BOOKS, Vol. 7

Like me, Patricia and Fredrick McKissack are Tennessee-born-and-bred. This teacher and civil engineer started writing because of their concern about the lack of stories written for African American children; since 1984, they've published a number of books set in the segregated South where we grew up. 

An author study on this writing couple would provide cross-curricular opportunities for learning about the Civil Rights Movement and Jim Crow laws, and Black Americans who have made great contributions to our society and culture. Researching primary sources and reading their biographies would offer opportunities for close reading of (and writing about) informational text, a major tenet of the CCSS: "Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text."

Their picture books are wonderful; one of my favorites is Goin' Someplace Special, written by Patricia and illustrated by Jerry Pinkney.

The book is described by Barbara Bader in "For the McKissacks, Black Is Boundless," which appeared in The Horn Book Magazine in 2007: "Though she’ll be allowed into the downtown library, ’Tricia Ann has to ride in the back of the bus, finds that the bench in the nearby park is for 'Whites Only,' and has a real scare when she innocently follows a white crowd into an off-limits hotel."

You and your students will enjoy seeing and hearing Patricia and Fredrick McKissack talk about their work in this Reading Rockets video interview:

Kemp Elementary School in Cobb County, GA chose Goin' Someplace Special as its book of the month in February 2005, and provides reading and writing strategies and a connecting activity to Rosa Parks. In January 2010, the K-2 Exquisite Prompt on the Reading Rockets website was based on Goin' Someplace Special.

You can teach SO much, including vocabulary, visualization, making inferences, time line activities, mapping, US history, and cultural understanding using this beautiful book. Share it with your kiddos and let its important themes help cure your Common Core blues!

Building Academic Vocabulary

I just might have mentioned before that I love Ireland's NBSS site. There are actually many reasons to love it, but as a teacher, I especially love two things. One is the organization's understanding that academics and behavior are tightly interwoven. The second is that it provides truly great teaching strategies; not only are students' needs considered, but teacher support is also a focus.

Today we'll look at their collection of Academic Vocabulary Building Activities & Strategies. Every teacher knows that a student must be able to understand and use the vocabulary of learning in order to succeed in any content area. Our students need a deep knowledge of these words in order to "access information about them from memory as they read" and we must explicitly teach both academic words and strategies for learning new ones that they encounter.

You will appreciate the explanation of Robert Marzano's six steps to effective vocabulary instruction, and the suggested methods of implementing each one: 

• The teacher gives a friendly, informal description, explanation or example of the new vocabulary term.
• Students give a description, explanation or example of the new term in his/her own words.
• Students create a non linguistic representation of the word.
• Students engage in activities to deepen their knowledge of the new word. 
• Students discuss the new word with one another.
• Students play games to reinforce and review new vocabulary. 

You'll love even more the thirty-three vocabulary Graphic Organizers provided for your students with so many different activities that they'll never get tired of them! Here's a sneak peek of some of my favorites:

   

NBSS provides links to six Useful Websites for Vocabulary Activities such as Visuwords and Triptico, that have fabulous vocabulary activities for your kiddos.

      

Last, but certainly not least, are Games for Learning. From Charades to Pictionary to Taboo to Wordo, you'll find instructions, templates, and links to sites that allow you to create your own puzzles tailored to your students' needs.

Convinced? I thought you would be. Enjoy this great resource and see how much difference it can make for your students' essential academic vocabularies!

Cures for the Common Core Blues: BOOKS, Vol. 6

As the granddaughter, daughter, and daughter-in-law of women who themselves sewed love into quilts that have kept generations of our family warm, I love The Keeping Quilt, and find it one of Patricia Polacco's most memorable books. It's been called her signature piece with good reason, winning the Sydney Taylor Book Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries in 1988, when it was first published.

From the dust jacket of the second edition: "When Patricia's Great-Gramma Anna came to America as a child, the only things she brought along from Russia were her dress and the babushka she liked to throw up into the air when she was dancing. Soon enough, though, Anna outgrew the dress and her mother decided to incorporate it and the babushka into a quilt. 'It will be like having the family in backhome Russia dance around us at night,' she said. And so it was. Together with her Uncle Vladimir's shirt, Aunt Havalah's nightdress, and an apron of Aunt Natasha's, Anna's mother made a quilt that would be passed down through their family for almost a century. From one generation to the next, the quilt was used as a Sabbath tablecloth, a wedding canopy, and a blanket to welcome each new child into the world." A unique family heirloom, indeed.

Multicultural books like Patricia Polacco's are invaluable tools for broadening our students' worlds, enriching their vocabulary, and giving them a greater understanding and appreciation of people who aren't just like them.

          

 Read this beautiful book with your kiddos, and then:

• create an "I Have; Who Has?" game or a card sort for vocabulary
• sequence the generations of Patricia's family
• compare and contrast the weddings through the years
• make a class collage of the varied uses of the quilt (in color, of course, just as in the book!)
• let them write about a tradition in their own family

And something that was a favorite of my students? A bookmark, with some of Patricia's fabulous artwork, as a reward after completing the book study!

Such a lovely little way to remember a jewel of a book, while letting it help cure those Common Core blues!

Common Core Practice | Bad Reviews, Elite Schools and Facebook Fakes

Do all of your students understand different types of questions? Is their questioning effective? Would you like to have a tool that would help them understand rhetorical questioning as a device for proving a point?

If so, one of this week's Common Core Practice writing tasks at The Learning Network is tailor-made for you! Sarah Gross and Jonathan Olsen's students loved Pete Wells’s less-than-stellar review of Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, with one of them declaring, "This is the best article we've read this year."

The task that references this article asks students to write a letter expressing annoyance or disappointment through a series of rhetorical questions.

The second task is argumentative: students are asked to read an editorial about admissions procedures at a group of highly-selective high schools in New York City. "After reading the editorial, answer the following two questions in a paragraph each. Try to connect the two paragraphs using transitions. A) How should highly selective high schools select students? B) What do you think are the most accurate predictors of high school success?"

This week's final task, also argumentative, refers to people who set up fake Facebook accounts in order to hide their identity, and asks the question: "Do you think it is ethical for high school and college students to create a Facebook profile using a pseudonym, despite the fact the company expressly prohibits it in their Terms of Service? Explain your opinion in one paragraph."

Thanks again to Sarah Gross, Jonathan Olsen, and their students, for these great writing tasks connected to articles in the New York Times!

Cures For The Common Core Blues: BOOKS, Vol. 3

What a book I have for you today! My Name is María Isabel has been on my short list of fantastic children's books for several years.

Publishers Weekly describes Alma Flor Ada's beautifully written chapter book this way: "Armed with her new blue book­bag, María Isabel bravely faces her first day at a new school. But when she meets her new teacher, she is told there are already two other Marías in the class. 'Why don’t we call you Mary instead?' her teacher sug­gests, unaware that María was named for both her grand­moth­ers, a grand­fa­ther and her father. María's inabil­ity to respond to 'Mary' leads to more prob­lems. Sim­ply told, this story com­bines the strug­gle of a Puerto Rican family’s efforts to improve their life with a shared sense of pride in their her­itage. The author’s care­fully drawn char­ac­ter­i­za­tions avoid stereo­types, thus increas­ing their appeal and believ­abil­ity. An essay involv­ing a wish list gives María a chance to reclaim her name, and allows her teacher to make amends."

Reading is Fundamental has several excellent activities for the book that you can adapt and make your own:

• A guide for educators that includes a prediction chart template.
• A tic-tac-toe of activity options, with math, science, geography, art, and writing extensions for the book. I LOVE these!!!
• A guide for parents and families that includes a recipe for beans and rice.

You and your kiddos can read Alma Flor Ada's biography and watch a video interview with her over at Colorín Colorado, a fabulous site worthy of its own post, and soon!

When I read My Name is María Isabel with a group of 4th graders several years ago, I asked them to write an essay about their "Greatest Wish" as María did; one of them brought me to tears. My sweet student wrote about how much she wanted to see her sister who lives in Mexico with their grandmother, and whom she hasn't seen since she was two years old. What a heartfelt, and mature, wish from a precious little girl! 

(Note: one of the activities suggested by Reading is Fundamental is writing just such an essay.)

Enjoy this wonderful book, available at Amazon, with your kiddos! Teach them the important vocabulary -  attentively, Hanukkah, manger, menorah, misunderstanding, pageant, strumming, Three Kings' Day, troublesome. Discuss the realistic fiction genre. Have them write, look for evidence and cite it, learn about measurement using the recipe, and much more.

And as always, let it help cure your Common Core blues!

Cures For The Common Core Blues: BOOKS, Vol. 2

This is the second in a series about books that have great potential for Common Core lessons. Cures For The Common Core Blues: BOOKS, Vol. 1 was published two weeks ago with the promise of a new book post each Thursday. That was interrupted last week by the birth of our granddaughter (I write with a smile on my face.) This week we're back on track, with Patricia Polacco's amazing book about the friendship of two boy soldiers during the Civil War,  Pink and Say.

Here is the story, paraphrased from the words of Leah Polacco, the author's daughter-in-law: "When wounded attempting to desert his unit, Sheldon Curtis (Say) is rescued by Pinkus Aylee (Pink), who carries him back to the Georgia home where he and his family were slaves. Say is nursed back to health by Pink’s mother, Moe Moe Bay, and begins to understand why his new friend is determined to return to the war, to fight against "the sickness" that is slavery. When marauders take Moe Moe Bay’s life, Say is also driven to fight, but both boys are taken prisoner by the Confederate Army. Say survives to pass along the story to his daughter Rosa, Patricia Polacco’s great grandmother. Pink was hanged shortly after being taken prisoner, so Patricia’s book "serves as a written memory" of him. At the end of the story Patricia tells the reader, "Before you put this book down, say his name (Pinkus Aylee) out loud and vow to remember him always." A defining moment in the story is when Say tells Pink and his mother that he once shook the hand of Abraham Lincoln. Convinced that his encounter is a "sign" of hope, Say reaches for Pink’s hand, exclaiming, "Now you can say you touched the hand that shook the hand of Abraham Lincoln!" At the end of the story when the boys are dragged apart, Pink reaches for Say one last time to touch his hand."

When my co-teacher and I read this book with our ESL students last year, we began by having them research online which states were part of the Confederacy and which ones remained with the Union, and plot their locations on a table-sized laminated map. The kiddos color-coded the states, and we maintained the colors when we wrote anchor chart type notes about the advantages and disadvantages that each side brought to the war due to location and economy. 

We staged a simple role play of a slave market, which opened the floor for many questions and a brief Socratic discussion of slavery itself. We set the stage for reading with video clips and photos of battlefields. When we finally read the book using our visual presenter, the students were captivated. 

After reading, we did vocabulary work with card sorts; the culminating assignment was for each student to write a letter home from Andersonville prison. 

The letters written by our 4th grade English Learners blew us away with their insight and honesty. 

If this incredible book sounds like one you want to share with your students, you might want to look at the sites below.

Storybookipedia has numerous activities, from anticipation to building connections at Pink and Say Activities.

PatriciaPolacco.com provides lots of information about the author and has a page for each of her other wonderful books.

The Civil War for Kids is a site our students used for their beginning research.

When you finish your study of the book, which you can purchase from Amazon, reward your kiddos with these beautiful bookmarks available on Patricia Polacco's website. Just print on cardstock and cut apart; I promise they will love them.

I think you will love this book, and that it can help cure your Common Core blues!

Common Core Practice | Young Voters, College Rankings and Food Journeys

This week, The Learning Network's Common Core Practice writing prompts include two from the classroom of Sarah Gross and Jonathan Olsen, and a third that uses Room for Debate, a feature of The Times Opinion Pages.

The first is an argumentative task regarding the Presidential campaigns' use of social media.

The second, also argumentative, prompts students to write about whether or not the college ranking system is useful.

Finally, a narrative writing prompt asks students to consider the journey of fresh food to our table.

Note, from the website: "The #art4me hashtag suggested in this feature last week is alive and well on Twitter. Learn more here, then join the conversation by posting a photo of the art in your life."

Columbus Day?

So. Columbus Day, hmm? Such a romantic story of the discovery of a "New World." 

"In 14 hundred 92, Columbus sailed the ocean blue," was the sing-song verse I learned in elementary school. The First People weren't mentioned, of course.

My missionary son (a member of a minority in Tanzania, a former colony itself) posted this link on Facebook today: Rethinking Columbus: Towards a True People's History. The embedded question is, "Is it OK for big nations to bully small nations, for white people to dominate people of color, to celebrate the colonialists with no attention paid to the perspectives of the colonized, to view history solely from the standpoint of the "winners?"

Also for your consideration:

10 Things You May Not Know About Christopher Columbus

Before Columbus: The Americas of 1491

Hatuey: 1512 - 2012

Lies My Teacher Told Me About Christopher Columbus

Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years

Should Columbus Day be changed to 'Exploration Day'?

Students Make Film: Columbus – The Hidden History

Why do we celebrate Columbus Day?

Food for thought, and for your reflection and planning for teaching your kiddos.

Common Core Practice | Floating Buddhas, MacArthur ‘Geniuses’ and Fracking

Today's Common Core Practice from Sarah Gross, Jonathan Olsen, and The Learning Network includes narrative, informative, and argumentative writing tasks. 

Floating Buddhas so inspired Sarah and Jonathan's students "that they have designed a challenge for students (and adults) everywhere: find a piece of “art” (however you define it) in your own surroundings, and post a photo of it to Twitter with the hashtag #art4me. They hope to 'see how far this project will travel,' so consider joining in!"

Librado Romero/The New York Times

Chang Jin-Lee’s inflatable Buddha sculpture, called “Floating Echo,”

is anchored on the East River at Socrates Sculpture Park

in Long Island City, Queens. Go to related article »

MacArthur ‘Geniuses’ tells students that “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction (can win) $100,000 per year for five years" and asks them to "propose a dream project that you hope the MacArthur Foundation would help fund."

Fracking refers students to the article Shift by Cuomo on Gas Drilling Prompts Both Anger and Praise, as well as a video and an earlier lesson plan, and asks them to "write a letter to the editor of The New York Times explaining whether Governor Cuomo should allow fracking to occur in New York State, (using) evidence from the article to support your argument."

"Winning!" again, with this great resource at The New York Times.

Cures For The Common Core Blues: BOOKS, Vol. 1

I know, I know. If you went to CCSS training this summer, you got a ton of helpful materials to take home.

And if you didn't, because you're a brand-new teacher? Or because your district didn't pay for it? Or require it? Or you went to school all summer, or taught summer school?

Or...you were overwhelmed and still haven't worked your way through all of it, because you teach ELA in Tennessee, and you're trying to figure out how to phase in the CCSS, and at the same time prepare your students for the TCAP because after all, that's what they will take next spring? I understand.

That's why I'm writing Common Core posts in chunks, with one topic, so you can actually look at resources one or a few at a time, when you have a minute. (I also know that even those minutes are few and far between, with PLC meetings, IEP meetings, RTI meetings, and meetings for every other acronym in education. :)

So. This post is the first in a series about a book that causes my juices to start flowing, just thinking about the possibilities for Common Core lessons using it. I'll write about one book each Thursday for the next several weeks.

Irena's Jars of Secrets, by Marcia Vaughan, was named a 2012 Sydney Taylor Honor Book for Older Readers. The Sydney Taylor Book Awards are presented annually to “outstanding books for children and teens that authentically portray the Jewish experience" by the Association of Jewish Libraries.

Here's a description from the publisher's website: "Irena Sendler, born to a Polish Catholic family, was raised to respect people of all backgrounds and to help those in need. She became a social worker; and after the German army occupied Poland during World War II, Irena knew she had to help the sick and starving Jews who were imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto. She began by smuggling food, clothing, and medicine into the ghetto, then turned to smuggling children out of the ghetto. Using false papers and creative means of escape, and at great personal risk, Irena helped rescue Jewish children and hide them in safe surroundings. Hoping to reunite the children with their families after the war, Irena kept secret lists of the children’s identities.

Motivated by conscience and armed with compassion and a belief in human dignity, Irena Sendler confronted an enormous moral challenge and proved to the world that an ordinary person can accomplish deeds of extraordinary courage." 

The book is available from: Lee and Low Books and Amazon. Download a PDF document with discussion questions for the book at Lee and Low's website.  Use them as inspiration for your own activities for close reading, inferring, vocabulary, cross-curricular connections, schema, and multicultural awareness. Lee and Low also provides a book talk with Vaughan and Ron Mazellan, who illustrated the book.

At the links below, you can read interviews with the book's author and illustrator that were part of the official Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour:

• An interview with Marcia Vaughan - Irena's Jars of Secrets
• The Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour: Interview with Ron Mazellan, Illustrator 

In December 2008, The New York Times published The Smuggler, a story about Irena Sendler, by Maggie Jones.
You can learn more about Irena Sendler and the group of students from Kansas whose research brought her story to worldwide attention at Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project. A book of the same name by Jack Mayer is available both on the site and at Amazon.com.

Irena Sendler: Mother of the Children of the Holocaust, Irena Sendler and the Children of the Warsaw Ghetto, and Irena Sendler: Bringing Life to Children of the Holocaust are other books about this remarkable woman. The Other Schindler...Irena Sendler: Savior of the Holocaust Children is available for Kindle.

In the Name of their Mothers: The Story of Irena Sendler is a film that was shown on PBS stations in May 2011. It includes some of Sendler's last interviews, and is available from PBS.org.

The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler, a 2009 Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation, is also available on DVD.

What a wonderful stand-alone book this is, but wouldn't it be amazing to embed these resources into a unit on the Holocaust or World War II, or a book study of The Diary of Anne Frank? If you create a fabulous unit around these ideas, be sure to let me know. 

And please, let great books help cure your Common Core blues!

White Flour - The Book and The Video

There are fourteen white faces in Geita, Tanzania, a rural town of 40,000 souls. Our son Carson, daughter-in-law Holly, and grandsons Jude and Silas are four. The rest are members of their mission team, except for a single German woman who also came to Geita as a missionary.

Since our kids moved to East Africa in 2009, I've spent a total of almost eleven weeks there, and I've glimpsed life as a minority. This has led to a great deal of reflection, as have my seven years of experience teaching English as a Second Language to Hispanic children and working closely with their families.

Holly sent me a link to this video last night, and I had to share it with you. If I were still in the classroom, I would get a copy of the book, download the video, and create a lesson to use with my students. I hope you will.

The book is available at WhiteFlourBook.com and at Amazon.com. From the website: "White Flour is David LaMotte’s second children’s book, with illustrations by Jenn Hales. In Seussian rhyme, it tells the funny and inspiring story of the day that the Ku Klux Klan met the Coup Clutz Clowns, who offered a whimsical and wise retort to their racist rally. The poem that provides the text for the book was inspired by true events in Knoxville, TN in 2007. White Flour was written for middle school students and older, but may be appropriate for younger kids at their parents’ discretion."

Common Core Practice | A King’s Skeleton, a Musical Mystery, a Territorial Dispute

From The New York Times, this week's practice tasks for the Common Core include: 

1. an informative writing task for the international story: “Discovery of Skeleton Puts Richard III in Battle Once Again”

2. a narrative writing task for the front page story: “ ‘Rebecca’ Sees Investor Fade, as if Dreamt”

3. a second informative writing task for the international story: “Near Disputed Islands, Japan Confronts Boats From Taiwan”

And a bonus: This week, one of Sarah Gross and Jonathan Olsen's students suggested an extension activity connected to the “Rebecca” prompt.

Thank you to Sarah, Jonathan, their students, and The Learning Network!

From the site: 

"All of our lesson plans, which go into much greater depth than the(se) short assignments, are aligned to the Common Core, including recent ones on algebra, Hispanic Heritage month, writing advice, human muscle systems and the video that has been roiling the Muslim world.

We also hope you’ll encourage students to choose their own Times articles (or multimedia) to read and write about. Each Friday we ask, “What Interested You Most in The Times This Week?” and choose one student response to highlight."

Wonderopolis®

Wonderopolis is a program from the National Center for Family Literacy. Its Wonders of the Day highlight learning moments in everyday life, and are intended for families to watch together, so they can learn together.

You can browse the Wonders Archives in 86 categories, including:

• Animals (ex: Do Warthogs Really Have Warts?) 
• Cultures of the World (ex: Have You Ever Tried Dim Sum?)
• Folk Tales and Legends (ex: Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?)
• Invention (ex: How Do Night Vision Goggles Work?)
• Professions (ex: How Do Teachers Get to Be So Smart?)
• Writing (ex:Celebrating Poetry Friday)

Posts of special interest to teachers? Try Connecting Wonderopolis to Content Areas, How to Integrate Wonderopolis into Reading Workshop, and Wonderopolis is WONDERful Science HW for ideas on using the site with your classes.

I'm sure you'll find something, or many things, to like at Wonderopolis, "where the wonders of learning never cease."