The Big Fresh from Choice Literacy March 13, 2010 Top 30 Links for Literacy Leaders


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The Big Fresh from Choice Literacy
March 13, 2010
Top 30 Links for Literacy Leaders

It's mid-March, which means it's time for our most popular newsletter of the year. Welcome to the Spring Break edition of the Big Fresh, where we highlight the favorite links featured in the Big Fresh over the past year. You voted with your clicks over the last 12 months - these were the sites you visited most often when they first appeared in the newsletter.

The first two spring break lists in 2007 and 2008 featured 10 links; the 2009 edition had 20. I'm up to 30 in this year's edition, and even then it was hard to narrow the list down. I'm amazed at how the resources on the web continue to multiply, particularly when it comes to videos and podcasts for teachers.

Even if your spring break isn't bringing you anywhere near sand and surf this year, I hope these fun and thought-provoking links take you to new corners of the web. Enjoy!

Brenda Power
Editor, Choice Literacy

Since there are so many links to feature this year, I've organized them by categories. It's not surprising that sites with lots of free video and audio were the most popular.

Multimedia Sites Featuring Video and Podcasts

The Screen Actors Guild hosts Storyline Online, chock-full of video read alouds. Well-known actors read children's books, and the videos are optimized to play at almost any bandwidth (even dial-up). I was surprised at the variety of books - there are many current and diverse new titles here:

http://www.storylineonline.net/

The Education Podcast Network has hundreds of free podcasts, helpfully organized by topics and grade levels:

http://www.epnweb.org/index.php?openpod

Teaching students how to preview books is a big part of helping them develop the skills to make appropriate choices. Video book trailers are fairly new on the scene, and an intriguing new addition to the book preview toolkit for teachers. Keith Schoch has posted an excellent round-up of video book trailer resource links for primary through high school grades, as well as suggestions for how to use them:

http://bit.ly/76I95V

If you haven't discovered the TED Talks on the web, you are in for a treat. These are inspiring brief lectures from visionaries in almost every public realm. Scott McLeod at his Dangerously Irrelevant blog has compiled a handy guide to the Top 20 TED Talks for School Administrators. This is terrific free professional development on the web for summer renewal:

http://www.dangerouslyirrelevant.org/2009/05/top20tedtalks.html

We linked to Grammar Girl's fun podcasts of quick grammar tips a couple years ago in the newsletter. Since then, the broadcasts have been enhanced to include print transcripts. Teens and adults alike enjoy these weekly broadcasts, and it's very helpful to have the text available to reinforce the ideas:

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/

Jim Trelease shares advice on how to read a book you don't want to read in this nine-minute video for reluctant readers of any age. This link also includes a summary of the video for dial-up users:

http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/tree-book-video.html

Can't We All Get Along? Conflicts with Colleagues

Big Fresh readers were always eager for advice on dealing with tensions over curriculum, personalities, and different styles in and out of the classroom. Next to multimedia resources, these features were the most likely to be read and passed along to colleagues.

Every staff has a "lone wolf," or that other favorite phrase - a teacher who "isn't a team player." A Literacy Coach Confidential article took on the challenge of figuring out how to work with them:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/899.cfm

Sometimes the pendulum swings so hard in education that it's hard not to feel whiplash. Shari Frost considers critiques of strategy instruction, analyzing what's valid and what's not in attacks on the flurry of post-its in classrooms. This would be a provocative read for a staff meeting or study group:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/853.cfm

A curriculum coordinator loves DIBELS; a first-grade teacher doesn't. Literacy Coach Confidential provides a range of wise suggestions from our contributors on dealing with disagreements over assessment. This article is useful for teachers and literacy leaders who are working together with assessment data early in the year, no matter what evaluative system your school or district has in place:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/958.cfm

Kim Cofino has a post in her Always Learning blog on the difference between "coaching light" and "coaching heavy." If you're a literacy coach considering when and why it's important to have difficult conversations with teachers you mentor, this provocative post will get you thinking:

http://mscofino.edublogs.org/2009/09/06/difficult-conversations/

Letting Boys Be Boys and Girls Be Girls

There are a wealth of wonderful sites for either gender, and the best are heavy on humor and updated often.

Readergirlz was just awarded a "Reading Innovators" Award this year from the National Book Foundation. Designed to help teen girls connect with their favorite authors and other readers, it has lots of fun features like playlists of favorite tunes from writers:

http://www.readergirlz.com/

What I like about the The Boy Reader Blog is how authentic the posts are. The blog includes far more than just book suggestions - there are tales of putting books in boys' hands and getting their reactions, back and forth with colleagues about the quality of specific texts, and just a lot of fun, real-world nitty-gritty details of what books hook boys:

http://www.theboyreader.blogspot.com/

Children's and Young Adult Literature

While we linked to scores of individual posts in the "kidlitosphere," these are the sites that readers returned to most often.

Anneographies by Anne Bustard presents favorite children's book biographies organized by birthday. You can check out the archives to figure out upcoming famous folks you might want to highlight on their birthdates in your classroom with read-alouds and biography book shares:

http://annebustard.blogspot.com/

The 5 Great Books Blog is exactly as advertised - posts of five terrific children's books around various themes. It's a fine blog to bookmark for quick and timely collections for book baskets or read alouds:

http://5greatbooks.wordpress.com/

This is one of those essays that sticks with you long after you've read it. In The Defiant Ones published in The New Yorker, Daniel Zalewski makes connections between the rise of popular children's books celebrating characters who "revel in clever mischief" and parenting styles which avoid any real discipline of willful children. If you are seeing a rise in your school of children who just won't take "no" for an answer, maybe it's time to rethink some of your read-aloud favorites:

http://bit.ly/nIGb7

Differentiating Instruction

The Dare to Differentiate Wiki has an excellent collection of resources for organizing flexible groups and helping students become more independent within them:

http://daretodifferentiate.wikispaces.com/Flexible+Grouping

Kathy Collins compares differentiation in classrooms to holiday meal planning, and realizes the process is all about attitude and heart:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/1035.cfm

Is there any teacher on the planet who is better than Debbie Miller at conferring with children? In this blog post from Stenhouse's Quick Tip Tuesdays, Debbie shares some of her favorite open-ended prompts for deeper conversations with students:

http://bit.ly/cLNFh4

We talk about "scaffolding" learning, but what does that really mean? Terry Thompson has a practical and helpful take on the difference between scaffolding and rescuing, as well as a quick self-test that might help you slow down and rethink your teaching style. "Are You Scaffolding or Rescuing?" is a provocative article for discussion in a study group or grade-level team meeting:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/1073.cfm

Writing Instruction

The National Writing Project has posted 30 Ideas for Teaching Writing culled from their journal archives, with links to the original articles:

http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/922#/One

If you're looking for a place for students to publish their writing for an authentic audience and get inspired at the same time, the "My Hero" website is a terrific resource. People from all over the world post writing and multimedia creations about their heroes. This nonprofit site also has an extensive resource base for teachers that includes lessons, calendars, and standards connections:

http://www.myhero.com/myhero/home.asp

Navigating the Web with Students

Teachers are excited about using social media with students, and understandably concerned about privacy and permission issues. Practical Presentation has created a one-page guide available online, Social Media Checklist for Youth Projects. This download is a good starting point for integrating social media into your classroom, as well as discussing these projects with administrators and colleagues:

http://bit.ly/8UwhYX

WebTools4U2Use is a fabulous wiki with suggestions and tutorials on easy to use and free web tools. Developed for media specialists, it's become a favorite destination for teachers of all grade levels too. This is a site you'll want to bookmark and explore when you have a few free hours:

http://webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com/

Offbeat and Fun

It turns out Big Fresh readers are a hungry crowd. The Books Good Enough to Eat post on the PBS Booklights blog is a charming collection of photos of book-themed cakes gathered from across the web:

http://to.pbs.org/a5Gm29

S. Rebecca Leigh's "Unlucky Arithmetic" lists on how to produce "non-writers" and "non-artists" were so popular with readers that she's updated them with forms you can download that mimic the style of the Horn Book original:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/863.cfm

Warning - this next link won't be every teacher's cup of tea, but it sure was passed on by many of you. Mrs. Mimi's It's Not All Flowers and Sausages Blog is written by a teacher who loves children and learning, but gets frustrated by the daily dramas among adults in schools. She's funny, irreverent, joyful, and often painfully honest. I like the courage of any teacher willing to write in August to the world at large, Let's be honest with ourselves here for a moment, shall we? Sometimes it is hard to psych yourself up for a new class at the beginning of the year. If you can relate to those feelings, you'll enjoy her advice on how to dwell in "Happy Memories of Successful Teaching Past":

http://bit.ly/cCD5mi

"How a Poem Happens" is a wonderful blog for teachers who love poetry and want to nurture their own reading habits. Each week a poem is presented, along with an interview with the poet about their creative process. A number of the poems are also about reading and writing, useful on their own for read alouds and discussion in middle or high school classrooms:

http://howapoemhappens.blogspot.com/

One of my favorite blogs is emilyreads - haiku reviews of children's, young adult, and adult literature. Obviously pithy and frequently hilarious, I can't help but think assigning haiku book reviews to students might be a fun way to teach the form and value of using a few words to make big points:

http://www.emilyreads.com/

What a marvelous gift for leaders in any field! Seth Godin has put together a smart little leadership eBook - What Matters Now: Big Thoughts and Small Actions Make a Difference. The contributors are top names from many professions, riffing on the one word that will guide their actions this year. It's a just-right text to help you dream big. The book is designed to be shared freely and widely, with almost no copyright and use restrictions:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/1053.cfm

The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun is a delightful five-minute video that will get you thinking about how to get more joy in your professional life. There are many quotes and questions in the presentation to use in staff goal-setting meetings and study groups:

http://www.eightprinciples.com/

That's all for this week!