A letter I received from "TumbleBookLibrary:"
"I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you about a great way to merge technology and literacy in your classrooms– include ebooks in your curriculum! TumbleBookLibrary (www.TumbleBookLibrary.com) is an online collection of animated, talking, picture books which is used by over 7,000 public libraries and schools across North America.
In Florida, the following school districts offer TumbleBookLibrary district-wide: Miami-Dade, Seminole, Palm Beach, Broward, Polk, Sarasota, Seminole, Manatee and Alachua. Other districts such as Citrus County, Clay County and Collier County (to name a few) also have schools subscribing. Have your school join us too!
The TumbleBookLibrary has a selection of children's favorite story books. Old time favorites such as "The Paper Bag Princess" by Robert Munsch, as well as fairy tales such as "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "Old Mother Hubbard" come to life in an educational and interactive way. Other titles include: "Diary of a Worm," “How I Became a Pirate,” "Miss Malarkey Doesn't Live in Room 10," "One Duck Stuck," "Tops and Bottoms", and many more.
Our TumbleBookLibrary website is perfect for schools! We have a special link for educator resources with lesson plans, crosswords, puzzles, book reports, and much more. In addition, our online books have various features which help emergent or struggling readers such as "word helper" feature which sounds out the specific words, or text which follows along to the narration. We also has books in other languages such as Spanish and French. The website is customizable to fit your own needs!
As part of a special back to school promotion, we’ve set up your entire district with a free trial until November 30th, 2008.
Simply visit www.tumblebooklibrary.com to start ‘Tumbling’ right away."
Username: duvalschools
Password: trial
Links to other sites which read books:
http://www.lookybook.com/
http://www.storylineonline.net/index2.html
Let me know what you think of the TumbleBookLibrary. Although this is an advertisement for this company, it does offer students another opportunity to read books online until Nov. 30th.
Please send your comments to oakss@duvalschools.org
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Saturday, October 4, 2008
"WOWed" by My Students
I love learning. That's why I love teaching. Teaching regularly offers me new opportunities to learn. My favorite "learning" moments come when my students teach me, when they "WOW" me with their abilities. That is just what happened about 10:00 Friday morning, October 3rd.
Background: There is a genre study at the end of each unit in our new Houghton Mifflin (HM) reading series. "Poetry" is the genre study at the end of Unit 1 for 2nd grade. On Tuesday, I used variations of the old nursery rhyme "Over In The Meadow" to introduce the new vocabulary: rhythm, rhyme, stanza. On Wednesday, we read another version of that rhyme, Over in the Ocean by Marianne Berkes, an author who visited NBE two years ago when these students were in kindergarten. Then we went to our HM anthology to read the first four poems. I read each poem several times. We tapped to the rhythm if there was rhythm, found the rhymes and looked at the shape of the poem to decide if there were stanzas, divisions within a poem. On Thursday, we reviewed our vocabulary, read another variation, Over in the Jungle, also by M. Berkes, brought in by Jered. I read the next four poems from our anthology. Then I asked the students to pick one of the first 8 poems and practice reading it at least four times with their reading partners. On Friday, Reading Workshop was shortened by our "Healthy Living/Spike" assembly. I read the last poems in the HM anthology. We talked about each poem in terms of rhyme, rhythm, shape, why the author may have written the poem and closed the books. Finally, I asked the class if anyone could remember a poem, any poem and would like to share that poem with the class.
That's when they "WOWed" me. To my astonishment, many hands went up. One by one, students stood up and recited poems from the HM anthology. Chase shared "Gecko," Bailey shared "People," Majiya shared "Pickety Fence"... My heart sang!
My students reminded me not to underestimate their abilities. I knew they loved learning as much as I did.
Background: There is a genre study at the end of each unit in our new Houghton Mifflin (HM) reading series. "Poetry" is the genre study at the end of Unit 1 for 2nd grade. On Tuesday, I used variations of the old nursery rhyme "Over In The Meadow" to introduce the new vocabulary: rhythm, rhyme, stanza. On Wednesday, we read another version of that rhyme, Over in the Ocean by Marianne Berkes, an author who visited NBE two years ago when these students were in kindergarten. Then we went to our HM anthology to read the first four poems. I read each poem several times. We tapped to the rhythm if there was rhythm, found the rhymes and looked at the shape of the poem to decide if there were stanzas, divisions within a poem. On Thursday, we reviewed our vocabulary, read another variation, Over in the Jungle, also by M. Berkes, brought in by Jered. I read the next four poems from our anthology. Then I asked the students to pick one of the first 8 poems and practice reading it at least four times with their reading partners. On Friday, Reading Workshop was shortened by our "Healthy Living/Spike" assembly. I read the last poems in the HM anthology. We talked about each poem in terms of rhyme, rhythm, shape, why the author may have written the poem and closed the books. Finally, I asked the class if anyone could remember a poem, any poem and would like to share that poem with the class.
That's when they "WOWed" me. To my astonishment, many hands went up. One by one, students stood up and recited poems from the HM anthology. Chase shared "Gecko," Bailey shared "People," Majiya shared "Pickety Fence"... My heart sang!
My students reminded me not to underestimate their abilities. I knew they loved learning as much as I did.