Pat Scales, chair of the American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee, answers readers’ questions about censorship. This month, Scales addresses what to do when your school has inflexible or strict Internet filters, including strategies for aiding students in completing research assignments and advice on instituting new policies for challenged materials.
Primary resources can help bring history to life for students. Make the most of first-hand accounts and other primary source content with tools such as the National Archives’ Digital Vaults, video tour included.
2013 ALSC & YALSA Audio Picks: The year’s best notable recordings and amazing audiobooks for children and teens.
It’s time to update your audiobook collection, so don’t miss ALSC’s Notable Recordings and YALSA”s Amazing Audiobooks lists for 2013.
BYOD, or bring your own device, programs offer media specialists an opportunity to connect with students, teachers, and school administrators—and to take a leadership role in their schools and districts.
The ability for teachers and students to embed their own content into digital texts, write notes, and get feedback on student reading—classroom reading just got a lot more dynamic. SLJ columnist Jeff Hastings test driives Gobstopper and Subtext.
Artist and author Molly Idle talks about her latest book, her life, and her obsession with Prismacolor pencils.
When stories and informational audiobooks are paired together, they create a winning combination that can help students establish a foundation of knowledge about certain topics.
Books about bears and pandas are super-popular with K–4 kids and a great way to encourage them to read.
Reviews of recent encyclopedias, almanacs, dictionaries, and atlases.
“National Geographic: People, Animals, and the World” is part of the National Geographic Virtual Library. The database allows access to full-text books on travel, science and technology, history, the environment, animals, photography, and peoples and cultures. Also included are full-text articles from National Geographic Traveler magazine from 2010 to the present, 325 videos, 655 full color maps and atlases, and 600 downloadable images.
Stories of resistance, rescue, courage, ingenuity, and survival are beacons of light amid the dark horrors of the Holocaust. These titles document the events, help to promote understanding, and inspire a new generation of readers.
“You hear a lot about gaming and engaging kids in STEM subjects, says teacher Jason Sellers. “So, I wondered, what does gaming look like in English?” Sellers, a teacher at the French American International School in San Francisco, found out, basing a classroom lesson in Playfic, an online community where users write, share, and play games using Inform 7, a programming system for creating interactive fiction based on natural language.
Add depth to your poetry collections with these new titles: Gail Bush & Randy Meyer’s Indivisible Poems for Social Justice, J. Patrick Lewis’s When Thunder Comes: Poems for Civil Rights Leaders, and Marilyn Singer’s Follow Follow: A Book of Reverso Poems.
Be sure to check out new easy readers by Michael Garland, Betsy Lewin, and Mo Willems as well as many other exciting new selections for spring.
You will definitely want to add the ten DVDs and audio productions that received starred reviews to your school and public library collections
April is National Poetry Month and a favorite part of this initiative by the Academy of American Poets is Poem in Your Pocket Day, coming April 18. It’s a perfect time to see poetry all around us and reinforce that poetry infuses our lives. How will you be celebrating?
Flipping the classroom or library encourages students to learn at home through teacher-made videos, and frees up valuable class time to devote to discussions and exploring topics more deeply.