I founded this humble blog for the purpose of sharing picture book teaching ideas with my fellow teachers. I frankly wasn't able to find anything like it on the Internet.
Since that time, many teachers have emailed me to say how much they appreciate the recommendations and resources found here. Many, however, are hungry for more, and invariably ask, "Where can I find other sites like yours?"
To advance the cause of teaching with picture books, I reached out to some of the extremely knowledgeable and talented educators who, like me, not only review children's books, but also provide their readers with teaching ideas and additional resources. I absolutely encourage you to visit their sites, become followers, and share their resources with your colleagues.
In addition, if you know of a fantastic site that I missed (especially if it's yours!) please let me know and I'll be sure to include you here.
The Book Chook
Audience: Teachers, Parents, Homeschoolers, Anyone Who Loves to Read, Write or Create and Wants to Share that with Kids.
Teachers and parents from all over the world visit
The Book Chook to find tips on encouraging kids to read, write and communicate, reviews, letters asking for The Book Chook's advice, articles about using technology to motivate kids' learning, and links to games, activities and online fun.
Susan Stephenson is the face behind
The Book Chook, where she shares her passion for children's literacy, literature and learning. Susan taught Kindergarten to Year 6 in Australian primary schools, drama outside school to kids and young teens, and ESL in China.
Currently, as well as pretending to be a chicken on her blog, she writes stories for children, and edits the free magazine for parents,
Literacy Lava. It's published four times a year, and available as a
downloadable free pdf. Each issue is erupting with practical ideas and strategies to involve children in reading, writing and communicating with creativity. Contributors come from all over the world, but each shares a passion for children's literacy.
Some recommended posts to explore:
Katie's Literature LoungeAudience: Teachers, Parents, Homeschoolers, Librarians
This is my fourth, but probably not the last, post focusing on
free resources from children's publishers. If you're just arriving, you'll want to check out the older posts to see parts
one,
two, and
three. If you know of a publisher I've missed,
drop me a line!
Salariya is the UK publisher of the immensely popular Scholastic "You Wouldn't Want..." series which I discussed in a
previous blog. They've put four of their more
popular titles online for direct viewing, with a little bit of interactivity and related links to boot. Check out the
online versions of
You Wouldn't Want to be a Roman Gladiator,
You Wouldn't Want to be an Egyptian Mummy,
You Wouldn't Want to be a Polar Explorer, and
You Wouldn't Want to Sail on a 19th Century Whaling Ship. Some of the links which appear at the end of each book are equally worth exploring.
I don't know how I mentioned Candlewick in my previous post without noting their very cool
Ology World site. While this is topic of a post on this site, I'll leave it to you if you wish to sneak a peek. Your boys especially will like the interactive approach to nonfiction.
I also mentioned the Walker US site and the Walker Australia site, only to find out that there's an equally impressive
Walker UK site. The
Kids Den presents the user with th
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By:
Keith Schoch ,
on 1/9/2010
Blog:
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Under what rock have I been living? That's a question I asked recently over at my
How to Teach a Novel blog. A couple readers emailed and suggested I repost here, since the reason for that rhetorical question would be of interest to teachers here as well.
I simply wondered how it took so long for me to discover
Tracie Vaughn Zimmer. She's an author, and I do recognize
a couple of her titles. But somehow I missed that she has also created this
awesome site (absolutely
no hyperbole intended) containing
original teaching guides for
picture books (over eighty of these!),
YA books, and
poetry. All for free! All Tracie asks in return, if you like what you see, is that you buy a copy of one of her recent books. Pretty good deal: free resources
and one of her critically acclaimed titles for your library.
Personally I found teaching guides for many books I'm hoping to include in future blog posts including
Abe's Honest Words,
Daniel Boone's Great Escape,
River of Words: The Story of William Carlos Williams, and
Mama Went to Jail for the Vote.
So in a rare move, I'll shut up now. I'll let
Tracie's web site speak for itself (and you can check out
her blog as well). Thanks, Tracie, for your terrific resources!
By:
Keith Schoch ,
on 1/2/2010
Blog:
Teach with Picture Books
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What makes a good children's book? I'd suppose that's a tough question to answer, otherwise Microsoft would have already written Newbery Notebook 1.0 and Caldecott Creator for Windows. A good children's book is far from formulaic.
It seems, however, that
Little, Brown Books has done a pretty good job of nailing some of the more prominently recurring traits of good children's books (both novels and picture books). See the
whole list at the
Upstart Crow Literary blog (a cool place to peek behind the curtain of the writing and publishing biz).
What use is this list to the average classroom teacher?
- It may help you understand why some books win with children while others fail. The list explains, for example, why a common literary motif of many children's novels (Harry Potter, Lord of the Flies, Narnia, Holes) is the removal of the protagonist (and other main characters) from adult supervision and control.
The individual attributes may help you create some connections between otherwise unrelated texts. One successful exercise with every novel, for example, is looking at how a character grows or changes over time. I've used this approach with Number the Stars, Because of Winn Dixie, Crash, Flipped, and Island of the Blue Dolphins to name just a few. Check out this sample recording sheet.- The list can be used a fairly accurate indicator of a book's overall value when teachers must choose just two or three titles for study. Many teachers, for example, complain that their boys just don't "get into" books which fe
In a
previous post I shared about a dozen links to children's publishers who provided extensive resources for teachers (teaching guides, reading group guides, printable activities, and audio and video links).
Susan Stephenson, aka
The Book Chook, blogs regularly about books and literacy. Susan replied:
Loved your post! It brought me some new publisher sites, and reminded me of great ones I'd forgotten.
However... I couldn't help but notice, your list did tend to concentrate on the northern hemisphere! Check out these Australian publishers and see what you think. Most are much smaller than their US counterparts, so you won't find bells and whistles like flash games etc, but you will find solid support.
So I perused Susan's suggestions, and sure enough, she's right! Lots of gems here.
Black Dog Books was recommended highly by Susan because their teachers notes are "perfect to add value for both classes and homeschoolers, or just for parents who want to immerse their kids in all sorts of literacy activities." While each title features a splash page with a link to the teaching pdf, you can view
all teachers notes on a single page as well. Some really fascinating titles!
New Frontier is another excellent publisher, mostly of picture books and children's titles, some educational. They have great support in their
teacher notes, which include discrete learning objectives for each title.
I'm thrilled to find these great resources, Keith, most of which are new to me. Thanks for including me in such a stellar line-up!
I'm pleased to spread the word! So many teachers, homeschoolers, and tutors aren't aware (yet!) that these resources exist.
Great resources here.
Thanks
Kevin
What a fantastic round-up of resources!
I reviewed a couple of picture books this week - I tend to switch back and forth between picture books and YA, dizzying, I know!
Check out Creative Literacy:
http://creativeliteracy.blogspot.com/
Katie does not only talk about using picture books to teach, but her posts on that topic are thorough and very powerful. I've truly learned a lot from her!
Silvana: I agree that Creative Literacy is a terrific site. It was definitely in the running! I finally decided to choose sites that were more focused on the picture book topic, all the time; I found quite a few that had a picture book focus one day of the week, for example. Thanks for mentioning this site!
Keith,
Thanks for mentioning my site. :) It is so refreshing to know all these people that are out here blogging about books and how to use them. Keep up the good work.
Thanks,
Margo
http://margodill.com/blog/
Keith,
Thank you so much for including me! This post looks great. Second the thought for keeping up the good work.
Jeff Barger
http://ncteacherstuff.blogspot.com
Hi, Keith,
I'm so glad I found your site. I'm a children's book author and also the director of the National Writing for Children Center, a showcase for children's book authors and illustrators.
Every month we show parents and educators how to use picture books (and other children's books) as part of their teaching tools. Our site features articles on using picture books to teach prediction, cause and effect, main idea, and all sorts of other basic concepts.
I noticed that some of the books you mention on your site have been featured at our site as well!
Check us out some time at http://www.writingforchildrencenter.com
Thanks so much and happy reading!
Suzanne Lieurance
National Writing for Children Center
Hi, Suzanne.
Thanks for sharing your site with us. I actually recall coming across it some time ago, and you've got some excellent resources there.
I'm sure there will be a follow-up to this post, and I'll definitely point folks your way.
Another great resource for elementary school teachers and parents:
Delightful Children's Books
www.delightfulchildrensbooks.com
At Delightful Children's Books, you can search for booklists by child's age and by subject matter (e.g. art, backyard wildlife, dance, snow, other countries, friendship).
Thank you for including my SimplyScience blog here. This is a great roundup of helpful blogs and I enjoyed seeing ones I didn't yet know.
My pleasure, Shirley! Wish every content area had a picture book proponent like you!
Susan is only pretending to be a chicken? Drat, my bubble is burst.
Seriously, Keith ... this is a GREAT lineup. I would also add Franki Sibberson/Mary Lee Hahn's blog A Year of Reading.
Try out aneducationinbooks.wordpress.com for must-read books for kids. About two-thirds of the posts are about picture books and there are ideas and brief teaching points on most.
Thanks for sharing that link!
I checked it out and it's a pretty straightforward yes useful site with some nice picture book selections.
Terry: Thanks for reminding me about A Year of Reading (readingyear.blogspot.com; I saw it a few months ago and enjoyed reading through the posts. It does give some nice reviews as well as teaching tips for selected books.
Thanks for the heads-up!
Great post! Thank you for including us.