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Are you always telling your students to add detail? To write more? Here is a sample minilesson to show them how.

We will be starting a unit on informational writing to wrap up the school year. I wanted to demonstrate a different way of finding a topic, a narrow topic. I find that young… Continue reading →

We’ve all been there. You’ve gathered your students into the classroom meeting area, nice and cozy, with the intention of doing just a quick l’il minilesson. Just a quick tip about writing and… Continue reading →

"Stepping into our authenticity is stepping into our real power."

Interactive Modeling: A Powerful Technique for Teaching Children teaches us how to use interactive modeling to teach a variety of classroom routines, behaviors, and skills in an engaging way that shows students what to do while providing them with a safe space to practice.

Last week I spent a day at Southbury Elementary School in Illinois. (Hello Southbury!) They had students for half a day and the afternoon was a time for us to come together for… Read More →

In one of the kindergarten classrooms I’ve been working in, we’ve been learning: Writers share their opinions. This has been a unit of study inspired by the Common Core State Standards, which place a heavy emphasis on opinion writing. What does that look like in kindergarten, I wondered. So I’ve been trying out a few [...]

This sequel to Lucky tells the story of the middle sister, Allison, of the recently-rich-now-“broke” Avery family. Allison has a wicked sense of humor, is quite bright, and views herself as the ugly duckling of the family. One night in a dream she trades her cell phone to the devil in a deal to make her gorgeous in the eyes of seven people. Will the deal create opportunities or tragedies? What is wrong with her demented cell phone? Maybe it was not a dream, but a real deal. Vail does a great job of creating a unique story for Allison, leaving Phoebe on the fringe and introducing Quinn, the eldest sister, more. This easy and humorous novel, about true friends and family connections, will surely be a hit among readers enjoying light, realistic fiction. Like Lucky, another great cover!

ENDERS' Rating: Looking forward to Quinn's novel!

Rachel Vail's Website

This quote from Penny’s book spoke to me today: “Writers don’t need to be given formulas; they need to be shown possibilities.”    — Barry Lane I’ve been thinking about this.  So often, in the name of modeling, I think we give students a formula for writing as opposed to showing them possibilities.  It’s a fine line between [...]

Last year I wrote the September/October issue of Library Technology Reports on Gaming in Libraries: Intersection of Services as a general overview that could help jumpstart a discussion in a library (especially with a department head or administrator). During the next few weeks, I’ll be writing an update to that issue, so I’m curious what you’d like to see in this new edition.

My intent is to broaden the discussion about gaming to include a more holistic view of the topic, beyond just video games, as well as diversifying the audience for gaming in libraries beyond just teens. So I have a pretty good idea of what I want to write about, and although I’ll have a shorter length to work with (half as long as the first one because TechSource is trying to reduce the cover price of LTR), I’d still like some input. What questions do you need answered? What do you need help explaining to others in your institution? Which areas need some further exploration?

I’m also hoping to highlight a few more case studies if there’s room. I’m particularly interested in showcasing unique gaming services offered by school and rural public libraries or services to nontraditional patrons, so please let me know if you think you’re doing something good.

Please leave a comment and share your thoughts. Thanks!

Casey Bisson has written a Library Technology Reports issue on Open Source Software in Libraries with a chapter by yours truly. I got to install and run Mac and Windows versions of the more popular desktop open source applications and take screenshots and make recommendations. Of course it’s not hard to recommend something like Firefox with all its sexy add-ons and Greasemonkey scripts, but you might not know that VLC is a pretty good media player, or that for advanced users Gimp can do a lot of what Photoshop does for no cost. Now if we can just get our style guides properly updated to not suggest hyphenating it all the time, we’ll be golden.