Congratulations to Abi from North Dakota, who was chosen by RANDOM.org to receive a copy of Lemony Snicket's 13 Words
. You left an awful lot of disappointed people in your wake!
In the coming days, look for the following topics to be posted here at
Teach with Picture Books:
- Sit Down and Be Counted: Exploring the Civil Rights Through Picture Books
- Making Peace with Picture Books
- Reasons and Resources for Author Studies
- Becoming Art Smart with Picture Books
- Tales from the Black Hills (a review of several fantastic titles produced by the South Dakota State Historical Society Press, including The Prairie-Dog Prince
)
These long pieces, as well as a few posts dedicated to single titles that
deserve attention, will hopefully get us all through the doldrums of February!
Thanks to all who entered the giveaway!
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!
Many teachers, especially at the lower grades, enjoy making books with their students as a follow-up activity to sharing picture books. To this end I highly recommend you visit
MakingBooks with Children, Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord's elegant website on creating simple books with children. (And yes, my fellow English teachers, it is, indeed, MakingBooks, without a space between the two words).
In addition to her
free activities, she also offers teachers
tips on the teaching process, tools, and materials. Her
MakingBooks blog offers other terrific ideas, many of them related to the holidays.
Check it out. You'll be surprised how easy it is to create such wonderful books with your students.
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