The world's largest reviewer of books, multimedia, and technology for children and teens
What student isn’t intrigued by time travel? The annual Listen to a Life Essay Contest gives kids a chance to travel through time and learn about the past, while discovering a direction for their own future. The contest also helps build critical 21st-century skills. Now in its 13th year, this is a powerful learning experience that changes lives and communities.
If your school or public library is looking for some ideas for teen programming, the following sessions from NCTE’s recent annual conference are bound to inspire you. While most of the presenters focused on older teens, their programs can also be adapted for middle schoolers. And there are many more sessions that can be explored on NCTE’s 2012 website, such as But I Hate Poetry, Using Signal Words in Graphic Novels for Sequence and Cause/Effect, or Ah Ha Allusions!—Pop Culture Allusions & Dystopian Literature, to name just a few.
Over the next few issues of SLJTeen, I’ll be posting brief summaries of many of the sessions I attended at the annual National Council of Teachers of English annual conference, held in Las Vegas, Nov.15-18, 2012. Hand-outs for many of the sessions are available from the NCTE 2012 website. This round up includes sessions on nonfiction resources for English teachers, literacy efforts for incarcerated youth and adults, and faeries in young adult literature.
If your secondary school is in the U.S., has a minimum of 40 percent of students qualifying for free or reduced lunches, and has at least five senior classes, you could be eligible to apply for the annual College Board Gaston Caperton Inspiration Award. This is no small prize—three winning schools each receive $25,000, and an additional five could receive $1,000 honorable mention awards.
Part of the fun of opening a new library is getting to tell people about it, and seeing their reactions. Myself and some coworkers have recently attended farmer’s markets and back-to-school nights in the Gum Sping area, talking to residents about the new library and answering their questions about resources and programs. We have encountered excited citizens whose enthusiasm is palpable. But we have also met hesitant residents who have never experienced a public library who are unsure of its purpose, and fearful of its unfamiliarity. While we appreciate the former group, the latter group is what drives me to outreach events, in hopes of educating them on the benefits of the library so that when we open they are educated as to our mission and seek to learn more about us.
Although kids today say they enjoy reading just as much as their peers did in 2005, they’re actually reading far less each day because they’re busy doing other things, says a new study by the National Literacy Trust, a UK-based literacy charity.
You know how folks say a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step? Well, that’s what happened when Swati Malik, one of our Floral Park (NY) Memorial High (FPMH) students, approached social studies teacher Christina Blanc about building a school for kids in Nicaragua in late 2011. Swati came up with the idea after hearing about buildOn, a nonprofit organization that offers extracurricular service-learning programs in our nation’s high schools and builds schools in developing countries, such as Mali, Nepal, and Nicaragua.
Some 60,232 Chicago kids read more than 1.5 million books this summer, thanks to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Rahm’s Readers, the Chicago Public Library’s summer reading program. Studies show that children who participate in summer reading programs maintain or improve their reading skills and start school ready to learn.
Literacy isn’t the only thing Washington, DC, public libraries are offering kids this summer. They’re also serving up some lunch.
“We wanted to make sure they had a reason to come,” says Ginnie Cooper, chief librarian for the District of Columbia. “Sometimes the kids will come for the lunch, and sometimes they come for the program.”
Last spring the children’s book community lost several beloved authors and illustrators, including the hugely talented Leo Dillon, Jean Craighead George, Ellen Levine, and Maurice Sendak. In honor of their memory and their many accomplishments, TeachingBooks.net is offering video and audio recordings of these creative artists whose work enriched the lives of so many people.
Hundreds of K-8 students in Baltimore, MD, will return this fall to 12 new school libraries equipped with Nooks, computers, and even a reading spot for mom and dad, thanks to a $5 million, four-year grant from the Harry and Jeannette Weinberg Foundation.
Some kids in Michigan are literally fighting for their right to read. The state’s American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently filed a class-action suit on behalf of eight students in the Highland Park School District who don’t read at grade level.
Seven Title I media centers throughout the district continue to keep their doors open two hours each week, and local kids are welcome to read, check out books, or attend read-alouds. Although it’s not a new concept, it’s the first time Salem-Keizer has kept summer hours—and so far, kids seem to be enjoying it, says Stephen Cox, the district’s library media program specialist.
What do you do when disaster strikes? That’s the urgent question the staff at the Poudre River Public Library District in Fort Collins, CO, was forced to answer when the raging High Park wildfires—among the worst in the state’s history—ignited June 9 north and west of the city.
War, terminal illness, grief, depression—the teen protagonists in these recent young adult titles face dire circumstances and difficult personal dilemmas with honest candor and courage, choosing to live with hope, seeing possibilities in the midst of despair. Never sentimental or maudlin, ever inventive and realistic, their stories reference historic touchstones and human vulnerability in strikingly voiced narratives sure to capture readers’ hearts and minds. They offer myriad themes to explore and writing opportunities in classrooms across the curriculum.
For more than 20 years, Julie Metzger and Robert Lehman have been meeting with children, teens, and their parents. Their goal? “To promote positive communication about pubery, sexuality, in topics around adolescence and growing up.” In Will Puberty Last My Whole Life?(Sasquatch Books, 2012), they share some of the questions preteens have asked them on these topics and offer readers honest answers.
Middle school students are a “hormonally charged” bunch who are “full of complex contradictions” and just “want a voice,” say authors who participated in SLJ’s 2012 Day of Dialog on June 4 at New York’s Jacob Javits Convention Center.
This is the worst time to be a school librarian and the best time to be one. Our profession is under daily threat of extinction, yet the implementation of the Common Core Standards affords incredible opportunity to make the strongest case for the importance of librarians and libraries in schools. Together we must commit to gaining a deep understanding of these new standards and determine to be at the fore of the Common Core conversations taking place in our buildings. We are uniquely suited for this because the Common Core Standards dovetail elegantly with inquiry, and we know inquiry.
The world of reference is moving at warp speed these days. Public library patrons are used to Wikipedia and expect the same convenience when it comes to library resources. And in many school libraries, budget crunches, technology issues, and Common Core standards have made librarians’ jobs even more, shall we say, exciting. Wouldn’t you love to sit down with some of the world’s leading reference publishers and say, “Hey, wait a second! This is what we need you to do to make our libraries better”?
