Ideas

Teen Read Week (TRW) kicked off with a lively Twitter chat among supporters of teen literacy and leisure reading on October 15. SLJ, Blink, Goodreads, Merit Press, Soho Teen, and AASL participated in the hour-long virtual conversation, highlighting ways librarians can help celebrate teen reading. The following are some of the tweets that resonated with SLJ editors.

Facebook has announced that it is changing its privacy options so that teens ages 13 through 17 can choose whether or not to post publicly on the site, a reversal of the company's previous policy. Teens also will now be able to turn on "Follow" so that their public posts can be seen in people’s News Feeds.

Face it.  The news is not written for most of our kids, especially those who are struggling readers or new English learners. I showed Newsela to my ELL and several of my ELA teachers early this semester and we have some devoted fans. Launched in June, and the winner of a Gates Foundation Literacy Courseware Challenge, Newsela publishes articles [...]

In an August issue of SLJTeen, we covered a program run by University at Buffalo’s Center for Literacy and Reading Instruction that matched graduate students with 180 elementary school students to advance their reading and writing schools over the summer. We asked readers to tell us about other programs like it, and the Southeast Regional Library (FL) stepped up with their collaboration with University of North Florida's education undergrads.

Librarian Jennifer Prince reviews BiblioBoard, a database offering ebooks, primary sources, and that can store locally created materials.

California minors now have the legal right to erase their social media posts, a positive step toward giving them greater control over their online identities—or is it? Online content, after all, is not so easily erasable, according to Gary Price, editor of Library Journal’s INFOdocket.

October is National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month, when organizations nationwide unite to raise awareness on how, with education and support, bullying can be obliterated from schools and communities. SLJ has compiled a list of tools for educators and parents, which includes advice on collection development, plus news and feature articles highlighting authors’ efforts against bullying.

Scenario Learning is offering free bullying prevention resources to every school in October and November. Nominations are open for the American Library Association's Excellence in Library Programming Award until December 1. The Young Adult Library Services Association’s 2014 Young Adult Literature Symposium is now accepting program proposals through November 1. The Coretta Scott King Book Awards Committee is looking for new members to participate in various capacities.

The new Next Generation Science Standards, released last April, are performance standards, created to demonstrate not merely what students will know, but what students will know how to do. They have been written with direct connections to the Common Core. Here is a sample lesson working within both sets of standards.