Waffle Bytes

Check out the  Promoting STEM Through Literature project/books ! Teachers can use these resources to integrate literature and STEM/Maker activities.  A Design Thinking workbook for students to use is one of the resources. Current Book List: The Secret Subway - Shana Corey Crayon Man - Natascha Biebow and Steven Salerno The World Is Not a Rectangle: A Portrait of Architect Zaha Hadid – Jeanette Winter How to Build a Hug - Amy Guglielmo & Jacqueline Tourville Ada’s Violin - Susan Hood Balloons Over Broadway - Melissa Sweet Beauty and the Beak - Deborah Lee Rose The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind - William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer Claymates - Dev Petty The Most Magnificent Thing - Ashley Spires The Marvelous Thing That Came From a Spring - Gilbert Ford Papa’s Mechanical Fish - Candace Fleming One Plastic Bag - Miranda Paul Ticktock Banneker’s Clock - Shana Keller Twenty-One Elephants - April Jones Prince Whoosh! - Chris Barton

Save the Children has launched its inaugural summer reading campaign in the United States – Read a Story, Change Their Story – in celebration of the global nonprofit’s 100 th  anniversary. The 100-day campaign, which will conclude on September 8, World Literacy Day, encourages all children, parents, teachers, librarians, caregivers and adults to log their summer reading minutes at  SavetheChildren.org/READ .  Participants can positively impact the lives of children growing up in rural America who do not have adequate access to early education or children’s books, while also promoting literacy in all communities. Every minute logged helps raise awareness and supports Save the Children’s work to improve literacy and change lives. For more information, go to: https://www.savethechildren. org/us/about-us/media-and- news/2019-press-releases/100- days-of-reading

Looking for some activities that focus on the Great Lakes?  Check out the Center for Great Lakes Literacy ! The site includes curriculum resources, professional development and webinars that you can use to help tie your science lessons to the Great Lakes.  Many lessons in the curriculum resources are multi-disciplinary and convey the complexity of problems faced when looking at Great Lakes issues.    Additionally, teachers may apply to for a shipboard professional development opportunity.  Selected teachers spend a week aboard a research vessel on one of the Great Lakes, working alongside and learning from scientist.  Housing and meals are provided for this experience, along with a $500 stipend.  The target audience is educators in the Great Lakes basin. that work with 4th-12th grade students

Stony Brook University's School of Journalism has some great free resources for teachers in the Digital Resource Center around the topic of News Literacy. There is a " Let's Get Started " area with shared activity/lesson ideas that can be used. There are also 14 lesson plans that can be used within a course or integrated into your own curriculum - "The full News Literacy course , developed at Stony Brook University, organizes the material into 8 concepts that are spread amongst our 14 week course that take students from the first information revolution of Johannes Gutenberg's printing press to the Digital Age of Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook. Each lesson stands alone or can easily be integrated into your program. Below, find a summary of each of those lessons, and a link to the most updated version of the teaching materials for each from our professors at Stony Brook University. Each of the following Course Packs include PowerPoint presentations, a...

C-SPAN Classroom has provided a lesson on helping students learn methods for identifying fake news, and the impact fake news can have on society.  Lesson includes several video clips that may be used, along with a worksheet.

Novel Engineering looks like a great way to collaboratively teach Literature with Engineering! From the website: An integrated approach to teaching Engineering and Literacy "Inspired by kids and grounded in research, Novel Engineering is an innovative approach to integrate engineering and literacy in elementary and middle school. Students use existing classroom literature - stories, novels, and expository texts - as the basis for engineering design challenges that help them identify problems, design realistic solutions, and engage in the Engineering Design Process while reinforcing their literacy skills.... [S]tudents develop projects based on texts they read in English Language Arts or other content classes, such as history. The characters become their clients and students pull from the text to scope problems and set constraints as they engage in engineering design. Teachers play a pivotal role in supporting their students' engagement by providing a supportive,...

From the Library of Michigan Michigan Reads! program - a great resource for use with preK-2 students.  Check out the Michigan Reads! link at the bottom for connection to past One Book, One Community resources. The  Michigan Reads!  Programming and Resource Guide 2017  for Bubble Gum, Bubble Gum is  now online !  The guide contains information on early literacy, activities directly related to the 2017 book, templates, coloring, and more!  Written by Meagan K. Shedd, PhD, with contributions by Catherine Lancaster and additional activities by Kris Remenar and Bubble Gum, Bubble Gum author Lisa Wheeler.   Access the Michigan Reads! Programming and Resource Guide 2017  Full Page Spreads here .  Or you may choose to open & print  single pages   of the Michigan Reads! Programming and Resource Guide 2017. Inside the Programming & Resource Guide for  Bubble Gum, Bubble Gum ...

Website recommendation from MeL - Often library staff that are not children’s specialists will need to assist patrons/parents who have children and will be asked for reading tips for their young children. When training or sharing information with other staff members, you might want to recommend the excellent Reading Rockets website. If you are not familiar with Reading Rockets, you might want to spend a little time exploring their site as there is an incredible amount of useful information. Reading Rockets is described as “a national multimedia literacy initiative offering information and resources on how young kids learn to read, why so many struggle, and how caring adults can help.” The following links would be useful for ALL library staff to be aware of, but also the tips could be reproduced on bookmarks to hand out to parents or distribute at programs.  Most importantly the information is given in numerous languages including Spanish, Arabic, Traditional Chinese, Ha...

What: Writing Contest Theme: "How did an author's work change your view of the world or yourself?" Who: Students Grades 4-12 Deadline: December 2, 2016 - Grades 9-12                 January 9, 2017 - Grades 7 &8, Grades 4-6 Websites:   Letters About Literature site , Guidelines  (pdf), Teaching Guidelines (pdf) from Cathy Lancaster, Youth Services Librarian, LM As Nathaniel Hawthorne so elegantly wrote in  The Scarlet Letter , "She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom." I read it in the ninth grade and while many in my class moaned and groaned, and quite frankly hated it, I was absorbed into the world of Salem, Massachusetts in 1642. Absorbed into the plight of Hester Prynne and her daughter Pearl. It was an awakening to examine how the world has, or has not, changed in our treatment of women in the centuries since. Now the details of the plot and much of the book itself have faded from my memory, b...

From the Library of Michigan -    Early Literacy Instruction: 10 Research-Informed Practices That Can Change Every Classroom Content provided by BloomBoard. This webinar takes place on September 26, 2016 @ 2 p.m. ET Register for this webinar now. As in many states, far too many of Michigan’s children are not reading proficiently by the end of grade three—and the situation continues to worsen. Addressing this problem can require broad and significant improvement in instructional practices. Toward that end, an Early Literacy Task Force (ELTF) in Michigan identified 10 research-informed classroom literacy instructional practices for Pre-K and 10 such practices for K-3 that can have a meaningful impact on student literacy. In this presentation, Nell Duke, Susan Townsend, and Naomi Norman will share these instructional practices, and discuss how the ELTF is working to make them a focus of professional development throughout the state of ...

From Brandy Archer at MeL - some great resources that you may find useful: Greetings, Below are links to great Open Educational Resources (FREE).  Some of these (Word Generation) I have shared before.  Keep scrolling down and you will even see some quick mindfulness activities to help students focus. SERP MEDIA Open Educational Resources for Public Use . Visit the SERP Media Website . LITERACY : WordGen Weekly . Visit the WordGen Weekly Website . WordGen Weekly (the “original” Word Generation program) is a supplementary curricular resource that offers a series of discussable dilemmas designed to promote academic language and other academic practices prioritized in the 21st century learning standards. The program is unique in its cross-disciplinary design, giving teachers of ELA, science, social studies, and math the chance to collaborate on the shared goal of helping students use aca...