Practically Paradise   

I do like to mix up my gift boxes with fiction and information titles. Each of these titles deserves a complete blog post so please read all the way through and don't make me have to post each individually.

• The Vowel Family: A Tale of Lost Letters
• Corkscrew Counts
• About Rodents: A Guide for Children
• In the Night Garden
• Double Trouble Groundhog Day
• Buster Goes to Cowboy Camp
• No Mush Today

...Read More

Had to mention these rhyme in the title because I have many teacher colleagues in preschool-grade 1 who love to read-aloud rhyming books and books in verse. The Learn With Animals set from Weekly Reader / Gareth Stevens is surprising. In 32 pages they introduce us to ten animals of each habitat. 

Each two-page spread has an illustration of the animal appropriate for the very youngest preschooler on one page and a poem about the animal written in a child-friendly font on the other page. The poetry is very simple (don't expect Robert Louis Stevenson) but w...Read More

Today's box to give River Valley Elementary contains Weekly Reader / Gareth Stevens Publishing titles intended for kindergartners and first graders.  

Months of the Year is a WR Social Studies set. ©2010 Containing between 142-186 words each title is written at Fountas & Pinell Levels H and I. I'm loving the reinforced library binding on these books intended for the toughest kids in school - the kindergartners and first graders. S&L Price is $198.00 or $16.50 each.

Months of the Year includes twelve titles, one for each month, in a smaller 7"x7" size which immediately signals ...Read More

Julie Dos Santos is the author of the series Amazing Machines from publisher Marshall Cavendish Benchmark. © 2010. Discounted price $19.95 each.

Cranes ISBN 978-0-7614-4401-5

Diggers ISBN 978-0-7614-4402-2

Fire Engines ISBN 978-0-7614-4403-9

Aircraft ISBN 978-0-7614-4404-6

Tractors ISBN 978-0-7614-4406-0

Trucks ISBN 978-0-7614-4407-7

Trucks We've all had students who loved one form of transportation and wanted to read and re-read every book yo...Read More

Julie A. Walker, Executive Director of the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) has asked us to forward the information below widely. I hope you will participate on behalf of all school librarians and our students. 

Late in October, I sat in on a webinar regarding the National Educational Technology Plan. If you have not done so already, I want to urge all of you to go to the site: www.edtechfuture.org . The developers are seeking input on all four aspects of the plan: learning, assessment, teaching and productivity / infrastructure. At the time of the late October webinar, the developers expressed concern about the LOW VOLUME of comments they had received. They are particularly looking for examples o...Read More

How do these things keep happening? We had too many students who wanted to be part of the library club during advisory period so we divided into several groups including boys' lunch on Thursdays, girls' lunch on Tuesdays, and the regular advisory period. That 154 student group kept growing somehow and seems to be over 180 with a student population around 900. 

I began the girls lunch group with 37 girls planning to come at lunch the first day, then as they realized it was a staggered schedule and actually it meant 3 separate groups of students were coming, more students appeared. Some of the lunch groups are smaller with 8-9 girls around a table in the Kennedy room. 

But then along comes the group of 6th grade girls who brought their friends who desperately wanted to be in the library club and part of something that was actually d...Read More

I would like to challenge you to donate $10, $6.50, $5, or even $1 to the Spectrum Scholarship program.  You talk about helping bring others to our profession. What are you doing? Are you personally sending anyone to graduate school for Library & Information Science? You could be. You could also be strengthening our profession by supporting efforts to bring more diversity into our profession. Do you have $6500 to spare to support a Spectrum scholarship? I don't either, but I did have $10 to donate. 

During the AASL National Conference, if you see me (and the ALA folks there) and donate towards the Spectrum  program, I will match up to the first $100 total and you'll get a ribbon to wear. It's a small step, but it shows my commitment. That's money coming out of my food, gas, cl...Read More

I hope to see all of you at the AASL National Conference in Charlotte, NC. (Tell me that you read this blog please because I get insecure and think I'm talking to myself). If you cannot make it for whatever reason, there is still a way to participate .... VIRTUALLY through the b There program.

b There Your Virtual Track Pass is the virtual component of the AASL 14th National Conference & Exhibition. I am just one of many geeks who will be there adding content to the b There portion for...Read More