Documenting History with the National Archives
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November 3, 2009

From picture-book celebrations of Thanksgiving to new titles by Elizabeth Partridge, Rebecca Stead, and Andrew Clements and Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, this issue of Curriculum Connections is bursting with updates on recent books and suggestions on how to use them in the classroom. We are also featuring some fascinating titles on the Dust Bowl and a range of online multimedia resources, including information on 120 years of National Geographic, now available in DVD format.

No longer confined to onsite print materials, research missions can transport us and our students around the world into rich depositories of information. In this issue, Joyce Adams Burner takes readers on the first of a series of virtual visits to the National Archives, offering a peek into their extensive holdings—resources ripe to incorporate into instruction and reports. Who said you have to board a bus to take a field trip?

Sincerely,

Daryl Grabarek,
Editor, Curriculum Connections
dgrabarek@reedbusiness.com

Fabulous Field Trips

  • Documenting History with the National Archives
    Are budget constraints limiting your classroom enrichment options? Put students face to face with a wealth of primary historical sources available on the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Web site. Reproducible digitized documents and accompanying lesson plans are only the beginning of the treasures waiting to be discovered at this robust portal. Take a virtual field trip into the storehouse that has been called the nation's attic, without leaving the classroom! more » » » 

Nick's Picks

  • Nick’s Picks: Selected Resources from TeachingBooks.net
    High school offers numerous opportunities to integrate multimedia into literacy activities across content areas. In this month’s column, please find a sampling of ready-to-use materials that will enrich and stimulate conversations about books, support student research, and enable students and teachers to hear from writers and illustrators about their craft. more » » » 

Interview

  • A World in Your Backyard: Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me
    For 12-year-old Miranda it appears that everything in her life is changing and that the biggest shift involves her friend Sal. Sal lives in her building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and the two have been buddies since their stroller days. But ever since the afternoon he was punched by a stranger as they walked home from school, Sal treats Miranda differently. Things begin to feel even more uncertain when she starts getting mysterious messages from someone who knows about events in her life before they happen. Sometimes it seems as if the only thing the girl can count on is the well-worn copy of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time that she carries around (she "had probably read it a hundred times, which was why it looked so beat-up"). Here Stead talks about how a stranger and time travel and coming-of-age themes all came together in her second novel, When You Reach Me. more » » » 

Make These Curriculum Connections

  • Friends from Far Away
    Andrew Clements and Phyllis Reynolds Naylor are masters at tapping into the interests and tastes of middle grade readers. Clements was a teacher for eight years, and understands how schools, teachers, and students tick. He writes a dependable stream of thoughtful, issue-based, always fun-to-read, school-themed books, including the ever-popular Frindle, The School Story, A Week in the Woods, Lunch Money, and No Talking. Naylor, a master fictioneer, has published more than 100 books for children and adults, including the Newbery Medal winner Shiloh (and its sequels), and the hilarious The Boys Start the War (and its sequels). The latest novels by these two authors—Clements's Extra Credit and Naylor's Faith, Hope, and Ivy June—dovetail in theme and will make an interesting pairing when booktalked and/or read aloud. Students will be intrigued by the similarities and differences in the lives of the dual protagonists in each book—children who make their homes in very different locations. more » » » 

What's New

  • The Dust Bowl Years
    Imagine a wall of black dust 1000 miles wide and hundreds of feet high, advancing more than 1500 miles. That was the size and distance traveled by the "Black Sunday" blizzard of 1935—the largest of the dust storms that plagued the Midwest during the1930s. This year several new books on the Dust Bowl were published for middle grade readers, each offering a different approach to an era marked by drought, devastating storms, and the Great Depression. more » » » 

Celebrations

  • Thanksgiving Day Stories for Reading Aloud
    Share these fresh and fun picture books with your students to welcome in the holiday.

    Wendi Silvano's feathered protagonist knows that he's headed for Turkey Trouble, the "kind of trouble where it's almost Thanksgiving…and you're the main course." Refusing to go willingly to the platter, the plucky poultry hatches a clever plan: he will hide his identity by camouflaging himself as a less-than-Thanksgiving-worthy animal. However, when one hilariously jury-rigged costume after another falls flat, the fretful fowl must come up with a final brainstorm (and his best disguise yet). Stuffed with clever wordplay, groanable puns, and easy-to-ham-it-up animal sounds, the chuckle-inducing narrative makes a crowd-pleasing read-aloud. more » » » 

Behind the Books

Professional Shelf

  • 120 Years of National Geographic
    In a school where I once worked there were decades of old issues of the National Geographic lined up on the open shelves—rows upon rows of bright yellow bindings promising trips to faraway corners of the world. Staff and students would pull copies of the magazine, find a seat in a quiet spot, and pore over them. Not only were the articles of interest—real-time reporting on historical archaeological and anthropological discoveries and adventures—but the ads were fascinating as well, offering great visuals for reports. It's our luck that libraries and classrooms can now own a run of the magazine, going back to 1888, that takes up no space at all. more » » » 



Mom dates daughter's teacher; what well-known author turned this experience into a book?

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