Where can you make a Wordle?

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. (from the Wordle website)

The word of the week posters at Grand Forks Central have been made using Wordle, which is referenced above. To learn more about Wordle, click the above hyperlinked text.

Looking for vocabulary activities?

What's available at VocabularyCoach?

The choice to view words according to difficulty.
Think you are a word guru?
Various word games and activities to better help you master new words.
Enjoy both active games and hands-free games, where you just watch and learn.
No account needed, and it's free.

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

A little reminder

 Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary — Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate.
Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node to expand the tree.Click and drag the background to pan around and use the mouse wheel to zoom. Hover over nodes to see the definition and click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections.

• It's a dictionary! It's a thesaurus!
• Great for writers, journalists, students, teachers, and artists.
• The online dictionary is available wherever there’s an internet connection.
• No membership required. (from Visuwords)

National Student Poets Program

The President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services have partnered with the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers to launch the National Student Poets Program (NSPP), the country's highest honor for youth poets presenting original work. Five outstanding high school poets whose work exhibits exceptional creativity, dedication to craft, and promise will be selected annually for a year of service as national poetry ambassadors.

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

What's up at Reading Today Online?

Reading Today Online is updated daily with articles on the following topics: Articles on Reading Today Online are divided into six topics: Teaching Literacy, Children’s Literature, Councils & SIGs, Research & Grants, Legislation & Policy, and Member News. You can access articles one at a time by clicking on their links, or you can view all of the articles of a certain topic by clicking on that topic name. You can also view all of the articles in a list, shown in reverse-chronological order. If you especially enjoy a certain article, click on the sharing links at the bottom of its webpage. There are links to Facebook, Twitter, and more, as well as a link to share the article URL via email. Some articles even have “discuss on Engage” buttons that allow members to login to chat with other members about topics covered in the articles.  (from the "About" page at Reading Today Online)


To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Note: You don't need to belong to the International Reading Association to access content at Reading Today Online.

Young authors guide at New Pages

This is guide where young authors (as defined by each publication - sometimes it includes college-age) can find places to publish their writing. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather a select list of publications in print as well as online that have open submissions with guidelines, an editorial selection process, and a regular print cycle. Some publish only young authors, some publish all ages for young audiences. For more specific submission guidelines, visit the publication's website. (from the New Pages blog)

How to denote foreign words

Whether or not to italicize foreign words depends upon the word’s familiarity to the intended audience, the context in which the word appears, and the frequency with which the word appears in a given text.


In American usage, if a foreign word has an entry in Merriam-Webster, it need not be italicized. According to that rule of thumb, kafé and nan would be italicized; retsina and puja, not. (from Daily Writing Tips)

To read more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Take a look at Teaching Channel

Here's another 'Central' to explore

Welcome to the new Merriam-Webster's Word Central now reprogrammed for superior word power and language fun.
Introducing…Alpha-bot! The word-spelling robot hosts the latest amazing word game and challenges spellers of all ages.

Word Central includes terrific word-related resources as well as a special section for educators. To explore Word Central, click here. 

How the brain holds language

The brain holds a "visual dictionary" of words we have read, allowing quick recognition without sounding out words each time we see them, a new study finds.

The research, presented today (Nov. 14) at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, D.C., could be useful for understanding the causes of reading disorders such as dyslexia, according to the researchers. The study reveals how the brain works with words, which have both a visual, written component, and a sound-based phonology component. (Stephanie Pappas at Yahoo!News)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Reading resources at the Library of Congress

Books can open windows to new worlds and doors to adventure. As part of its Lifelong Literacy Campaign, which encourages children and young adults to become engaged in reading, the Library of Congress presents a sampling of suggested books that will spark imagination and transport readers to new and exciting places. Look for them at your public library or in your local bookstore. Explore new worlds. Read. (from the Library of Congress New Worlds Booklists section)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Can games help students learn?

Even though more people are recognizing the potential for teaching and learning through video games, there are still plenty of skeptics -- those who see video games as a mindless distraction, as entertainment and not education. But the work of a research center at the University of Washington may be at the forefront of challenging that notion. And this isn't just about how students can benefit from educational gaming either; it's about how scientific discovery can benefit from gamers.
That latter element has found UW's Center for Game Science in the news a lot lately, as one of the games it developed has helped lead to a breakthrough in AIDS research. (Audrey Watters at Edutopia)

To read more, click the above hyperlinked text.

The Literacy Project

As part of The Literacy Project, Google provides, among other things, a way to search for literacy-related sites. A bit of a descriptor from Google follows. 

Use this customized search engine to find literacy-related documents on the web.

• Search literacy organizations’ websites.
• Search across languages and countries.
• Find everything from statistics and reports, to project and contact information.
• Add your literacy organization to the index.

'Focus' resources

A quick Google of "Focus Mike Schmoker" yields a number of hits, the first of which takes you to the ASCD page where Schmoker's work is highlighted. At this link, you can watch several short videos in which Schmoker talks about his book, Focus Elevating the Essentials To Radically Improve Student Learning.

To view, click here.

Grand Forks Central teachers and staff are doing a book study of Focus.

Resources for helping adolescent readers

AdLit.org offers lots of articles that provide research-based and best-practice information for educators, parents, and others interested in helping young people become better readers and writers. Click below to find articles organized by topic or browse an alphabetical list of all our articles. (from All About Adolescent Literacy)

The All About Adolescent Literacy website is rich with articles and resources specifically directed at helping adolescent students read better. Do click around the site and enjoy.

NAEP results are out

New national test data show that 4th and 8th graders have inched up in mathematics, but the results are more mixed in reading, with 4th grade scores flat compared with two years ago.
Overall, achieving proficiency in reading and math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as “the nation’s report card,” remains an elusive goal for the majority of American students. Only about one-third reached that level or higher in reading and 8th grade math, the 2011 data show. At grade 4 math, meanwhile, the figure was slightly higher, at 40 percent. (Eric Robelen at Education Week)

To read more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Kentucky Education department literacy strategies

Included in this glossary are definitions of common terms used around literacy instruction. The strategies can be used by teachers in every content area to support literacy instruction. Some of the terms have accompanying word documents with templates and/or examples of the strategy for teacher use.

The glossary mentioned in the above hyperlinked text comes from the Kentucky Department of Education. To look at the literacy strategies referenced above, click the hyperlinked text.