Free reading

The entire text of all new Stenhouse books is available for free online reading. Click on a title you're interested in and then click on Preview the Book Online to see the entire book. For older titles, at least one chapter of nearly every Stenhouse book can be read for free online. For videos, click on a title to watch sample clips.
To look for books and videos by author, title, topic, or ISBN, visit our search page. Or browse books, videos, and e-books by using the links to the left. 

Yes, Stenhouse is a book publisher, a business designed to make money. Still the Stenhouse website is full of free resources, including the complete texts of its new books. To check out the free books, click the above hyperlinked text.

Student essay contest

The Bill of Rights Institute is currently hosting an essay contest for high school students. The contest asks students to write an essay (1000 words max) about the following question, "how does the Constitution establish and maintain a culture of liberty?" Cash prizes of up to $1000 will be awarded in five U.S. regions...Entries are due by December 15. (from Free Technology for Teachers)

To learn about the contest rules, click here.

The lighter side of English

One way to 'build' vocabulary

Thinking about having a word wall in your classroom? Take a look at the following.

What are Word Walls?
A word wall is an organized collection of words prominently displayed in a classroom. This display is used as an interactive tool for teaching reading and spelling to children. There are many different types of word walls including high frequency words, word families, names, alphabet and "doozers". [sic] (from Instructional Strategies Online)

Ways to increase reading comprehension

Can you connect with the book you are reading?  Can you imagine yourself in it?  Does it remind you of things from your life?  If not, maybe it's just not the book for you.


The process of reading is when a person reads text and their inner voice makes connections between the words, and their life and prior knowledge. The more closely the reader connects to the text, the higher the level of comprehension.

At times connecting is simple. At others, especially when the text is not in an area that the reader has background knowledge, comprehension is difficult. To be a better reader, think about how the story relates to your life. 

Readers should concentrate on their inner voice and connections. (from The Reading Workshop)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Dealing with math anxiety

And dyscalculia—a serious math disability—affects about as many people as dyslexia. So which comes first: the struggle to do math, or the fear of it?

The latest study suggests fear may be a bigger hindrance than previously thought. The researchers analyzed 32 college students, ages 18 to 25, identified as high or low math anxiety based on their answers to a questionnaire. The students were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI—a brain imaging technology which measures blood flow to different areas of the brain—while the students performed a series of equally difficult math and spelling tasks. As expected, students who were highly anxious about math performed less accurately on math than on spelling and less accurately in math than students who were not afraid. But the story doesn't end there.  (Sarah D. Sparks at Education Week)

Reading Rockets' resources

We bring the best research-based strategies to teachers, parents, administrators, librarians, childcare providers, and anyone else involved in helping a young child become a strong, confident reader. Our goal is to bring the reading research to life — to spead the word about reading instruction and to present "what works" in a way that parents and educators can understand and use.

The Reading Rockets project includes PBS television programs (also available online and on DVD); online services through the websites ReadingRockets.org and ColorinColorado.org; professional development opportunities; and a robust social community on Twitter and Facebook. The project is guided by an advisory panel made up of leading researchers and experts in the field of reading. (from the "about" page at Reading Rockets)

Though Reading Rockets maybe seem geared toward parents, guardians and teachers of elementary students, it's rife with resources for those who work with older students. To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text and explore.

National Day on Writing resources at ReadWriteThink

To draw attention to the remarkable variety of writing Americans engage in and to help make writers from all walks of life aware of their craft, the National Council of Teachers of English has established October 20, as the National Day on Writing. To celebrate composition in all its forms, NCTE invites diverse participants to submit a piece of writing to the National Gallery of Writing. (from ReadWriteThink)

ReadWriteThink has a number of resources and activities for the National Day on Writing, which is October 20. To explore those resources, click the above hyperlinked text.

You can't go wrong with Curious George

The Library of Congress has enlisted the iconic Curious George to encourage parents to read to their children. Among the resources and suggestions from Curious (or is it better to say Mr. George?) is the following checklist of considerations to use when getting a child to read a book. 



The 3 I’s:

• Interest: When a child wants a book for information and/or enjoyment.
  • Build on their interests, hobbies, favorite activities or a trip you have taken by asking them if they would like a book about one of these topics.
• Integration: Using reading as a connection to other subjects – math, science, art, sports, music and more.
  • Find out what real-world topics your child is interested in and suggest areas of the library or bookstore that have books on that topic. Connect reading to at-home experiences. For example, finding a book on machines would help explain why a toy or clock is not working at home.
• Invention: Creating something that relates to a book.
  • Reading that initiates or inspires creations or inventions motivates many children. For example, a child who has read “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” may want to create porridge that Papa Bear would enjoy. Reading with invention in mind is spontaneous and often occurs after reading is finished. The creativeness involved with this motivation allows children to further their reading interests and “invent” themselves.

Open Library

One web page for every book ever published. It's a lofty but achievable goal.
To build Open Library, we need hundreds of millions of book records, a wiki interface, and lots of people who are willing to contribute their time and effort to building the site.
To date, we have gathered over 20 million records from a variety of large catalogs as well as single contributions, with more on the way.
Open Library is an open project: the software is open, the data are open, the documentation is open, and we welcome your contribution. Whether you fix a typo, add a book, or write a widget--it's all welcome. We have a small team of fantastic programmers who have accomplished a lot, but we can't do it alone! (from the Open Library "About" page)

Open Library includes a number of books online, many of which can be embedded on a blog or website. Below is the "The Odyssey" embedded.

Looking for writing prompts?

The Time Is Now offers a weekly writing prompt (we’ll post a poetry prompt on Mondays and a fiction prompt on Thursdays) to help you stay committed to your writing practice throughout the year. We also offer a selection of books on writing—both the newly published and the classics—that we recommend you check out for inspiration, plus advice and insight on the writing process from the authors we've profiled in Poets & Writers Magazine. And don’t miss Writers Recommend, which includes books, art, music, writing prompts, films—anything and everything—that has inspired other authors in their writing. (from Poets and Writers magazine)

To read more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Thinking about using a new strategy?

ReadWriteThink is a website full of resources, including strategy guides for teachers. To learn about those guides and to actually look at them, click the text below.

Looking for new teaching strategies or interested in brushing up on the strategies you are already using in your classroom? Strategy guides define and provide examples of effective literacy teaching and learning strategies and offer a wealth of related resources to help sharpen your instruction.(from ReadWriteThink)

On writing

The National Day on Writing is October 20. Writing is a certainly a good way to get better at writing. Still, advice from the best of writers is helpful. Below is some advice from Mark Twain at Advice From One Writer to Another at About.com  To read more, click the hyperlinked text below.

"I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English--it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them--then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice."(Mark Twain)

Need a book recommendation?

BookSeer's webapp answers the question "What should I read next?", using Amazon, LibraryThing, and the last book you read and enjoyed.
Joining the ranks of other book recommendation tools, like previously reviewed BookArmy, WhichBook, BookLamp, and What Should I Read Next?, BookSeer offers a simple interface and answer system. (from Lifehacker)

To read more, click the above hyperlinked text.

What's in a name?

NASA needs help renaming two robotic spacecraft heading into orbit around the moon. And it's looking for suggestions from students in grades K-12.
Entries must be submitted by teachers using an online entry form by Nov. 11. The final round of judging to pick the names will be chaired by former astronaut Sally Ride and Maria Zuber, a researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. (Erik Robelen at Education Week)

To learn more, click the above hyperlinked text.

Not just an online dictionary

Dictionary.com LLC’s online and mobile properties are destinations for learning. Our goal: to empower word discovery and learning. We provide resources that create success for users in their schoolwork, careers, relationships, and life. (from the "About" page at Dictionary.com)

Dictionary.com's "About" page doesn't really do the website justice. The site is full of word games, tools, etc. To explore, click here.

Bad or badly?

I don’t want to make you feel bad, but because so many writers handle this issue badly, I’m going to discuss the use of bad and badly.
Let’s start with badly, which is an adverb. Roughly speaking, an adverb describes how something is done: “She handled the news badly.” Bad, on the other hand, is most familiar to us as an adjective, but what stymies us sometimes is that it can also be an adverb.
In adjectival form, bad provides detail about the noun it accompanies: “I have a bad feeling about this.” As an adverb, bad modifies the preceding verb: “Now I don’t feel so bad about it.” (Mark Nichol at Daily Writing Tips)

The above comes from Daily Writing Tips. To read more, click here.

Spotlight on The National Academies Press

The National Academies Press (NAP) was created by the National Academies to publish the reports issued by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council, all operating under a charter granted by the Congress of the United States. The NAP publishes more than 200 books a year on a wide range of topics in science, engineering, and health, capturing the most authoritative views on important issues in science and health policy. The institutions represented by the NAP are unique in that they attract the nation’s leading experts in every field to serve on their award-wining panels and committees. The nation turns to the work of NAP for definitive information on everything from space science to animal nutrition.

The National Academies Press has a huge offering of books available digitally. To learn more about NAP, click the above hyperlinked text.