Goals for 2014

One glance at a book...

If you liked Divergent...

Thought for the day...

The official poster for "Fault in our stars" has released!!!!

5 Apps to Encourage Reading Over the Winter Break

	Goodreads Teens learn by reading books, then forming and sharing opinions in an online setting. By engaging in friendly discourse about books, they'll learn communication skills. They'll be proud to add newly read books to their own online library and talk about their favorites with peers. Read full review.
	The Learning Network The Learning Network is a blog-style website that features New York Times news content. With some guidance, kids can explore and follow and read news articles that interest them. It's a great app to build reading habits by having kids follow current stuff on their favorite topics. Read full review.
	Professor Layton and The Curious Village Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a good, engaging app during the winter break because it's an incredibly fun game, with tons of tricky puzzles that help with analytical skills, and has a good amount of reading as well. And since it's a DS game, kids will love it and it won't feel like schoolwork but a gift. Read full review.
	Subtext Subtext might be the digital reading resource of your dreams. Parents can read a book first and annotate it, or read along with kids and annotate together. It's for tablet only, so parents and kids would need to share one device, but it allows a-temporal dialogue and interaction since parents could leave a note that kids see later during their reading time. Read full review.
	The Sports Network 2 The Sports Network 2 is set in the bustling context of cable sports news, but it's a reading game at heart. It can be used to build reading comprehension, teach core critical and evaluative reading skills, and/or as an introduction to the professional workplace. Read full review. Site link

New Books!

I was able to attend the scholastic warehouse sale and got boxes of new books.  I got 111 new books for the middle school!  I laid them out on tables and told kids as they came in that they could mark any they liked with a post-it and I would get it ready for then tomorrow.  Look at my picture...

New posters!

Beautiful new shelves in the AMS library...

(Taking the books off the old shelf)

Building the Book tree

SLJ's top 10 Apps of 2013

Click here

New Harry Potter covers!!

Great holiday decor at the high school

(Advisory class making a book tree in the library)

(Mrs. Frater's awesome door!)

Superman Vs. the KKK

This was a very interesting book and I learned a ton. This book shares the extensive history of the creation of Superman as well as the formation of the KKK. Then, goes on to explain how the Superman comic took on the KKK. If you like history this is a great one!

Why you should read...

"Heaven is for real" trailer!

What I am thankful for...

This donation of brand new, beautiful graphic novels by an artist and children's book author, Jonathan Ribera!!!

AMS Battle of the Books reading list

Title	Author
Bluefish	Pat Schmatz
Bomb:  The Race to Build and Steal the World's Most Dangerous Weapon	Steve Sheinkin
Boom	Mark Haddon
The Boy on Cinnamon Street	Phoebe Stone
Brain Jack	Brian Falkner
Breathing Room	Marsha Hayles
Chains	Laurie Halse Anderson
Cinder	Marissa Meyer
Cloudy with a Chance of Boys	Megan McDonald
Dark Eden	Patrick Carman
The Dark Unwinding	Sharon Cameron
The Dead Gentleman	Matthew Cody
Dogtag Summer	Elizabeth Partridge
The Eleventh Plague	Jeff Hirsch
Farhenheit 451	Ray Bradbury
Flygirl	Sherri L. Smith
Frankenstein	Mary Shelley
Far North	Will Hobbs
Ghost Knight	Cornelia Funke
Jump Into the Sky	Shelley Pearsall
Killing Lincoln: The Shocking Assassination that Changed America Forever	Bill O'Reilly & Martin Dugard
Kimchi and Calamari	Rose Kent
Lord of the Flies	William Golding
Michael Vey:  Prisoner of Cell 25	Richard Paul Evans
Miracle on 49th Street	Mike Lupica
Nerd Girls: The Rise of the Dorkasaurus	Alan Lawrence Sitomer
No Ordinary Day	Deborah Ellis
The Peculiar	Stefan Bachman
The Project	Brian Falkner
Ruby Redford:  Look Into My Eyes	Lauren Child
Shift	Jennifer Bradbury
Sophia's War:  A Tale of Revolution	Avi
Splendors and Glooms	Laura Amy Schlitz
Super Human	Michael Carroll
Superman Versus the Ku Klux Klan: The True Story of How the Iconic Superhero Battled the Men of Hate	Richard Bowers
Temple Grandin:  How the Girl Who Loved Cows Embraced Autism and Changed the World	Sy Montgomery & Temple Grandin
This Dark Endeavor: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein	Kenneth Oppel
Trackers: Book 1	Patrick Carman
Ungifted	Gordon Korman
Unstoppable	Tim Green

No Ordinary Day by Deborah Ellis

This is such a sweet, short book written about an orphan in India who lives on the street, learns to survive on her own, and finds out that she has leprosy.  It’s a quick read and worth your time.

A book is magic...

(Courtesy of Salt Lake Comic Con)

New bulletin board at HS

6 Free online resources for primary resources

The Common Core Learning Standards describe the importance of teaching students how to comprehend informational text. They are asked to read closely, make inferences, cite evidence, analyze arguments and interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text. Primary source documents are artifacts created by individuals during a particular period in history. This could be a letter, speech, photograph or journal entry. If you're looking to integrate social studies into your literacy block, try out one of these resources for primary source documents.

1. National Archives

The National Archives is a fantastic resource. Their website is easy to navigate and includes lots of teacher resources. They feature a daily historical document relating to an event from that day in history. The online catalog can be searched using keywords, and 100 "milestone" documents are identified as significant to American history.

2. DocsTeach

Also run by the National Archives, DocsTeach is full of activities for educators. The documents are organized by different periods in American history. If you're teaching "Civil War and Reconstruction" or "Revolution and the New Nation," just click on the topic to find hundreds of primary source documents. DocsTeach provides audio, video, charts, graphs, maps and more.

3. Spartacus Educational

Spartacus Educational is a great resource for global history. It contains free encyclopedia entries that directly connect to primary source documents, making it a perfect tool for educators looking to give students a starting point in their research. It can even be used for a historical figure scavenger hunt!

4. Fordham University

Fordham University is another good resource for global history. Similar to how DocsTeach organizes primary sources into periods of American history, this site categorizes documents as well. From the "Reformation" to "Post-World War II Religious Thought," teachers can find full texts available from Fordham or similar institutions. These sources are appropriate for the middle school and high school classroom.

5. The Avalon Project

Broken down by time period then listed in alphabetical order, the Avalon Project at Yale University also has primary sources for global history teachers. This database starts with ancient and medieval documents and moves into present times. In addition to categories that address specific historical periods, the Avalon Project includes links to human rights documents as part of Project Diana.

6. Life Magazine Photo Archive

Google and Life Magazine have a wonderful search engine that lets users search millions of images from the Life Magazine Photo Archive. Not only can you type in key terms to guide your searches, you can also look through images organized by decade (1860s through 1970s) or significant people, places, events or sports topics.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/online-resources-primary-source-documents-monica-burns?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=blog-6-primary-edtech-burns-RSS

Jump into the Sky

What a beautiful book!!!  This story is based on the 555^th battalion (The Triple Nickels) during WWII.  They were the very 1^st black paratroopers and their story is incredible.  I am a huge history buff and was surprised that I have never heard of their story OR about the balloon bombs dropped by Japan.  I love that every time I read, I learn.  This book is SO well written and if you like historical fiction at all, I HIGHLY recommend this great book!