Avon: Literature Based Activities and the Internet

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Literature Based Internet Activities for Reading and Writing

Julie Coiro and Jill Castek
University of Connecticut

	Jill	Julie
Grades K-1	Internet Project: Traveling Mascots A venture between seven kindergarten classes from all around the United States. Each of the participating classrooms learned about other areas of the country through the exchange of a class mascot, email, and digital photos.	Digital Puzzles: Jigzone - choose the level of difficulty and create interactive digital puzzles. Create them with themes related to the books you read or encourage children to take digital photos of activities/field trips and upload for "non-fiction" related puzzle reinforcement.
Grades 2-3	Internet Workshop: Moose on the Loose - Multiple mascots travel to countries all over the world. Students use the website to write in the journal and read progressive entries. Provides links to learning themes that explore the traditions of many contries. International students share their native plants, animals, foods, celebrations, holidays, geography, climate/weather, clothing, and games.	Internet Project: My Town is Important - Use the simple format found in Margaret Wise Brown's, The Important Book, to help students describe a special person, event or place.
Grades 4 plus	Progressive Stories: Students All Over the World Writing Online Books	Quia Quiz Generator: Genres of Literature - Create java games, interactive quizzes, matching games, flashcards, concentration, and word search activites instantly.

Grades 4 & Specials

Grades K-1


Traveling School Mascot Programs with Companion Online Journals Make Way for Ducklings Traveling Buddy Backpack Project (Boston, MA)- Jake, The Mallard Beanie Baby is sent along with the book to other participating classrooms. As each class receives the backpack, they email participating classes to describe how Jake is spending his week complete with digital photographs. Owney the Traveling Dog (Maine) - An online project based on the book Owney the Traveling Dog, by Lynn Hall (1977), a story is about a real puppy adopted by postal workers, and it lived at the post office. Classes host the dog, send me a paragraph or two by e-mail to be added to Owney's online journal. Links literature, social studies and telecommunications. A great way to learn about the US postal system and its long history. Owney the Traveling Dog (California) Willie the Wandering Wallabee- Learn about the adventures Willie had by reading his travel journal and meeting the students he visited. Kindergarten Traveling Mascots	Interacting with Progressive Online Stories Read Global Story Trains - Story Train is a fun and creative way to work with other children from around the world. Each completed story train is comprised of three cars, or chapters. Sponsored in conjunction with the July, 2000 United Nations G8 Summit. All aboard! Construct Global Story Trains Add Pictures to Global Story Trains Weekly Readers' Write to Zip (Gr. K) - Zip has a problem and he needs your help. Students write to provide answers and advice. Weekly Readers' Write to Buddy Bear (Gr. 1) - Buddy has a problem and needs your help. Students write to provide answers and advice. Poet's Corner
Responding and Sharing with Classroom Webpages: Display the results of student work while you create new age-appropriate locations for others to visit Pocantico Schools Grade K: Ms. Hoyt and Ms. Terry Grade 1: Mrs. Shaul and Ms. Mackey Jack Fontanella's Kindergarten Marci McGowan's First Grade Webpage (with extensive links to other classrooms)	Pairing Fiction and Non-Fiction in Internet Workshop Enchanted Learning - houses children's educational web sites and games which are designed to capture the imagination while maximizing creativity, learning, and enjoyment Weekly Reader (mystery puzzles, captions, photos and sounds that change weekly) Kindergarten Grade 1 Scholastic News Grade 1
Telecollaborative Response and Sharing Kindergarten Potluck Project - an online recipe book by Kindergarten classes for Kindergarten classes . Can be linked to cooking units and the book Potluck by Anne Shelby. From Sea to Shining Sea - classrooms engaged in collaborative problem solving by e-mailing questions to each other based on The Magic School Bus Inside a Hurricane by Joanne Cole. Classrooms conducted research to find the answers. The project culminated in a virtual picnic. Graph Goodies - Students create a graph that will be part of an online interactive graph book. They analyze the graph's data and create three questions about their graphs for students to solve. KidSpired Frosty Readers - Select a book with a winter theme. After reading the story, students write a new ending, story sequel, letter to the author, etc. The teacher will then create a follow-up activity in any content area using Kidspiration. Meeting in the Mitten - After reading Jan Brett's book, The Mitten, the class will learn about the author, setting and characters of the story. Use what you have learned to create and perform a play based on the story of The Mitten. Letterboxing for Kids - is a great place to learn how to go on a real-life treasure hunt with your friends and family. Includes activities for rubber stamping.	Constructive Literacy Tools Jigzone: choose the level of difficulty and create interactive digital puzzles. Billy Bear's Personalized Storybooks - Computer Storybooks are a great way to learn mouse control. Makes reading a fun and special activity. Students can personalize with their own name and print out to take home. Magical Kingdom Stories: Has the best animated stories on the Web. Includes many classics such as Cinderella, The Lion and the Mouse, Jack and the Beanstalk and many more. You can make your own too!
Author/Illustrator Study Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes -Includes Rebus Rhymes for children who are learning how to read. Kindergartners enjoy picking out the words they can read. Great fun. Arthur (from PBS Kids) - Includes links to games and resources for parents and teachers. Jan Brett - 2,622 pages of free activities, coloring pages, and projects Audrey Wood- Meet Audrey Wood and join in activities with the author herself. Discover how picture books are written and illustrated. Leo Lionni - An author study compiled by first grade students at Beal school. Interactive links are a great way to extend appreciation of his books.	Early Reading Skills Practice Oral Language: Fred Penner's Jukebox - play your favorite children’s songs and sing along Starfall - online interactive storybooks for early emergent and advanced emergent readers. Incudes contextual skills practice for target sounds in a fun and interactive format. Alfy's Word Games - many games that reinforce letter learning and sound symbol relationships. Early Childhood Education Network - Includes many play and learn lessons in English, Spanish, German and French. Clifford's Interactive Games and Stories - Interactive storybooks that build feature children’s favorite book character, Clifford! Builds enjoyment for learning and engagement with stories.
Literature Based Resources for Teachers Database for Award Winning Children's Literature - A great resource for matching readers with texts. Visit the information link to get started in using this resource. Leveled Books Database - interactive tools allows you to search for books that have been leveled using either the Reading Recovery or Guided Reading methodologies. Search by title, author, keyword, reading strand, or level. ReadWriteThink Lessons Scholastic Lessons and Units - Includes lesson plans, activities, reproducibles, thematic units, teaching strategies and much, much more. Rubric Makers for Reading Topics (and much more) - Create rubrics to evaluate students in all subject areas. Simple to use. K-12 SCORE Cyberguides - Plans and resources for web-delivered units of instruction centered on core works of literature. Excellent resources organized by grade level.

Grades 2-3

Traveling School Mascot Programs with Companion Online Journals Moose on the Loose International Exchange Project: Multiple mascots travel to countries all over the world and students can use the website to read and/or write in the online journal as well as read the journal online. Flat Stanley Project - Based on the book by Jeff Brown, students create paper Flat Stanleys and exchange them with classes. Correspondance can be exchanged in e-mail, snail mail form. An excellent collaborative project. Rhonda Rhoda’s Rhode Island Ramble - This traveling state mascot helps teach children learn about communities and state characteristics. A great way to introduce students to e-mail. O llie and Oscar’s Odyssey - Oscar and Ollie are California Sea Otters who have left their "Mum" in search of new friends across the U.S. and around the world. Another great example combining e-mail communication and content area knowledge. Many great links. Owney the Traveling Dog (Maine) - An online project based on the book Owney the Traveling Dog, by Lynn Hall (1977), a story is about a real puppy adopted by postal workers, and it lived at the post office. Classes host the dog, send me a paragraph or two by e-mail to be added to Owney's online journal. Links literature, social studies and telecommunications. A great way to learn about the US postal system and its long history. Owney the Traveling Dog (California)	Interacting with Progressive Online Stories Read Global Story Trains - Story Train is a fun and creative way to work with other children from around the world. Each completed story train is comprised of three cars, or chapters. Sponsored in conjunction with the July, 2000 United Nations G8 Summit. All aboard! Construct Global Story Trains Add Pictures to Global Story Trains Progressive Story Writing - a great way to get kids interested in using email to collaborate and communicate ideas. A very valuable writing activities that promotes writing, collaborative and telecommunication skills. Poet’s Corner - an interactive site for sharing poetry in many forms. Great to build both reading and writing skills as well as a showcase for artwork. Ms. Asselin’s Postcards from around the world - classrooms exchanged greetings with each other to build a better understanding of each other and the world we live in.
Responding and Sharing with Classroom Webpages - Display the results of student work while you create new age-appropriate locations for others to visit Marci McGowan's Second Grade Webpage (with extensive links to other classrooms) Mrs. Goble’s Third Grade Classroom Webpage Mrs. Bogucki's Third Grade Webpage Pocantico Schools Grade 2: Mrs. Taverna Grade 3: Mrs. Sbarra	Pairing Fiction and Non-Fiction in Internet Workshop Magic Treehouse - Companion site for books pairing fiction and nonfiction topics. Includes links to activities, other books, author pages and more. Enchanted Learning's Zoom School - One of the most appropriate collections of well-organized informational texts about curriculur themes on the Internet. Scholastic Newszone Newburys and The Net - This site and the suggested links provide ways to extend, expand, and enhance Newbury Award Winning books. Many great resources. Eduplace Reading Scene - Includes online book clubs for kids around popular books at various grade levels.
Telecollaborative Response and Sharing Winter Sledding with Owney - A great way to combine content area learning, communication and literacy. Whale Tales (from Kids-Learn.org) - Classes read books as a springboard for an activity of their choice to share on the project website. School World Zoo Adoption Center - Adopt an animal and research its characteristics. A great way to build content knowledge about animal characteristics and their habitats. Post Card Geography - exchange picture postcards (purchased, computer or handmade) with all other participants to learn about locations around the country and the world. ePals BookClub - a great way to engage in conversations about books with others around the world. Promotes reading enjoyment, communication skills and comprehension.	Constructive Literacy Tools Working with Words (Making Words) and template for new word - a great online activity for learning common spelling and phonics patterns using letter tiles that can be easily manipulated. Both fun and educational. Quia (Homepage) Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Last Summer with Maizon Little House on the Prairie Magnetic Poetry - unscramble the cut up words provided to create or recreate poems. A great way to build word recognition. Jigzone: Choose the level of difficulty and create interactive digital puzzles Snappoll: Create your own online poll (example)
Author/Illustrator Study Robert Munsch Magic Schoolbus (Joanna Cole) Kevin Henkes Ann Cameron Aliki: How a Book Is Made	Reading Skills and Vocabulary Practice Fun Brain Word Activities Word Central Activities: Daily Buzzword, Verse Composer, Coding Chamber and more! A great resource for kids to look up words fast and create their own online dictionary of useful words. Fake Out! - Choose from the list of words at various grade levels, and guess its definition. write your own fake definition for words provided/ Check back in two weeks, and see how many people chose your definition, and learn the correct definition as well.
Literature Based Resources for Teachers Database for Award Winning Children's Literature - A great resource for matching readers with texts. Visit the information link to get started in using this resource. Leveled Books Database - interactive tools allows you to search for books that have been leveled using either the Reading Recovery or Guided Reading methodologies. Search by title, author, keyword, reading strand, or level. ReadWriteThink Lessons Scholastic Lessons and Units - Includes lesson plans, activities, reproducibles, thematic units, teaching strategies and much, much more. Rubric Makers for Reading Topics (and much more) - Create rubrics to evaluate students in all subject areas. Simple to use. K-12 SCORE Cyberguides - Plans and resources for web-delivered units of instruction centered on core works of literature. Excellent resources organized by grade level.

Grades 4 and Specials

Traveling School Mascot Programs with Companion Online Journals Owney the Traveling Dog (Maine) - An online project based on the book Owney the Traveling Dog, by Lynn Hall (1977), a story is about a real puppy adopted by postal workers, and it lived at the post office. Classes host the dog, send me a paragraph or two by e-mail to be added to Owney's online journal. Links literature, social studies and telecommunications. A great way to learn about the US postal system and its long history. Owney the Traveling Dog (California) Classroom Pet Exchange Animal Diaries: The adventures of Bonnie, Betsy, Rudolph, Baldy and Lucky Luke and from Haarlem Snuitje, Lady, The Green Knight, Jumbo and Hansje Brinker Selena On the Move Journal (Overview of Project)	Interacting with Progressive Online Stories The Poetry Zone Progressive Story Writing Students all over the world writing online books together Stories from the Web Poet's Corner Read Global Story Trains - Story Train is a fun and creative way to work with other children from around the world. Each completed story train is comprised of three cars, or chapters. Sponsored in conjunction with the July, 2000 United Nations G8 Summit. All aboard! Construct Global Story Trains Add Pictures to Global Story Trains
Responding and Sharing with Classroom Webpages - Display the results of student work while you create new age-appropriate locations for others to read & explore. GA SuperReaders (5th Grade Book Review Database) Mary Kreul's Fourth Grade Classroom Webpage Heather Renz' Fourth Grade Webpage Pocantico Schools Children's Encyclopedia of Women Gr. 4: Mrs. Almeida	Pairing Fiction and Non-Fiction in Internet Workshop Newburys and The Net - This site and the suggested links provide ways to extend, expand, and enhance Newbury Award Winning books. Many great resources. Carol Hurst's Linking Children's Literature with Content Themes - An excellent site for finding literacure books on a given theme. Exceptional resources that are both handy and useful. Scholastic NewsZone National Geographic - use this site to gather information about animals, environments and other science based topics. Kid friendly ! Eduplace Reading Scene - Includes online book clubs for kids around popular books at various grade levels. Enchanted Learning's Zoom School - One of the most appropriate collections of well-organized informational texts about curriculur themes on the Internet.
Telecollaborative Response and Sharing Wright On! - celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' flight by researching and sharing. Internet Projects: Book BackChats - an email discussion about books, covering 4-7 books each term for younger students Book Raps - an email and discussion board discussion about books for older students Spaghetti Bookclub: a place to post and read messages about books ePals BookClub: share discussions about books, authors, stories and poetry	Constructive Literacy Tools Jigzone: Choose the level of difficulty and create interactive digital puzzles Kids Crossword Maker TrackStar - collect Web sites, enter them into TrackStar, add annotations for your students, and you have an interactive, online lesson called a Track. Create your own Track or use one of the hundreds of thousands already made by other educators. Search the database by subject, grade, or theme and standard for a quick and easy activity. Folktales Collections Letters from Rifka Quia From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler Snappoll: Create your own online poll (example)
Author/Illustrator Study Patricia Polacco Jean Craighead George Brian Jacques (Redwall Series) Tedd Arnold (Illustrator) Reading Skills Practice Listen and Write Poetry Fun Brain Word Activities Word Central Activities: Daily Buzzword, Verse Composer, Coding Chamber and more!	Specials Resources Health Webquests Create a Graph Interactive Graph Maker K-12 Music Resources CyberKids Art & Poetry Gallery Special Education Resources on Internet (SERI) Young EFL/ESL Learners P.E. Central School Counselor Resources
Literature Based Resources for Teachers Database for Award Winning Children's Literature - A great resource for matching readers with texts. Visit the information link to get started in using this resource. Leveled Books Database - interactive tools allows you to search for books that have been leveled using either the Reading Recovery or Guided Reading methodologies. Search by title, author, keyword, reading strand, or level. ReadWriteThink Lessons Scholastic Lessons and Units - Includes lesson plans, activities, reproducibles, thematic units, teaching strategies and much, much more. Rubric Makers for Reading Topics (and much more) - Create rubrics to evaluate students in all subject areas. Simple to use. K-12 SCORE Cyberguides - Plans and resources for web-delivered units of instruction centered on core works of literature. Excellent resources organized by grade level.

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