You've Been Virtually Book'd With The Joy of Reading....A Special Program and List I Use Within Our Destiny Discover & Library!

 

One of my favorite things to do in the summer is read. I read more in the summer than anytime of the year. 

As I read, I am always looking for books to inspire and encourage my readers at school too. 

This month, I created a choice board with 14 eBooks from our Destiny Discover that will be perfect to share at the beginning of the school year to celebrate the joy of reading.  

I put together a choice board so my readers will be able to find and read them easily within the library, classroom and at home. 

Let me show you how I set up this choice board for my school community. 

First, I created the choice board in a Google Slide.  I added the covers of the 14 eBooks I included in this choice board. 

Second, I went to our Destiny Discover and...

...grabbed the links to each eBook.  

This is easy to do.  You just search for the eBook, click on the three little dots next to Open, and this drop down menu will appear. 

Click on Share and the link to the book will pop up. That is the url to share in the choice boards. 

Take the copied link and add it to the book cover.  

When every book cover is linked, you are ready to share the choice board. 

Go to File and down to Publish to the web.  

This will give you a link to share with the students and teachers.  

When they click on that published link, the You've Been Virtually Book'd With These Picture Books will pop up and all of the eBooks can be read from there. 

I am excited about this list of 14 special new eBooks I put together in Titlewave.  In this choice board, you can click on any book cover to view and find the full book list from Titlewave there too. 

Our students will love these books that celebrate reading and that are part of our You've Been Virtually Book'd program.  And I love how we can keep this program going all year long!  It brings so much joy to our readers each and every month.

How Are You Using This Summer To Relax, Recharge and Feel Inspired? Share Your Thoughts Here, Friends.

 

Our friends at StickTogether are wondering how we are taking care of ourselves over the summer. 

They are collecting our short responses in this Google Form over the next week and then will share the combined responses back to the StickTogether Community. 

I really love this idea and can't wait to see how everyone is making their summer as restorative as possible. 

Happy Thursday, friends. 

Using Sound Walls in Teaching Reading: These Tools and Classes Can Help You Be Your Best This Fall

                      

There is so much I’m looking forward to this summer! One of those things is learning about classroom resources and summer courses I can share with teachers and students.

Because I love reading so much – and I love helping students learn to read well and develop a love of reading, too – I was really happy to learn about Tools4Reading.com, and the dedicated folks there who introduced me to their Sound Walls Solutions resources. 

Let me tell you about the Sound Walls Solutions resources too.

Sound Wall 

A Sound Wall allows teachers to organize sounds (phonemes) and the different letters (graphemes) used to make them. These have been used in speech and language programs, as well as intervention programs for struggling learners, for many years. Because there are 44 sounds in the English language and only 26 letters, classroom resources like sound walls are needed to help students learn to read and progress with literacy learning. 

With a sound wall, teachers go from speech to print INSTEAD of print to speech. Many teachers I know use sound walls already, but Tools4Reading.com provides them with the resources to implement them well.

Summer Classes

This summer, Tools 4 Reading is offering Sound Wall classes, which are affordable, flexible sessions for individuals–you don’t have to go through your district to enroll. If you want some instruction on the science and implementation of sound walls instruction, check out these online classes that run from the end of June throughout August. 

Visit https://www.tools4reading.com/book-online to for the schedule and to register.

(They also offer PD for reading teachers called Top 10 Tools for Teachers – a topic for another blog sometime!)

Cards, Images, and a Manual for Teachers 

Tools4Reading.com offers an array of classroom resources that you might find helpful. The one I spent some time with was the Tools 4 Reading Value Pack, which is a handy collection with several impactful resources:

Sound Wall Solutions™ is the manual, which is really the heart of the elements included in a Value Pack they offer. The manual helps bridge the gap between understanding sound walls and allows teachers to quickly integrate sound walls into daily classroom reading instruction.

There are Phoneme/Grapheme Instructional Cards, which feature the most common patterns for reading and spelling. There are 47 cards, and they detail the reason behind the various spellings in our language.

There are also Phoneme/Grapheme mini cards for kids, perfectly sized for young learners’ hands. 

I loved the two posters included in the Value Pack! These two posters represent 41 speech sounds of the English language, and are arranged by the place and manner of articulation.

This is a great resource when teaching phonemic awareness—because students can easily make connections by making their mouth look like the one on the poster. 

Also included is a collection called Kid Lips, which is a simple yet so effective way to help children learn to form sounds and words correctly. The 100-page instructional guide includes short lessons and tips for instruction.

There is an inset image to match the correct Kid Lips™ picture card with each lesson. The cards feature pictures of children’s mouths to illustrate the correct placement of the tongue, teeth, and lips when producing specific sounds. 

Are you interested in these resources for your fall classes? 

You can order the Value Pack now and let them know you read about it here on my blog. Just use LIBRARY10 as the discount code when you go to https://www.tools4reading.com/ to order. 

I hope you’ll check these out! I know you and your students will love them.