in the Classroom Prepared by Mrs. Laura Loutensock Staff development Holyoke Elementary School

There are lots of other great online resources That cost money. Today we are focused on what does not cost you.

E-books yea or nay? O Are electronic picture books good for kids, and can they get them hooked on reading by expanding access to engaging titles? O Or are digital books one more step down that slippery slope to less and less interaction with print just when children need it most?

School Library Journal, 2011 O The results are remarkable, she says. The students using Tumblebooks leapt ahead of their peers. Last November, three months after starting the project, the average fluency rate for the Tumblebook group was 23 percentage points higher than that of the control group. Students using the ebooks had moved from a Lexile level of K to M. By January, the entire group of children in the ebook program had achieved fluency to the point that they were “exited” from her pull-out sessions and integrated back into their regular classrooms. It took the control group two months longer. She credits the success to the ebooks’ ability to narrate the story, while allowing students to feel like they’re in control of what and when they read. “When students repeatedly have a strong model of fluency, the more they hear that, the better they get it,” says Hume. The experiment was so successful that her school district decided to pay for Tumblebooks for all four of its elementary schools in the next school year.

Using E-books in the Classroom O Reading Center O remediation, enrichment, fluency practice … O Compare/Contrast O Sponge Activity O AR points for kids with no one at home to read with O Enrichment on a topic of study O Indoor recess O Holiday Literature

Free Collections of E-books O Tumblebooks O We Give Books (Pearson Foundation) O Story Line Online (Actor’s Guild) O International Children’s Digital Library O MeeGenius O Fables & Fairytales websites O Misc. Online Stories for Children O Tween Tribune – Online Newspaper for Kids

Tumblebooks O Animated, talking picture books -- with fiction, non-fiction and foreign language titles, O Read-Alongs (chapter books with sentence highlighting and narration but no animation) O TumbleTV which consists of pre-set playlists of a sequence of books, and Tumble Puzzles & Games. O A growing selection of Tumblebooks are available for iPad.

Tumblebooks O Tumblebooks are “checked out” from a library. Therefore you must first visit the library website and then follow their link to the Tumblebook library.

We Give Books Pearson Foundation Notice the Resources for Educators at the bottom of the page.

We Give Books This Year’s programs to encourage reading Fall - Read for the record Winter - Read to donate books to those in need Spring – Donate books to schools Summer - reading program – features a different book every week for 10 weeks

Story Line Online Storyline Online is a literacy program of the Screen Actors Guild Foundation Celebrities read stores aloud to share their passion for reading

International Children’s Digital Library The ICDL collection includes 4642 books in 61 languages

International Children’s Digital Library  A fundamental principle of the Foundation is that children and their families deserve to have access to the books of their culture, as well as the majority culture, regardless of where they live.  The ICDL Foundation's goal is to build a collection of books that represents outstanding historical and contemporary books from throughout the world. Ultimately, the Foundation aspires to have every culture and language represented so that every child can know and appreciate the riches of children's literature from the world community.

MeeGenius 70 free title for teachers who sign-up

Visit Mrs. Loutensock’s Start Page to see moremore online story sources

Online Newspapers for Kids TTJunior Tween Tribune Teen Tribune Tween Tribune is a free, not-for-profit online newspaper for kids, aged 8–15. It is updated daily with stories from the Associated Press that are chosen based on relevancy to pre-adolescents.

What do you want to add?

Thanks!