Kids' Summer Reading

Summer vacation! Time for all that great free-reading that kids might not have time for during the school year between homework and piano lessons and soccer practice and everything else!

Image from david.orban via Flickr CC BY 2.0

My own kids are out of school, and we've already been to the library once. I think my son has already read four of the eight books he picked out! (No trouble getting that one to read...)

For more reluctant readers, perhaps some suggestions might get the ball rolling? Earlier this year, I wrote a series of posts providing some reading suggestions. I called the series "Books for Boys." (No gender-bias intended, really...read my rationale for this.) Truth be told, most all of the books listed below will be great reads for both boys and girls, though I'm focusing on the 5th-8th grade crowd here for the most part, though some of these might be great read-alouds for younger kids too.

Free Rice: Do Some Good in the World

I want to encourage you to check out FreeRice.com sometime soon.

This site has been around for quite a while (since 2007, I believe), but that doesn't diminish it's importance or value. At it's simplest, it's a question-and-answer game: the website asks you questions, and you select the correct answer from among the ones listed. But here's the kicker: every question you get right donates "10 grains of rice" to help feed the hungry.

The United Nations World Food Programme sponsors the site. FreeRice.com seems to be largely about building awareness of the problem of hunger around the world, as the WFP is funded by donations. The group does tremendous good in the world, and I think this sort of site is a great entry point for conversations with kids about the enormity of the problem of world hunger.

The game was originally set up to be a vocabulary practice game: an English word is listed, and you choose the best meaning of that word. This is still the default mode when you visit the site, but there are many other subject areas you can play as well: multiplication facts, identifying famous paintings, world geography, vocabulary in other languages, and human anatomy, to name a few. (Click the "Subjects" button at the top of the site to select a different topic.)

I'm thinking this might be a good summer review game for kids? Something that will keep them connected to content and reviewing things they've learned...while doing some good in the world at the same time! Maybe set a challenge: donate 1000 grains of rice a day?

I hope you'll take a few minutes to check it out.

The Overwhelming Flood: Supporting Teachers Using Technology

We've had several days of heavy rain, but my basement has stayed dry so far. Our sump pump has running almost continuously.

Growing up on the West Coast of the U.S., I didn't have much context for life with a basement, let alone a sump pump. But I've learned the value of that submersible pump in a hole in the corner of the basement. The good people who built our house were planning ahead for the eventuality of lots of rain, and they put a series of tile lines (think 4-inch [10 cm] plastic tubing with perforations on the top to let water in) under the basement floor to drain water away from the inevitable cracks and crevices. These tile lines all drain into a sump--a pit in the corner of the basement--which fills up with water when it rains hard, as we've had these past few days.

A sump hole with a submersible sump pump. Thanks to Joan for this image.

Here's where the sump pump comes in: it can be submersed in the pit, and pumps the water up a pipe and out through a hose and out into the backyard. And while the water is still around...it isn't in my house.

Blogging: One Year In

I started this blog one year ago today. I feel like my life is very different in some ways and very much the same in others. It's been a good year! I began a full-time position in higher education, and I've basically loved every minute of it. Even the stressful, overwhelming times. I've made new friends, strengthened older friendships, had lunch regularly with my wife (that is a benefit to the professor's schedule!), and developed professionally. I've had the opportunity to teach 258 unique, individual students, including supervising some in student teaching, which was an adventure in learning for me and them.

What a year!

A View of Curriculum from 30,000 Feet

Image: Jorge Royan [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

So we had a quick trip to a warm, sunny spot (lovely) and on the flight home I was doing some reading to prepare for a course I'm teaching this summer. The book was Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World, edited by Heidi Hayes Jacobs. I'm enjoying the book very much, and challenged by it at the same time: it's well-written, compelling, thoughtful stuff about the curricular needs for students, teachers, schools, and society in the 21st Century.

As I read, we hit enough turbulence that I was feeling a little airsick and put the book down for a bit. It got me thinking about flying.

What to do with Twitter?

I had a weird series of events over the weekend.

A good friend and fellow professor, knowing that I like social media (probably too much) shared this article from the Weekly Standard, which decries Twitter for it's banality and how it is tugging down the britches of academia. It is a decidedly NON-Twitter-length piece (very lengthy!) but it's worth reading from beginning to end...assuming you can still handle reading long-form writing, which is one point addressed in the piece.

It's a really thoughtful piece--not just ranting--and it gave me pause about my Twitter use. I love Twitter for professional development...but now I'm wondering how much of it is really narcissistic ego-centrism? When I'm honest with myself, that's probably a part of it--it feels good to get something I write retweeted, or to have a conversation with someone I don't know outside of Twitter affirming my thinking about teaching and learning.

So I'm a little torn now, to be honest, because the next day, this video turned up in my Twitterfeed:

The Joys of the Apple II

By User Apple2gs, via Wikimedia Commons

If you were a child of the 80's (and maybe even the 90's), did you have an Apple II (or Apple IIe, or Apple IIgs) in your classroom? If so, here's a bit of nostalgia too good to pass up...

Block off an hour or so and go check out http://www.virtualapple.org/. You won't be sorry.

The site is an emulator for all those classic games you used to play: Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Lemonade Stand, and...the grand-daddy of them all...Oregon Trail!

The games load up right in your browser, but you'll have to install a plug-in for them to load. (This is easy, and free--when you try to play a game for the first time, follow the on-screen instructions and you'll be in game-mode in a matter of minutes.)

Yes, the graphics are just as awful as you remember them. Yes, the sounds are midi-generated silliness. Yes, the games are just as awesome today as they were all those years ago.

And even though the graphics are bad and the sound is worse, I think your students could still learn from these games. Okay, sure: some of them are just ridiculous...but you could say the same for some of the schlocky apps you probably have on your classroom set of iPads today!

It might also be worth sharing this site with your students' parents...just the sort of old-school fun for parents and kids alike for the summer doldrums of "Mom...I'm bored!"

(Thanks to my Twitterfriend @sjunkins for sharing this great site!)