Summer Learning

Most people might know ReadWriteThink.org as a collection of resources for teachers and students--and we are, so that is a good thing! But we are also a resource for parents/guardians/after school providers and kids (my distinction here being the not-so-scientific classification that a student is a kid who is in school--like actually in the school building doing school-based stuff).

We have these resources stored in an aptly named Parent & Afterschool section(which we typically call P&AS; I mention this because I will be using that initialism throughout the post). If you are a teacher, you should share these with parents. Especially the summer initiatives. We had one last year, Bright Ideas for Summer, for which Becky coordinated having some P&AS activities written/altered to fit a summer theme. And that is still up, still available, and still completely awesome for helping kids beat the Summer Slide (the "slide" backwards in progress that happens over summer when kids are no longer engaged in learning activities).

This year, little more of the same and little bit of something different. We have some new activities and some re-vamped activities come at you. BUT we spruced up the whole package this year.

Have you heard of We Give Books? They provide free books online for kids to read. Awesome, right? Of course! Free books over summer! That amazing!

And we've partnered up with them. We have ten P&AS activities in the works being that are being specifically written to accompany a book that will be provided for free from We Give Books. Each activity   uses of one ReadWriteThink.org's interactives to engage kids after reading the book, to keep them thinking and learning and having fun.

The books are free. The interactives are free. The learning that can be achieved? Priceless.

I'll be adding a link to the resources when they go live. You can also keep an eye on our Summer Learning board on Pinterest. I've pinned the Bright Ideas info; I'll be pinning the We Give Books stuff as it becomes available. The whole thing launches mid June, so we are closing in.

And that is what we have coming for Summer Learning!

Wes

What Happened to April?

Wow. I lost a whole month!

Usually in April I am blogging about the International Reading Association's annual conference, and how ReadWriteThink is hosting sessions there. And where I'll be so you can come see me.

Alas, I failed. We went to San Antonio, we spoke to the teachers, we had an in-person team meeting. And I got a cowboy hat. And Becky laughed at me.

Here's a way to show this in a graphic representation:

I'm not the only one who fits in the center, though.

Whoa! Look at that! A Venn diagram!

Yes, that's right, after talking about it for a few months now, we have our new Venn Diagram interactive live on the site.

The iPad and Android versions are in production and (fingers crossed!) will be out by the end of May, maybe June.

We have a list of our interactives we are trying to turn in to apps for tablets (to avoid the whole Flash-does-not-run-on-iOS-systems issue) as well as list of interactives to be updated with the work saver. I'll get into more detail with those once we have deadlines and designer approval for our ideas and workplan.

If it all comes together, it will be very exciting.

Next time, I'm going to go in to our summer plans for this year. It's pretty cool, and we are very excited by the partnership we were able to strike up for this project.

But for now, all you get--other than the handy link to the new Venn Diagram interactive--is a picture of me photo-bombing some poor conference attendees. Don't worry, they totally got another picture without me in it.

Wes