Educational Information Sources Online

Some resources online for Readers Theater that I've come across.

Internet Resources For Conducting Reader's Theater

Aaron Shephard's Readers Theater Scripts

Gander Academy Readers Theater Scripts

Education World Readers Theater Resources

Fiction Teachers.com

I found this early elementary reading site that has some great online reading activities for beginning readers. There are activities for ABCs, early readers, comics, puzzles, plays, non-fiction and selections based on holidays. Nice site to help kids with reading as well as learning to navigate web resources.

Here's a wonderful site called the Favorite Poem Project. A short description from the site:

Robert Pinsky, the 39th Poet Laureate of the United States, founded the Favorite Poem Project shortly after the Library of Congress appointed him to the post in 1997. Since its launch, the Favorite Poem Project has been dedicated to celebrating, documenting and promoting poetry's role in Americans' lives.

During the one-year open call for submissions, 18,000 Americans wrote to the project volunteering to share their favorite poems — Americans from ages 5 to 97, from every state, of diverse occupations, kinds of education and backgrounds. From those thousands of letters and emails, we've culled several enduring collections.

Once again, National Poetry Month is almost upon us (April). The Academy of the American Poets has a number of resources on its site, including a Poetry Read-A-Thon for classrooms. You can download the official logo at the site, and also order posters to display. Another neat part of this event is having a poem emailed to you every day for the month. You can sign up here.

I've been hunting for children's literature pathfinders at university library sites and I've found many good ones. Here are just a few:

University of Scranton Library Website pathfinder recommends a number of books by age/grade level.

Houston Cole Library has a nice pathfinder that is organized visually.  

Castleton College Calvin Coolidge Library pathfinder has a large selection of print materials listed.  

UC Berkeley has a nice selection of Internet links to follow for children's literature.  

Greenfield Community College Library's pathfinder gives instructions on how to search and use the materials as well as a listing of them.  

The Internet Public Library is always a good place to look for online resources. Here is a pathfinder for multicultural children's literature resources.  

Concordia University has a very well organized and visually pleasing pathfinder, succinct but mentions a good selection of quality sources.  

I found two articles (and I am sure there are more, but I liked these as they bullet and highlight issues to be aware of).

Joy Shioshita writes a brief article about selecting multicultural children's literature.  From The Council on Interracial Books for Children is a list of things to consider when evaluating a book for racial and cultural stereotypes. 

Here are a couple of really great sites, one a database, and the other a portal, for multicultural children's literature.

 
Cleveland State University's Multicultural Children's Literature Site can be searched by author, title, illustrator, genre, culture, and reviewer.

The North Central Regional Educational Laboratory has a site with links to multicultural resources.  

The Multicultural Resources for Children  website has a number of bibliographies organized by cultural group.

The Multicultural Pavilion has resources for cultural understanding that go way beyond literature.  

The EdChange Multicultural Page is another great portal of links to all kinds of web resources on multiculturalism. Take note of the Historical Collections links at the bottom of this page.

I found some neat websites for teaching fairy tales with students.

The Tales of Wonder site contains the text to fairy and folk tales from around the world.

Some interesting ideas for a first grade fairy tale unit can be found here.

You can find a number of links for kids to follow for fairy tales online and other activities, at this very purple site.

Fairy tale webquest for grades 4-5 can be found at this well-organized site.

Nancy Keane (who also has a wealth of other great literature info on the web) has a Feminist Fairy Tales site.

The American Library Association maintains pages for the Newbery Medal, Caldecott Medal, Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal,

Pura Belpre Medal,  and the Coretta Scott King Book Award. You can find the current years winners and honor books as well as past winner lists.

I've found a number of websites, some with searchable databases (by type, genre, subject, etc.), for children's literature. Here's the list:

Librarian Lisa Bartle's Database. You can search here by age level, setting, historical period, genre, and awards, among others.

Database of Award-winning Children's Literature

Database of abstracts of over 5000 children's picture books. You can search by keyword, alphabetically, or boolean searching. Very nice database if you're looking for books by subject or topic. I found this very useful.

Children's Picture Book Database at Miami University

The International Association of School Librarianship has a site with a number of links to web resources for children's literature.

Children's Literature Resources on the Internet

The University of Maryland has a great database of international children's literature. You may search via simple, advanced, keyword, and location fields.

International Children's Digital Library

Of course there's the Children's Lit comprehensive site. However, you need a password to access parts of this site (though not all).

Children'sLit.com

Yale University has a children's literature site as well:

Children's Literature Page of Yale University Library

University at Calgary maintains the Children's Literature Webguide. Also very comprehensive.

Webguide to Children's Lit Online Resources