Skip to main content

Two Webcasts from Scholastic

From the Scholastic OOM blog:

While not every kid “gets” history right away, it’s one of the most important subjects they need to take while in school.  It’s hard sometimes to see how things that happened 10, 20, 100, or 1,000 years ago have anything to do with today’s world. That’s why the upcoming webcasts – Dear America: History Speaks and The First Thanksgiving are so important, because they teach kids the importance of history in captivating, engrossing ways.  “You’ll never know where you’re going, unless you know where you’ve been,” said Jennifer L. aka my mom.

The first webcast, Dear America: History Speaks, takes place on Wednesday, October 26th at 1 p.m. and will feature Dear America® series authors Lois Lowry, Kirby Larson, and Andrea Davis Pinkney.  The award-winning authors will virtually talk to students about the art of writing historical fiction including how to craft compelling stories, conduct research and develop characters. Teachers will have access to tons of useful tools like free classroom discussion guides, whiteboard-ready slides and activities and more.  Visit www.scholastic.com/teachdearamerica to register your class today.

The First Thanksgiving, the second classroom event, broadcasts on November 16th at 1 p.m.  The virtual field trip will take students to the Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Mass. where they will meet Colonial and Wampanoag interpreters and learn what life was like during the first Thanksgiving.  Teachers can visit www.scholastic.com/thanksgiving to access the webcast and get free classroom discussion guides, activities and book lists.

Many schools are not able to afford as many field trips as they could in the past, but Scholastic has made it so that students will get the experience for FREE!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Fun and Inspiration

In this post, I'm sharing a few YouTube videos that have been quite inspiring and some that are just fun. Below is a TED presentation by spoken word poet and teacher, Sarah Kay . You MUST watch it and be inspired! I also watched a documentary titled, Louder Than A Bomb , about the spoken word poetry contest held in Chicago Public Schools. It was also extremely inspiring. Below is the trailer : Finally, does everyone but me know about the book, Goodnight iPad , a parody of the original by Margaret Wise Brown? Hilarious! See the YouTube video below...does it not perfectly capture what goes on in the homes of many of our children today? Reminds me of a colleague who told me she texts her children to tell them to come to dinner. The video below it is in stark contrast, titled: The Joy of Books . Enjoy!

NCTE was AMAZING!

I loved NCTE --not the "getting ready to go" part, which I hate, but the actual "being there" part. I learned so much from many great educators and authors. One of the many highlights of the conference for me was the Authors' Blog session, which I chaired. Laurie Halse Anderson, Maureen Johnson, Justine Larbalestier, Barbara O'Connor, and Lisa Yee were all on the panel and let me tell you -- these women are amazing! I didn't have my camera but several of the authors have already blogged about the session--check out Laure Anderson , Barbara O'Connor , Lisa Yee and Justine Larbalestier's blog posts. During the question/answer phase of the presentation, the authors discussed and raise very important issues that I think all teachers should consider. One of the questions I asked was about receiving posts that contained personal information. Children and young adults become very connected to these authors through their books and the authors' blog...