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Jam packed with facts, figures, and stunning images, these apps are both visually arresting and informative. All in all, these apps are sure to please parents and educators as well as youngsters.
School Library Journal, May 2013

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Educational Apps for Kids - Kids Discover

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Jam packed with facts, figures, and stunning images, these apps are both visually arresting and informative. All in all, these apps are sure to please parents and educators as well as youngsters. School Library Journal, May 2013

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The Importance of playing outside.
Rachel McMillan Nursery School is believed to be the first 'Open Air' Nursery School in England.
Our founders Margaret and Rachel McMillan were strong believers in the importance of fresh air, nature and activity for children's well-being and learning.

"To move, to run, to find things out by new movement, to feel one's life in every limb, that is the life of early childhood."
- Margaret McMillan 1930
The philosophy that developed here, has influenced Nursery School and Early Years practise across the world for the last 100 years. Free play, fresh air, physical activity and experience of the natural world are an integral part of children's time here at Rachel McMillan. It builds their muscles and it builds their minds.
Children have continuous access to the garden from their shelters for most of their session whatever the weather. We have waterproof clothing and spare wellies to help the children stay warm and dry when it is wet. We provide sun cream and encourage children to wear long sleeved tops when it is sunny. The sun, wind, snow and rain provide rich experiences to support children's understanding of their world and we want to enable children to be free to explore and learn in all weather conditions.

Children are able to interact with an environment that is always changing - exploring different weather conditions.

We plan for the children's learning outside in the same way that we plan for their indoor learning experiences. The outdoor area provides opportunities for learning that we could not deliver inside. The children are able to explore and experiment on a much larger scale here and enjoy a much greater freedom of movement. There is provision to encourage them to run, jump, climb, balance, swing and more. These activities are vital for physical and mental health but they also help to develop fine and gross motor skills which in turn help children be able to write and use tools effectively.

Children are able to interact with an environment that is always changing - exploring different weather conditions, the changing seasons; different light and temperature conditions as well as developing a sense of wonder and respect for the natural world.

The garden offers unique challenges for children to work together, to solve problems, to take risks and to learn how to be safe. Recent research shows a strong link in physicality helping brain development and the importance of young children being able to move their bodies freely. To be able to sit and listen to stories or work together in groups, children need to be able to control their bodies. They gain this control by doing all the physical activities we offer here.

Forest School
Forest School has developed from the Scandinavian education system and is about children and young people building self-esteem and independence through exploring and experiencing the natural world. It is a programme delivered by trained practitioners.
The Forest School experience promotes sensory child-led outdoor play, encouraging and stimulating curiosity and absorption. Forest School originated in Scandinavia where children are not formally educated until they are seven. The long tradition of craftwork in European education is also key to a Forest School experience. Forest School is a continuation of our outdoor learning and takes place in a small woodland space on the Nursery School site. Forest School operates in all weathers.

We have one Forest School Leader who works with parent volunteers to support children's learning at Forest School. We all know children love playing outdoors in natural spaces. The ethos of Forest School allows children the time and space to develop skills, interests and understanding through practical, hands on experience. Children learn new skills through wildlife hunts, plant and tree identification as well as whittling, sawing and lighting camp fires to cook on. By engaging and training children in risk-taking activities in the outdoors, children develop sophisticated skills in being able to manage safety and learn skills they may not pick up anywhere else. Forest School has a significant positive impact on children's language, their ability to make relationships and understand the world around them. Small groups visit the forest weekly throughout the year.

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welcome to the website for the rachel mcmillan nursery school and children’s centre

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Rachel McMillan Nursery School and Children's Centre website

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Rachel McMillan Nursery School is believed to be the first 'Open Air' Nursery School in England. Our founders Margaret and Rachel McMillan were strong believers in the importance of fresh air, nature and activity for children's well-being and learning.

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An abacus has beads that slide on rods. It can be used to count, add, subtract, multiply and more.

* the column on the far right is for ones (1,2,3,...)
* the next column is for tens (10,20,30,...)
* the next column is for 100s (100,200,300,...)
* etc
Just like our decimal number system!

Try using the abacus below (in this one the top row is worth 5 of the bottom row):

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An abacus has beads that slide on rods. It can be used to count, add, subtract, multiply and more. * the column on the far right is for ones (1,2,3,...) * the next column is for tens (10,20,30,...) * the next column is for 100s (100,200,300,...) * etc Just like our decimal number system!

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How children learn whole numbers

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Thank you for visiting Early Years Educator and making use of our archive of expert features, practical activity ideas and news. Why not register today and the enjoy the following great benefits: Weekly email newsletters, providing you themed activity ideas, topical features and news Unlimited access to news and selected features.

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for the love of reading

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Trust in books

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BookTrust transforms lives by getting children and families reading. We are the UK’s largest children’s reading charity. Each year we reach 3.4 million children across the UK with books, resources and support.

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Recommended for sentence types

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"The choice provided for every year group, block and step is outstanding: from fluency work to discussion problems. I can always find tasks to support, challenge, engage and inspire my learners." Emily
Teacher - Bradford

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Home - Primary Teaching Resources, Worksheets & Activities

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Our selection of worksheets, resources and activities created by teachers for teachers. Join Over 100,000 members with over 8,000 resources.

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The 3 rock types are:

Let's learn about these rocks and their role in the overall rock cycle.

But first, let's have some fun! Remember Sim City? You can remember the 3 rock types using the acronym SIM ( Sedimentary, Igneous, M etamorphic)!

Sedimentary Rock Type

Sedimentary rocks are made up of pieces of older rocks (igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary) and organic remains (shells, bone, etc.). When rocks break apart from erosion they are transported by rivers and streams to lakes and oceans. As the sediment piles up it is compressed and heated in the Earth. Eventually, the high pressures and temperatures lithify the loose sediment into a sedimentary rock. More information on sedimentary rocks.

Sedimentary rocks are the "recyclers" of the rock cycle, they take any other rock and turn it into a new one.

Antelope Canyon in Arizona is carved from sandstone, a sedimentary rock.
Â©Andrea Izzotti - stock.adobe.com

Examples of sedimentary rocks
Igneous Rock Type

Igneous rocks are formed when magma cools and turns into a rock. This cooling can either be intrusive, where the magma pool gradually cools and the magma solidifies into an igneous rock. Alternatively, the cooling can extrusive, where the magma is cooled very quickly such as during a volcanic eruption. More information on igneous rocks.

Igneous rocks are the "new kids" in the rock cycle. They're the new rock on the block, ready to start fresh.

Basalt lava flow in Hawaii, a perfect example of an extrusive igneous rock.
Â©willyam - stock.adobe.com

Examples of igneous rocks
Metamorphic Rock Type

Metamorphic rocks form from a previously existing rock, be it igneous, sedimentary or even an older metamorphic rock. Rocks turn metamorphic when they are subjected to very high heat and pressure. This alters the chemical and structural makeup of the minerals within the rock, changing it into a new metamorphic rock. If the rock is heated enough, it fully melts and if cooled would be an igneous rock. More information on metamorphic rocks.

Metamorphic rocks are the "change makers" of the rock cycle. They take what was once a rock and change it into a new rock!

A colorful​ example of Slate, a metamorphic rock used as the building source for Duke University.
Â© 2017 Bryan Pollard, all rights reserved

Examples of metamorphic rocks
Can you guess what rock type is pictured below? See below for the answer.

Thailand is known for this famous rock type that juts up hundreds of feet above crystal clear ... [+]
Â©saiko3p - stock.adobe.com

Answer: Limestone, a sedimentary rock.
... Read More

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3 Types Of Rocks: A Fun Way To Learn Rock Types

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The 3 rock types are: Let's learn about these rocks and their role in the overall rock cycle. But first, let's have some fun! Remember Sim City? You can remember the 3 rock types using the acronym SIM ( Sedimentary, Igneous, M etamorphic)!

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Hollis Scarborough-creator of the famous Reading Rope and senior scientist at Haskins Laboratories-is a leading researcher of early language development and its connection to later literacy.

Dr. Scarborough's association with the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) goes back to 1994 when she served as associate editor of the Annals of Dyslexia until 2002. In 2009, she received IDA's highest honor, the Samuel Torrey Orton Award. Dr. Scarborough continues her IDA affiliation as a member of both IDA's Council of Advisors and IDA's Scientific Advisory Board. Her contributions on a national level (e.g., the Research Council, Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, and the Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children) have positively influenced the reading instruction in the United States.

The genesis of the Reading Rope dates back to Scarborough's lectures for parents on the complexities involved in learning to read. Originally, she spoke of skilled reading as resembling the "strands" of a rope, using pipe cleaners to illustrate the interconnectedness and interdependence of all the components.

The Reading Rope consists of lower and upper strands. The word-recognition strands (phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition of familiar words) work together as the reader becomes accurate, fluent, and increasingly automatic with repetition and practice. Concurrently, the language-comprehension strands (background knowledge, vocabulary, language structures, verbal reasoning, and literacy knowledge) reinforce one another and then weave together with the word-recognition strands to produce a skilled reader. This does not happen overnight; it requires instruction and practice over time.

For many children, learning to read is a challenging undertaking. The Reading Rope, created by Dr. Hollis Scarborough, captures the essence of this task.
Copyright © 2018 International Dyslexia Association (IDA). Opinions expressed in The Examiner and/or via links do not necessarily reflect those of IDA. We encourage sharing of Examiner articles. If portions are cited, please make appropriate reference. Articles may not be printed for the purpose of resale. Permissionto republish this artilce is available from info@dyslexiaida.org.

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Scarborough's Reading Rope: A Groundbreaking Infographic - International Dyslexia Association

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Hollis Scarborough-creator of the famous Reading Rope and senior scientist at Haskins Laboratories-is a leading researcher of early language development and

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BooksForTopics: Recommended children's books and booklists sorted by age or topic

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BooksForTopics help millions of users each year find recommended children's books, including booklists for primary curriculum subjects, the best new children's books, and recommendations of the best books by age or year group.

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In July a writer friend posted a link to the report: Reflecting Realities - A Survey of Ethnic Representation within UK Children's Literature 2017. The report was created by the CLPE (Centre for Literacy in Primary Education) and aimed to explore the extent and quality of ethnic representation in children's publishing in the UK.

The results were dire. The report concluded that of 9,115 children's books published in the UK in 2017

4% featured BAME (black or ethnic minority) characters

1% had a BAME main character

The stats didn't surprise me. Every Christmas I spend weeks trawling bookshops and websites, asking teacher and librarian friends for recommendations, trying to find books for my nieces and nephews that feature characters who resemble them. It's a disheartening uphill task.

What I do find disturbing about the report are these findings:

Over half the fiction books with BAME characters were defined as 'contemporary realism' (books set in modern day landscapes/contexts)

I can already picture them. The 'gritty' books set on council estates in urban city centres.

10% of books with BAME characters contained 'social justice' issues (such as war and conflict)

Only one book featuring a BAME character was defined as 'comedy'

Where is the fantasy and magic for children of colour? Where are the dragons? The magicians and super hero powers? Where are the wacky, madcap books that make children giggle uncontrollably? Children of colour in the UK are taught so early to associate their skin colour with problems and strife. There's no escapism for them through fiction unless they step into the shoes of white children. Meanwhile, white children are conditioned to associate conflict with ethnic minority children.

Author Nikesh Shukla, who sat on a steering committee for the CLPE's report, told the Guardian:

"When you're figuring out the world, being able to see yourself in books, as well as people who don't look like you, is really important. It means you see your story as valid, and it can contribute to who you imagine yourself to be - and a kid should be able to imagine themselves as anyone in the world. These mirrors are so important."

32% of school students in the UK are ethnic minorities. That's a third. It's not acceptable that their lives are represented so narrowly. It's not acceptable that almost all of the books written for their age group look out onto a world that does not include them.

There are some signs of change. Rashmi Sirdeshpande has written a great blog post listing initiatives that are being undertaken by publishers and agents to diversify both the authorship of children's books and the publishing personnel working on them behind-the-scenes.

Meanwhile, we can support the authors of colour that have been published.

Here are 21 to start you off.
Picture Books Middle grade (8-12)
11. Sam Hepburn - Her Perfect Life: A gripping debut psychological thriller with a killer twist
Younger readers - Quicksilver / Serpent's Gold
Sam's Sudanese father and English mother met at a London art school. They married and set up home in Khartoum. Sam moved back to England with her mother but began to revisit her Sudanese family in her twenties. Since then she has worked and travelled widely in Africa and the Middle East.
Young Adult
14. Natasha Ngan - The Elites / The Memory Keepers / Girls of Paper and Fire - Out Nov 2018
Part-time yoga teacher. She grew up between Malaysia and the UK.

19. Sufiya Ahmed - Zahra's First Term at the Khadija Academy / Secrets of the Henna Girl
Born in India, moved to the UK as a baby. Sufiya lived in Bolton, Lancashire, before moving to London. She has worked in advertising and in the House of Commons, but is now a full-time author.

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21 British Children's Authors (of Colour) You Should Know

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In July a writer friend posted a link to the report: Reflecting Realities - A Survey of Ethnic Representation within UK Children's Literature 2017. The report was created by the CLPE (Centre for Literacy in Primary Education) and aimed to explore the extent and quality of ethnic representation in children's publishing in the UK.

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BIG and little ideas

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Working towards big ideas: Implications for the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment - impact.chartered.college

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The need to define a set of ‘big ideas’ as a framework for decisions about the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment originated in the context of science education. For many years there had been calls for greater depth and less uncoordinated breadth in this field. Multiple problems stemmed from the cu

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Working towards big ideas: Implications for the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment

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The Picture History of Great Explorers - Gillian Clements

How to Be an Explorer of the World - Keri Smith

Henry the Explorer - Mark Taylor

One Day In Antarctica - Ella Bailey

Sir Francis Drake - Roy Gerrard

Space Explorers - Eva Moore

Penguin Problems - Jory John

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Explorers - Morning Topic Activities - Twinkl Imagine KS1 & KS2

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The Picture History of Great Explorers - Gillian Clements How to Be an Explorer of the World - Keri Smith Henry the Explorer - Mark Taylor One Day In Antarctica - Ella Bailey Sir Francis Drake - Roy Gerrard Space Explorers - Eva Moore Penguin Problems - Jory John

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Welcome! We are open as normal, 10am-5.45pm Mondays to Saturdays and 11am - 5pm Sundays & most bank holidays. Please continue to stay safe, and we appreciate it if you can continue to wear a mask or face-covering while in the shop, thank you. Read more about shopping safely and ordering from us

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News From Nowhere Radical & Community Bookshop

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Welcome! We are open as normal, 10am-5.45pm Mondays to Saturdays and 11am - 5pm Sundays & most bank holidays. Please continue to stay safe, and we appreciate it if you can continue to wear a mask or face-covering while in the shop, thank you.

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Creative, fun, make links, create 3d tours, add info and links
immersive reader function allows up to 60 languages to be read- accessible learning.

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ThingLink:  ThingLink for teachers and schools

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Create personalized learning experiences, access to real-world environments virtually. Share to LMS, access to advanced learning analytics.

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Un-commissioned | New Talent

Why did you make this work:
This picture book is based on a news article I read, about people who found a yellow bird in their town and thought it was an exotic bird of some kind. In reality, it was a seagull covered in curry! I loved this idea and developed it into a book, about a little boy called Joel who wants to be like his zoologist heroes and discover this exotic new bird- oblivious to the fact it's a curried seagull.

How was the illustration used:
This is a children's picture book intended for ages 5-7. However I intended to create a book which would be enjoyed by both children and parents alike.

How did you make this work:
This is digitally illustrated, with lots of layers and textures. I wanted to use a bright colour palette to reflect the humour in my story. I think what makes this work is the use of textures, created both in photoshop using brushes, and via inks and monoprint rollers. I think these textures combined with the rough edges of my characters, makes a cohesive and interesting image.

College:
Cambridge School of Art
Course:
MA Children's Book Illustration
Year of Graduation:
2020

Currently Based:
Northern Ireland / England

Biography:
Ellan Rankin is a Northern Irish author-illustrator. She has recently completed a Masters degree in Children's Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art. A huge animal lover, her picturebooks often centre around animals, history and silly stories she has read in the news.

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Un-commissioned | New Talent Why did you make this work: This picture book is based on a news article I read, about people who found a yellow bird in their town and thought it was an exotic bird of some kind. In reality, it was a seagull covered in curry!

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What's the difference between a language and a dialect? Is there some kind of technical distinction, the way there is between a quasar and a pulsar, or between a rabbit and a hare? Faced with the question, linguists like to repeat the grand old observation of the linguist and Yiddishist Max Weinreich, that "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy."

But surely the difference is deeper than a snappy aphorism suggests. The very fact that "language" and "dialect" persist as separate concepts implies that linguists can make tidy distinctions for speech varieties worldwide. But in fact, there is no objective difference between the two: Any attempt you make to impose that kind of order on reality falls apart in the face of real evidence.

And yet it's hard not to try. An English speaker might be tempted to think, for example, that a language is basically a collection of dialects, where speakers of different dialects within the same language can all understand each other, more or less. Cockney, South African, New Yorkese, Black, Yorkshire-all of these are mutually intelligible variations on a theme. Surely, then, these are "dialects" of some one thing that can be called a "language"? English as a whole, meanwhile, looks like a "language" that stands by itself; there's a clear boundary between it and its closest relative, Frisian, spoken in Northern Europe, which is unintelligible to an English speaker.

As such, English tempts one with a tidy dialect-language distinction based on "intelligibility": If you can understand it without training, it's a dialect of your own language; if you can't, it's a different language.But because of quirks of its history, English happens to lack very close relatives, and the intelligibility standard doesn't apply consistently beyond it. Worldwide, some mutually understandable ways of speaking, which one might think of as "dialects" of one language, are actually treated as separate languages. At the same time, some mutually incomprehensible tongues an outsider might view as separate "languages" are thought of locally as dialects.

I have a Swedish pal I see at conferences in Denmark. When we're out and about there, he is at no linguistic disadvantage. He casually orders food and asks directions in Swedish despite the fact that we are in a different country from his own, where supposedly a different "language"-Danish-is spoken. In fact, I've watched speakers of Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian conversing with each other, each in their own native tongues, as a cozy little trio over drinks. A Dane who moves to Sweden does not take Swedish lessons; she adjusts to a variation upon, and not an alternate to, her native speech. The speakers of these varieties of Scandinavian consider them distinct languages because they are spoken in distinct nations, and so be it. However, there is nothing about Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian in themselves that classifies them as "languages"; especially on the page, they resemble each other closely enough to look more like dialects of one "language."
It turns out that it's impossible to determine precisely where one "language" leaves off and another begins.
Meanwhile, one generally hears Mandarin, Cantonese, and Taiwanese described as "dialects" of something called Chinese. But the only single "Chinese" language that exists is on paper, in that all of its varieties have the same writing system, where each word has its own symbol that (more or less) stays the same from one Chinese "dialect" to another. Mandarin and Cantonese, for example, are more different than Spanish and Italian. I, you, and he in Mandarin are wǒ, nǐ, and tā, but in Cantonese they are, respectively, ngóh, léih, and kéuih. Dialects? A Mandarin-speaker can no more "adjust" to Cantonese than a Swede could "adjust" to German.

There are cases of the Scandinavian and the Chinese kind worldwide. A Moroccan's colloquial "Arabic" is as different from the colloquial "Arabic" of Jordan as Czech is from Polish. In order to understand each other, a Moroccan and a Jordanian would have to communicate in Modern Standard Arabic, a version preserved roughly as it was when the Koran was written. The cultural unity of Arab nations makes the Moroccan and the Jordanian consider themselves to be speaking "kinds of Arabic," whereas speakers of Czech and Polish think of themselves as speaking different languages. But then, while I'm on Czech, there is no such language as "Czechoslovakian"-at least in name. A Czech and a Slovak can usually converse. However, they consider themselves to speak different "languages" because of historical and cultural factors.

It turns out that it's also impossible to determine precisely where one "language" leaves off and another begins.

An example is certain languages-um, dialects?-in Ethiopia. According to data from Sharon Rose of UC San Diego, speakers of Soddo say, for he thatched a roof, kəddənəm. (The upside-down e is pronounced a lot like the oo in foot.) Not far away, people speaking Muher say it starting with kh instead of k: khəddənəm. A further ways distant, people who speak what they call Ezha say it with an r in the place of the n: khəddərəm. In Gyeto, the same word is khətərə. Then in Endegen they start with an h instead of a kh: həttərə. Now, where we started and where we finished look like what one might call different languages: Soddo's kəddənəm and Endegen's həttərə seem about as distinct as French's dimanche and Italian's domenica, for Sunday. But in between Soddo and Endegen are several other stages-I gave only a few of them-that each differ from the previous one by just a little change, such that the speakers can converse. If those stages are "dialects," what are they "dialects" of? Both Soddo and Endegen over on the ends?
The serendipities of history chose one "dialect" as a standard and enshrined it on the page.
All of them are simply dialects-even though the ones on the ends are not mutually intelligible and don't feel like the same "language" to their speakers. Speech worked this way from village to village across Western Europe until recently, when unwritten, rural dialects started steadily disappearing. People now know this area as home to a few "languages" like Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Italian, but on the ground there once was basically a smudge of countless Romance "dialects" shading gradually into one another from Portugal to Italy. In each nation, the serendipities of history chose one "dialect" as a standard and enshrined it on the page, but in real life, the situation was much like in Ethiopia. There are hints of this history today; in Catalan in Spain, key is clau; to the north, in Occitan, it's clau as well; but then a little further north, in obscure rural varieties called Franco-Provençal, it's clâ; in the Romansh of the Swiss mountains it's clav; in the northern Italian variety Piedmontese it's ciav (pronounced "chahv,"); and then in what's known as standard Italian it's chiave (pronounced "KYAH-vay").

The idea of distinguishing "languages" from "dialects" is of no logical use here. As often as not, it's more that speech is a little different from place to place, such that a person can get along speaking when in the town a few valleys over; one starts having trouble the further away he gets; and after a traveling a certain distance can no longer understand a thing anyone is saying.

The only thing that can save an attempt to impose a formal definition on the terms "language" and "dialect" now is perhaps to be found in popular usage, which suggests that languages are written and standardized and have a literature, while dialects are oral, without codified rules, and have no literature. Now, a typical objection to using literature as the dividing line is that there is oral literature-the Iliad and the Odyssey likely originated as memorized poems. But even allowing that memories can retain only so much, and that perhaps it is legitimate to distinguish what Greek bards knew from, say, Russian's written literature, there's another problem.
Is a dialect, on some level, unsophisticated, as if it doesn't have a literature because it is unsuited to extended thought and abstraction?
Namely, it's the implication that there is something lesser about a "dialect." Is a dialect, on some level, unsophisticated, as if it doesn't have a literature because it is unsuited to extended thought and abstraction? I recall an exquisite exchange I once caught between a man whom Nathan Lane could easily play, wearing an ascot and a long scarf and rather plummy of expression, and a man whom Sacha Baron Cohen would be cast as, straight-backed, earnest, and a little wary. Nathan asked Sacha what he spoke. Sacha said "Uzbek." Nathan asked breezily, "Is that a dialect?" Sacha, almost snapping, replied, "No, it is a beautiful language."

Despite Sacha's defensiveness, it's not the case that what one is taught to think of as "dialects" are somehow lowlier or simpler. As often as not, obscure, unwritten "dialects" are much more grammatically complicated than familiar "languages." The Foreign Service Institute ranks what it calls languages in terms of their difficulty for English speakers; the hardest to learn to speak include Finnish, Georgian, Hungarian, Mongolian, Thai, and Vietnamese. However, just about any Native American, Australian Aboriginal, or indigenous African tongue would easily rank among these in terms of difficulty, and actually, many obscure tongues around the world make any language on the FSI list look like a toy. For example, in Archi, spoken in the Caucasus mountains, a verb can occur in 1,502,839 different forms-that's more than a thousand times more forms than the number of people who even speak it (about 1,200).

Meanwhile, here in the English "language," there are walk, walks, walked, and walking. If sophistication separated languages from dialects, Archi would have more claim to the "language" title than English.

A language, then, is indeed a dialect with an army and a navy; or, more to the point, a language is a dialect that got put up in the shop window. Yes, people can sit down in a room and decide upon a standardized version of a dialect so that large numbers of people can communicate with maximal efficiency-no more clau, clav, and ciav. But standardization doesn't make something "better"-donning a Catholic school uniform isn't "better" than wearing different clothes to school every day.
The world is buzzing with a cacophony of qualitatively equal "dialects," often shading into one another like colors.
Or, yes, the written dialect will have its words collected in dictionaries. The Oxford English Dictionary does have more words than Archi and Endegen do; the existence of print has allowed English speakers to curate many of their words instead of letting them come and go with time. But words are only part of what makes human speech: You have to know how to put them together, and knowing how to handle Archi's words (or Endegen's) requires its own level of sophistication.

So, what's the difference between a language and a dialect? In popular usage, a language is written in addition to being spoken, while a dialect is just spoken. But in the scientific sense, the world is buzzing with a cacophony of qualitatively equal "dialects," often shading into one another like colors (and often mixing, too), all demonstrating how magnificently complicated human speech can be. If either the terms "language" or "dialect" have any objective use, the best anyone can do is to say that there is no such thing as a "language": Dialects are all there is. "Is it a dialect?" asks Nathan. Properly, Sacha could have answered, "Yes, a beautiful one." And Nathan should have understood that he was speaking a "dialect" too.

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What's the difference between a language and a dialect? Is there some kind of technical distinction, the way there is between a quasar and a pulsar, or between a rabbit and a hare? Faced with the question, linguists like to repeat the grand old observation of the linguist and Yiddishist Max Weinreich, that "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy."

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Glossary of Romani Terms - Friends, Families and Travellers

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These are the definitions of some of the Romani words used during the interviews. Please bear in mind that there may be varying definitions and spelling of these words from place to place.

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This post may contain affiliate links.

Read aloud picture books and look for simile examples and metaphor examples to learn how writers use figurative language to make writing beautiful and convey meaning. Use these favorite mentor texts to show writers how to write using similes and metaphors in their own writing. You are going to love these!
PRINTABLE LIST

Picture Books to Teach Simile Examples and Metaphor Examples

by Ben Brashares and Elizabeth Bergeland
Edie is having a difficult day. She imagines she's a bat hiding upside down in her cubby or a fast and fierce cheetah or maybe a chameleon sitting so no one can see her. " But inside, she felt like a naked mole rat. " Edie shares her tears and fears with her mom. And that makes everything feel better.

by Angela Joy, illustrated by Ekua Holmes
A little girl sits sadly on her porch steps thinking about the colors of the rainbow and how black isn't in the rainbow. Poignant, lyrical metaphors and luminous illustrations tell readers what the girl thinks of with black - a crayon, a feather, braids, rhythm, blues, trains, dreams, and so much more. " Black is the color of ink staining page. Black is the mask that shelters his rage. Black are the birds in cages that sing- Black is a color. Black is a culture.// ...My color is Black." Her narration celebrates black culture, showing pride and context and history. She ends with the statement that in her box of crayons, black is a rainbow, too.

Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story by Kevin Noble Maillard, illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal
T his beautifully written gem celebrates Native American culture through the lens of the food Fry Bread. The repetitive text starts each two-page spread, " Fry bread is..." then descriptive, lyrical verse follows each statement, elaborating on the meaning. " Fry bread is sound / The skillet clangs on the stove / The fire blazes from below / Drop the dough in the skillet / The bubbles sizzle and pop. " This rich text paired with evocative illustrations culminates in a wonderful book that will show children Native American traditions of family, food, and love.

A Place Inside of Me by Zetta Elliott, illustrated by Noa Denmon
A black boy expresses a myriad of feelings that wait inside him for him to feel each one. Joy that glows bright and warm as the sun when he's playing basketball, sorrow that is cold & dark when he sees the news about a police shooting, fear that stalks him and "seeps like a poison into my dreams". He expresses his anger, hunger, pride, hope, love, and compassion in lyrical phrases and illuminating illustrations. This is an essential picture book filled with metaphor examples and simile examples that will help you start conversations about racial injustice, emotions, and what it's like to be black in the U.S.

by Jane Yolen, illustrated by John Schoenherr
Lyrical, evocative language captures a quiet winter evening when the little girl and her Pa trek through the woods to find owls.

I Love You Like Yellow by Andrea Beaty, illustrated by Vashti Harrison
Beautiful, lyrical, and so very sweet, this love story to a child. It's meant to be read aloud to the children in your life. " Like sunny. Like shady. Like gloomy. Like gray. From the breaking of dawn till the end of the day. " Lots of simile examples!

by Patricia Polacco
Based on Patricia's own life, she shares all about her rivalry with her annoying brother and the turning point that changed everything between them. " He had orange hair that was like wire; he was covered in freckles and looked like a weasel with glasses. "

Honey by David Ezra Stein
I love the wonderful words, smilies, and descriptions Stein uses throughout this new picture book leaves readers with the satisfaction of savoring life's precious moments. The language pops with sweetness, just like the honey there bear so anxiously awaits. The world around bear. " spicy, aromatic, sparkling with sunlight", reminds him of honey. but it is too soon and he must wait." Clouds cracked and grumbled in a heavy sky. " Until finally, he hears a buzz - and that means honey!

by Toni Yuly
A little girl compares herself using simple text (with only a few words per page) to the natural world around her. She is a part of the world just like a flower in a field. The best part about this book is the bold illustrations - they are totally captivating. The similes are obvious, making this a good book choice for younger children just learning about similes and metaphors.

Love by Matt de la Peña, illustrated by Loren Long
Each page illustrates and describes different aspects of love. " Love, too, is the smell of crashing waves..." or " And it's love in each deep crease of your grandfather's face as he lowers himself onto an overturned bucket to fish. " Books like this that don't have a storyline often work well in the classroom for mentor text and make beautiful gift books for graduation or other occasions. This book's artful metaphor examples show how metaphor conveys meaning in a unique way.

My Hair is a Garden by Cozbi A. Caberera
A neighbor helps the little girl comb her hair in this s weet story about accepting your unique beauty just like the plants in a garden who are unique, beautiful, and require cultivation. " My hair is a garden. And like every good garden, it must be/cared for, every day. "

I Am the Storm by Jane Yolen, illustrated by Heidi E. Y. Stemple
When there is bad weather like a tornado, a blizzard, a forest fire, and a hurricane, the girl shares what she does with her family that feels safe and comforting. Then, after it stops, as it always does, the girl and her family do something helpful like pick up or fix things. The predictable text structure also feels reassuring. The book ends with children finding similarities between themselves and the weather. " I am loud like the tornado. I am wild like the blizzard. I am hot like the fire. I am fierce like the hurricane. I am the storm." METAPHORS and SIMILIES!

Magnificent Homespun Brown: A Celebration by Samara Cole Doyon, illustrated by Kaylani Juanita
Lyrical, figurative language (filled with similes, personification, and vivid imagery) not only celebrates people of color living life fully but transports readers into scenes rich with sensory imagery. " Deep, secret brown. Like the subtly churning river currents playfully beckoning me through my grandmother's kitchen window, winding steadily past banks of tall grass and wild rose buses." Or " Feathery brown. Like the jagged shadows of hemlock branches thrown over me and Daddy on a gentle mountain hike."

Dangerously Ever After by Dashka Slater, illustrated by Valeria Decampo
Princess Amanita loves dangerous things - daggers, scorpions, and plants with spikes. When Prince Florian slices grapes that blow up a wheelbarrow, he apologizes with roses. Of course, Amanita only likes the thorns. It's a great story about a not-your-ordinary princess who grows noses instead of roses and becomes best friends with Prince Florian. " It smelled like candy and lemons and cloves. It smelled like sleeping in the sun and staying up late for a party."

Saturdays and Teacakes by Lester L. Laminack, illustrated by Chris Soentpiet
Saturdays are the days the boy pedals to his Mammaw's house to pass the time cooking and eating. Laminack uses all the senses in his vivid imagery. " This was where my tire gave up their humming on the pavement and began the crunching of gravel. Just before reaching Mammaw's back porch, I slammed on my brakes, sending a shower of tiny pebbles into her flowers. " Not only is the language use exquisite but the story shows a loving relationship between boy and grandmother.

by Corinna Luyken
Impactful black, gray, and yellow illustrations immediately grab your attention. Simple text personifies the emotions of the heart. Together they create a deeply poignant book that begs to be discussed. " My heart is a window. My heart is a slide. My heart can be closed...or opened up wide." Ask your kids what they think this means. Ask what they would say about their own hearts. Use this book as a mentor text for finding metaphor examples and making inferences.

How to Solve a Problem: The Rise (and Falls) of a Rock-Climbing Champion by Ashima Shiraishi, illustrated by Yao Xiao
Written by one of the world's youngest and best climbers, she shares her experiences with climbing difficult "problems" which is what climbers call the boulders that they climb. This personal narrative focuses on a growth mindset of perseverance and facing challenges like difficult climbs with grit. " One part was arched like a question mark, another part stuck out like my father's elbow in a photo I have seen of him dancing..."

The Chicken-Chasing Queen of Lamar County by Janice N. Harrington, illustrated by Shelley Jackson
This young girl loves chasing chickens when Big Mama isn't looking, especially her favorite, Miss Hen, who is as "plump as a Sunday purse." (Simile example.) But that chicken is too fast. Eventually, she finds Miss Hen sitting on her nest and, in a nice character arc, decides not to catch her.

by Melissa Stewart, illustrated by Sarah S. Brannen
Informative and beautiful, this picture book will make you long to visit the seashore to find your own seashells. Written in dual-layered figurative language text, readers will learn the basics of shells in the first layer of bigger text size - " Seashells can pry like a crowbar . . . or bore holes like a drill bit. // Seashells can flit and flitter like a butterfly . . . or curl up tight like an armadillo. " Secondary text elaborates on the specific types of shells.

by Barbara Reid
The best thing about this book is the three-dimensional, eye-catching artwork. But the text is also impressive - with how the a uthor personifies the sky and gives readers metaphors that make us see the sky differently.

I Am Peace A Book of Mindfulness by Susan Verde, illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds
This is the goal - to feel the ground, take a deep breath, to be still, to say what you feel, and so on. Reading this book shows kids what mindfulness is. It truly is peace. Reynolds' whimsical watercolor illustrations make the concepts visually appealing and accessible.

Wilfrid Gordon MacDonald Partridge by Mem Fox, illustrated by Julie Vivas
I love this story so much - and read it aloud frequently in my classroom. This little boy exemplifies kindness! He learns his friend, "Miss Nancy," is losing her memory. He tries to figure out what a memory is and how he can help her remember.

I Will Fight Monsters for You by Santi Balmes, illustrated by Lyona
This clever parallel story of a young girl (and a young monster) who are both frightened to sleep because of the upside-down world of monsters (and humans) beneath and above their beds. Luckily, dads will fight monsters for their kids and they give good advice: " the size of the monsters depends on how scared you are. If you feel very brave, the monster will shrink and run away" and " fear is elastic, like bubble gum. As you grow braver, fear shrinks smaller and smaller until it disappears."

Crescent Moons and Pointed Minarets: A Muslim Book of Shapes by Hen Khan, illustrated by Mehrdokht Amini
Lavish, richly colored illustrations immediately draw me into this beautiful book of shapes from an Islamic perspective. " Hexagon is a tile, / bold and bright, / painted with an ayah / I love to recite." Learn about the geometric shapes like circles, squares, and octagons from the daily life and architecture of someone who is Muslim.

How Do You Feel? by Rebecca Bender
This is a literal (tactile) feelings book with lots of beautiful similes. Toad feels bumpy like the trunk of a gnarly tree. Duckling feels fuzzy like tall grass reaching for the sun. Rabbit feels silky like a web carefully spun.

Wild Feelings by David Milgrim
Do you ever feel . . . ? asks this book. Do you feel as stubborn as a mule? as chicken as a chicken? as daffy as a duck? Simple illustrations and metaphorical text show that everyone feels different feelings - and all are okay.

Green on Green by Dianne White, illustrated by Felicita Sala
Strong figurative language and sensory descriptions about the colors and seasons make this not just a beautiful reading experience but a good mentor text for young writing. Sparse, lyrical language with evocative illustrations capture the colors of the seasons. " Brown the squirrel. Brown the mouse. Brown the trees around our house. " Absolutely lovely.

Read these lovely picture books to find simile examples and metaphor examples! They're full of beautiful imagery and will help your growing writers learn about using figurative language.

Then go forth and write!

You Might Also Like:

Mentor Texts to Teach Sequencing

Mentor Texts to Teach Vivid Description

Mentor Texts to Teach Inference

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28 Picture Books with Simile Examples and Metaphor Examples - Imagination Soup

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Read aloud these mentor text picture books to find simile examples and metaphor examples that show growing writers about figurative language.

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The list below contains the books I have used over the years for teaching figurative language. Some of them are designed to teach about figurative language and some of them are books with figurative language woven naturally into the poem or story.

Just recently, we shared how we used one of these books to do a text scavenger hunt, looking for figurative language. We have a free graphic organizer and figurative language definition cards included in that post.

*This post contains affiliate links.

Texts that TEACH about Figurative Language

These are books with a purpose of teaching kids about figurative language. Some are explicit, while others are just plain silly and would need a little explanation for some children. Almost all of these texts are sure to make your child's giggle box turn over. 🙂

Books with Figurative Language

The books included below are texts that feature figurative language within the text naturally. These would work better with our figurative language graphic organizer. Even though some of the books may be for younger children, they can make a great text for older students when introducing and practicing figurative language.

More Book Lists You May Enjoy:

Follow This Reading Mama's board Read Aloud Resources on Pinterest.

~Becky

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The list below contains the books I have used over the years for teaching figurative language. Some of them are designed to teach about figurative language and some of them are books with figurative language woven naturally into the poem or story. Just recently, we shared how we used one of these books to do a text ...

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inspiring book: for philosophy lessons Emmanuel's dream

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inspiring book: for philosophy lessons Emmanuel's dream

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This inspirational picture book biography tells the true story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah, who bicycled across Ghana with only one leg. In so doing, he forever

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Celebrating Heroines in Fact and Fiction Join Jeannine Atkins, Heather Lang, Ekua Holmes, Katherine Paterson, and Rita Williams-Garcia for an insightful, spirited conversation! Watch video > How to Get and Keep Boys Reading This event, created especially for teachers, librarians, and parents, was mo…

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Un-commissioned | New Talent

Why did you make this work:
This picture book is based on a news article I read, about people who found a yellow bird in their town and thought it was an exotic bird of some kind. In reality, it was a seagull covered in curry! I loved this idea and developed it into a book, about a little boy called Joel who wants to be like his zoologist heroes and discover this exotic new bird- oblivious to the fact it's a curried seagull.

How was the illustration used:
This is a children's picture book intended for ages 5-7. However I intended to create a book which would be enjoyed by both children and parents alike.

How did you make this work:
This is digitally illustrated, with lots of layers and textures. I wanted to use a bright colour palette to reflect the humour in my story. I think what makes this work is the use of textures, created both in photoshop using brushes, and via inks and monoprint rollers. I think these textures combined with the rough edges of my characters, makes a cohesive and interesting image.

College:
Cambridge School of Art
Course:
MA Children's Book Illustration
Year of Graduation:
2020

Currently Based:
Northern Ireland / England

Biography:
Ellan Rankin is a Northern Irish author-illustrator. She has recently completed a Masters degree in Children's Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art. A huge animal lover, her picturebooks often centre around animals, history and silly stories she has read in the news.

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Un-commissioned | New Talent Why did you make this work: This picture book is based on a news article I read, about people who found a yellow bird in their town and thought it was an exotic bird of some kind. In reality, it was a seagull covered in curry!

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IDEA: International Dialects of English Archive | free dialect and accent recordings for the performing arts

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Welcome to IDEA. The International Dialects of English Archive was created in 1998 as the internet's first archive of primary-source recordings of English-language dialects and accents as heard around the world. With roughly 1,700 samples from 135 countries and territories, and more than 170 hours of recordings, IDEA is now the largest archive of its kind.

IDEA's recordings are principally in English, are of native speakers, and include both English-language dialects and English spoken in the accents of other languages. (Many include brief demonstrations of the speaker's native language, too.) The archive also includes extensive Special Collections.

Paul Meier is IDEA's founder, director, and principal contributor, personally collecting nearly 20 percent of the archive. He established IDEA to provide actors the real-life models they need for their characters' accents and dialects; many actors use his Accents & Dialects for Stage and Screen in conjunction with IDEA. But IDEA has proved invaluable in many other fields too; for example, it's a favorite tool of international business, helping personnel become familiar with their customers' accents and dialects.

HOW IDEA WORKS

To find an example of an accent or dialect, use the Global Map, or the Dialects and Accents tab on the menu bar. The site is also fully searchable, not just by country, state, and province, but also by characteristics of each speaker, such as ethnicity, age, and occupation; even single phrases from transcriptions and phonetics can be searched online. You may conveniently listen to the streaming audio while reading the accompanying transcription and commentary. All samples have one-line descriptions (gender, age, year of birth, ethnicity, location). Submission of new samples by the editors and other contributors is done entirely online.

At the heart of IDEA are its Senior Editors and the Associate Editors, forming a global network of contributors. They record the subjects, transcribe the recordings, and, in many cases, write scholarly commentaries that often include phonetic and cultural analyses. Many editors are professors at major universities, or are members of The Voice and Speech Trainers Association ( VASTA).

Cameron Meier is IDEA's executive editor and chief sound and copy editor, and also vice president of Paul Meier Dialect Services.

New recordings, their accompanying transcriptions and scholarly commentaries are added frequently (see What's New). Each recording includes both a reading (Comma Gets a Cure, or, on our earliest recordings, The Rainbow Passage) and some unscripted speech - about four minutes in all.

The Global Map quickly reveals which countries/states/provinces have a representative sample, and those that still lack one. As you see, IDEA continues to grow, aspiring to provide a recording from every corner of the world. Please join us in this ambitious project by becoming an associate editor, or contributing your own voice to the archive.

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IDEA: International Dialects of English Archive

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Welcome to IDEA, the internet's best source for primary-source recordings of English-language dialects and accents as heard around the world.

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Guest Post & Giveaway: Breaking News in the Classroom / Nick Sheridan

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We’re delighted to welcome to the blog BBC journalist Nick Sheridan, whose new book Breaking News is out now. Breaking News aims to help children to navigate the news. It’s never been easier to access the news; TV, radio, billboards, newspapers and endlessly buzzing on to the screens in our pockets…

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Mathematics Through Play in the Early Years : Kate Tucker : 9781446269770

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Mathematics Through Play in the Early Years by Kate Tucker, 9781446269770, available at Book Depository with free delivery worldwide.

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Coffee Bookshelves aims to promote and celebrate black authors. Not just the Booker-shortlisted writers that make national headlines, but the scribes who produce detective novels, romance books, thrillers and teen reads, ie the bread-and-butter books we actually read, (as opposed to displaying artfully on our coffee tables).

My opinions are my own, if you disagree please share your thoughts in the comments section.

You can also follow me on IG @CoffeeBookshelves

Shade

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Coffee Bookshelves aims to promote and celebrate black authors. Not just the Booker-shortlisted writers that make national headlines, but the scribes who produce detective novels, romance books, thrillers and teen reads, ie the bread-and-butter books we actually read, (as opposed to displaying artfully on our coffee tables).

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The year is 1946, and the Lee family has moved from Metropolis' Chinatown to the center of the bustling city. While Dr. Lee is greeted warmly in his new position at the Metropolis Health Department, [...]

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At the CLPE, we are passionate about placing high quality literature at the heart of all learning. But this doesn't just mean physical books; well-chosen magazines, newspapers and comics can be key in engaging children in reading for purpose and pleasure.

As with physical books, there is a lot out there for schools to select from, so it's just as important to look at the selection available with the same discerning eyes as you would with books when selecting titles for your classrooms and library.

There are many magazines and comics whose key purpose is to engage children with reading for pleasure. Storytime and Scoop are two of the best examples of these. They have thought about their target markets carefully and have planned content and selected narratives, with high quality illustrations that go beyond just being decorative or merely representing the content and articles, that meet the needs and interests of their intended readerships. is perfect for sharing in Key Stage 1 classrooms, showcasing a range of traditional tales and twists on tales with ideas for creative activities that enable children's deeper understanding such as visualisation through drawing. takes this approach into Key Stage 2 with high quality authors, poets and illustrators such as John Agard, Vivian French, Jamie Smart and Ben Newman contributing stories and non-fiction pieces to engage children's interests on a variety of topics and subjects, themed by issue.

Comics are and have always been many children's preferred independent reading choice. There can be a certain amount of snobbery over these; Neil Gaiman, in his Reading Agency lecture in 2013, remarked 'Comics have been decried as fostering illiteracy.' Far from it. Building reading stamina is often interpreted as children reading quickly and reading longer novels but comics, as with graphic novels and picturebooks, actually do work on building real reading stamina, slowing reading down to allow children to really take in what they are reading and seeing additional detail in the illustration, leading to a deeper level of comprehension.

Find out more about visual literacy with our Power of Pictures research.

The better the quality of storyline and illustration, the better the reading experience, so choose high quality examples such as The Phoenix, who draw on some of the best comic artists and illustrators around. Stories in series, such as Neill Cameron and Cate Brown's Tamsin and the Deep, leave children itching to read the next issue. Strips such as Adam Murphy's Corpse Talk also make links across the curriculum, engaging children in finding out about the lives (and deaths!) of key historical figures. David Fickling Books, who produce The Phoenix have also collected full sets of the narratives of some of the strips in books in their The Phoenix Presents series. Neill Cameron has also written How to Draw Comics in this series, encouraging children to see that making their own comics is a valuable way of telling stories of their own in words and pictures.

It's also important to include magazines and newspapers that expand children's knowledge of the world and recent events. Children are becoming aware of the 'fake news' culture at earlier ages and high quality publications such as The Week Junior and judiciously pick stories that broaden children's knowledge of local and world news in engaging ways. In our increasingly visual world, the skill of analysing and interpreting images is essential for children. ( From the Power of Pictures 2019 Interim Report). The Week Junior's weekly debate engages children in critical thinking, sharing both sides of an argument and inviting children to vote on what side they agree with and why. It's an excellent example of how to present a balanced argument to inspire children's own writing too.

There are also many magazines that can help to broaden children's understanding of curriculum content. Two of the best examples are Okido and Aquila. engages 3-7 year olds in a range of activities that promote artistic and scientific understanding. They've researched their concepts well and present the information clearly, without ever being patronising, so that children can understand some complicated concepts clearly and engage with these practically in easy to carry out experiments. takes this concept and the quality of research around concepts through to Key Stage 2 and also contains activities and articles that broaden children's understanding of English and Maths.

Specific publications that tap into children's personal interests and recognise popular culture can also be useful additions, perhaps individually rather than as a subscription. In Early Years classrooms, some of the CBeebies programme tie-ins can encourage the youngest readers to engage with print and higher up the school, specific magazines that link to particular children's interests, such as Angling Times, Airliner World or specific sports or craft magazines can be exceptionally engaging for children with definite fascinations or hobbies outside of school. If you are drawing from magazines published for a wider audience, always read these through yourself first to check their suitability.

As a teacher, do you read comics and magazines yourself? Showing that you value these as a form of reading is important in raising their status for your children and parents too. You can use these to extend your knowledge of other types of children's literature by subscribing to magazines like or the digital magazine Books for Keeps.

It's important when selecting any text for your classroom to do your research first. Look at the publication's website for samples and to see if they offer special rates for school subscriptions or if they'll send a trial issue for you to evaluate with your class, so you know your money will be well spent. A well-chosen selection can reap great rewards in terms of engaging readers of all ages.

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Using newspapers, magazines and comics in the classroom | Centre for Literacy in Primary Education

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At the CLPE, we are passionate about placing high quality literature at the heart of all learning. But this doesn't just mean physical books; well-chosen magazines, newspapers and comics can be key in engaging children in reading for purpose and pleasure.

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Literacy Daily is a space to connect educators, students, and leaders with the latest news, ideas, tools, strategies, and research in literacy instruction.

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Welcome to Using Graphic Novels in Education, an ongoing feature from CBLDF that is designed to allay confusion around the content of graphic novels and to help parents and teachers raise readers. In this column, we examine graphic novels, including those that have been targeted by censors, and provide teaching and discussion suggestions for the use of such books in classrooms.
This post takes a closer look at the Amulet series by Kazu Kibuishi. The ninth and final volume is expected to be published in 2021. This guide was written after the first six books had been published.

Amulet is an award-winning graphic novel series about Emily and her brother Navin who, through extenuating circumstances, find themselves battling for the freedom of a parallel world and face mounting dangers with newfound friends. This coming-of-age series continues to win awards. The Young Adult Library services Association named it one of Best Books for Young Adults in 2009. In 2010, it won a Rhode Island Children's Book Award and was included in a Library Journal list of "Graphic Novels for Reluctant Readers." In 2011, it received a Young Reader's Choice Award, and in 2013, it was ranked fourth on Goodreads' "Best Graphic Novels for Children" list. These books received an Eisner nomination and are currently New York Times bestsellers.

The Amulet series includes (to date):

1. Amulet Book One: The Stonekeeper (2008)

2. Amulet Book Two: The Stonekeeper's Curse (2009)

3. Amulet Book Three: The Cloud Searchers (2010)

4. Amulet Book Four: The Last Council (2011)

5. Amulet Book Five: Prince of the Elves (2012)

6. Amulet Book Six: Escape from Lucien (2014)

7. Amulet Book Seven: Firelight (2016)*

8. Amulet Book Eight: Supernova (2018)*

9. Volume Nine expected in 2021

*note: this guide covers volumes 1-6, although many of the activities will apply to any of the books in the entire series.

Table of Contents

OVERVIEW

Amulet is about a determined girl named Emily and her younger brother Navin, who move into their great-grandfather's country house outside a town called Norlen after their father's death. While the locals believe the house is haunted, Emily and Navin's mom, Karen, has no choice but to fix up the old house and move in. Times have been hard without their dad, and the home is all they can afford. While cleaning the cobwebs and dust, Emily discovers a locket - the Amulet - and Karen, Emily, and Navin are transported into an alternate world through a small door in the basement. They soon discover that they're descended from a line of Stonekeepers, people charged with protecting the alien world. They also find shortly after their arrival that something is terribly wrong.

Throughout the series, we learn about Emily's family's past, her great-grandfather's abrupt disappearance, and the power of the Amulet. Emily and Navin, with the help of extraordinary supporting characters, also learn about their own powers - powers to cope, powers to survive, powers to protect others, and powers to grow.

Amulet introduces us to wonderfully faceted characters - robots that bring to mind Star Wars; steampunk robot houses; elves; anthropomorphic foxes, rabbits, and cats; all sorts of flying machines piloted by children and robots; and more. The reader also encounters amorphous voices and characters who feel like pure evil. Amulet's plot and diverse characters are achieved through rich dialogue as well as lavish art.

Through exciting twists and turns, Amulet deals with familial responsibilities, coming of age, finding the courage to face unwanted challenges, and the importance of teamwork. In each volume we ride a roller coaster of plot twists, along with outstanding art, graphic design, and character development.

These books are geared for kids 7+ and can be easily integrated into language arts and social studies lessons for grades 2-6. That said, they're wonderfully entertaining for readers of all ages, and would encourage outside-of-school reading.

SERIES SUMMARY

Leon and others from the underground help Emily and Navin discover their purpose and strength. Navin learns that he is the general they've heard about in prophecies, and Emily learns to wield the powers and secrets of the Amulet as she, Leon, and Miskit trek for the fruit of the alder tree that will save Karen. In her quest for the fruit, Emily faces many challenges, including attacks by the elves. Emily battles Trellis, the son of the evil Elf King, and breaks the stone of his Amulet - one much like Emily's.

NOTE: two additional volumes of Amulet have been published since this guide was developed.

In short, Amulet is a about finding the courage and the means of facing one's challenges and fears. It's a series about heroes and responsibility and learning to trust. It's a series about the benefits of teamwork when facing the challenges of growing up.

Throughout the series readers learn:

How to accept and meet the burdens and challenges of responsibility to one's family and one's community;

How to balance meeting and falling short of expectations;

How to accept fate while facing and navigating fears;

How to recognize and accept given gifts and skills while balancing goals and expectations;

How to learn to use your strengths and skills while accepting help from others when those strengths and skills are not enough;

How to figure out what it takes to be a hero.

Amulet 's themes include:

The power and importance of friendship;

The power and importance of family and strong sibling relationships;

The pressures and challenges of living up to expectations;

The pressures of juggling fate, circumstances, fears, and realities when problem solving;

Finding the resources and courage to face and overcome fears;

Realizing that success entails dedication, creative problem solving, and teamwork;

Learning to recognize good versus evil and understanding that things aren't always as they seem.

TEACHING/DISCUSSION SUGGESTIONS

Plot, Themes, and Values Related

In each volume, Emily and Navin must overcome challenges. Plot the challenges each face and the strategies they use when facing them. Discuss and evaluate the effectiveness of their strategies. Brainstorm your own. You may want to do this for Trellis and Max as well.

Over the course of the series, discuss how Emily and Navin have changed. Have students bring in evidence to support their positions.

Over the course of the series, we frequently question the motivations of Trellis and of Max. Discuss why Kibuishi has us question their motives, and discuss how Kibuishi creates these ambiguities.

In each book the characters are forced to make decisions and must then deal with the consequences. Plot the decisions and consequences of the characters' actions. What can you learn from them?

Critical Reading and Making Inferences

Search and discuss the many truths Emily and Navin learn in each book. For example:

In Book One: The Stonekeeper (p. 72), the Voice tells Emily, "Being a Stonekeeper is a responsibility you mustn't take lightly." What might these responsibilities be? Why can't they be taken lightly?

In Book Two: The Stonekeeper's Curse (p. 99), Leon Redbeard and Emily discuss the choices she is facing. Discuss what Leon means when he says, "You must believe that you are here by choice and not by circumstance...You must...take control of your life and the stone will follow." What might Leon's implications entail?

In Book Two: The Stonekeeper's Curse (p. 125), Leon tells Emily and Navin why he's helping them: "I am not motivated by vengeance. I do this to honor him." What does Leon mean by this? How does Leon's helping Emily and Navin help honor his father?

In Book Three: The Cloud Searchers (p. 145), Mom tells Emily that, "If you can find the confidence to trust yourself, you can make it through any situation, no matter how bad things seem." Discuss how confidence can help you through situations. Give specific examples.

In Book Four: The Last Council (p. 38-39), Mom tells Emily that, almost everywhere you go in life, "...you're going to find something wrong with the place. That's the way life is... You just have to be willing to follow their systems and do what you can to make things right." Have students explain this and come up with examples of how in school and in their extended communities they can try to 'make things right.'

In Book Five: Prince of the Elves (p. 58), Vigo tells Emily that, "Sometimes personal desires and ambitions can cloud the judgment of even our brightest minds." Explain what Vigo might mean, giving examples to support your interpretation.

In Book Six: Escape From Lucien (p. 20), Leon tells Emily to trust her instincts and to "Just remember that these people need your help to begin with... not making decisions can be the worst decision of all." Have students explain what Leon means, giving examples to support their opinions.

Language, Literature, and Language Usage

Language Usage: Search, chart, and discuss literary devices used in Amulet. You may want to compare other ways to write the same ideas in an effort to show the value of these devices.

Creative Writing

In Book One: The Stonekeeper (p. 67), Emily and Navin escape a monster by jumping off a cliff and using large mushrooms as "sails." Write how it might feel to parachute with a mushroom.

In Book One: The Stonekeeper (p. 100), Grandfather Silas says "...the power of the Amulet can give power to turn back time...the power to shape your world." What might you go back in time for and what might you change? How and why would you change it?

Literature: In Book Two: The Stonekeeper's Curse (p. 95), Leon Redbeard discusses the choices Silas had and made. Discuss Silas' and Emily's choices. Then read and analyze Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken. Discuss how this poem relates to this scene here in Amulet.

Literary Devices

Foreshadowing can be found in each of the volumes both in the text and the images. Search for and discuss examples of foreshadowing and have students create their own examples. For example, in Book Three: The Cloud Searchers (p. 150), Leon sees a dragon like monster and then (p.151) says, "I get the feeling we're not the only ones out here..."

Puns and idioms are rife in these books. Search, define, and discuss these literary devices and have the class brainstorm others.

Modes of Storytelling and Visual Literacy

In graphic novels, images are used to relay messages with and without accompanying text, adding additional dimension to the story. In Amulet Kibuishi weaves a story, full of emotions and insights through the use of text, image and design. For example:

Chart and analyze and discuss how Kibuishi uses color, font, and design to separate scenes. Discuss the effectiveness of these visual cues.

Chart, analyze, and discuss how balloon shapes and font styles and sizes are used to relay information.

Chart and analyze how flashbacks, dreams, and conversations with the Voice are created through the combination of image, design, and text.

Chart and analyze how Mr. Kibuishi uses color schemes to help distinguish and shift scenes.

In Book Five: Prince of the Elves, we meet Chronos, a monster Max rescues to help him. Discuss the form and design Kibuishi uses to make Chronos appear so formidable. Have students draw and explain their own worst nightmares / monsters.

Content-Area Lessons

Social Studies: Compare and contrast the way the cities of Cielis, Alledia, Lucien and Kanalis are designed, run, and maintained. Ask students: How are these cities and the daily lives of their inhabitants similar and different from where you live?

Social Studies: In Book Four: The Last Council (p. 38-39), Karen tells Emily that almost everywhere you go in life, "...you're going to find something wrong with the place. That's the way life is... You just have to be willing to follow their systems and do what you can to make things right." Discuss how different systems of government do and do not encourage and empower their citizens to "make things right."

Social Studies: In Book Four: The Last Council (p. 81), Vigo recounts how Silas criticized the Council for making decisions based on its fears. Discuss how political and social decisions are made and why making decisions from fears may or may not be the best way to legislate.

Social Studies: In Book Five: Prince of the Elves (p. 22), we see a flashback of Max Griffin before the Guardian Council. He is being sentenced "...to fifty years in the ice prison of Korthan for aiding in the escape of war prisoners. You will also face trail in prison for your actions leading to the deaths of four soldiers...." Discuss whether this sentencing and punishment is just or unjust (giving examples to support your opinions). You may also want to discuss the choice of location for Korthan (and other) prisons.

History/Social Studies: In Book Five: Prince of the Elves (p. 58), Vigo tells Emily that, "Sometimes personal desires and ambitions can cloud the judgment of even our brightest minds." Have students search for examples in history that support Vigo's statement.

History/ Social Studies: In Book Six: Escape from Lucien we meet the Resistance Army. Discuss why it is called a "Resistance Army" and compare this army (its structure, goals, and missions) to resistance armies throughout history.

Science: In Book One: The Stonekeeper, Karen is stung by an "arachnopod." In Book Two: The Stonekeeper's Curse (p. 40-41), we learn a little more about arachnopods.

Using this name, have students create their own field guide for identifying arachnopods and curing their lethal stings.

Have students create their own original deadly animals with names based on existing scientific taxa. Have students describe what these animals look like, where they live, what their deadly powers might be, and what we might do to protect ourselves from those deadly powers/threats.

Suggested Prose Novel and Poetry Pairings

For more fun or if seeking resources for deeper literary analysis, here are some books/poems similar to Amulet that we're sure you'll enjoy.

Zita: Space Girl by Ben Hatke: A graphic novel series about a young girl who is also is transported into an alternate world, and reluctantly finds herself a hero.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle: A book in which a brother and sister must travel to an alternate world to find and rescue their scientist father.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost: A poem about choices one must make.

The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien: A book in which a humble hobbit must join with forces with elves, dwarfs, and others to go on an adventure and save Middle Earth.

The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling: A coming-of-age series with magic, adventure, good, and evil.

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll: A story in which a girl falls through a rabbit hole and finds herself in an alternate reality.

The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis: A book in which siblings transport through a wardrobe into an alternate world that they must save from an evil queen.

The Oz series by L. Frank Baum: Including the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, this series follows the adventures of several children, including Dorothy, in the magical Land of Oz.

COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS (CCSS)

While this book is written for young readers (with a Grade 2-5), and suggested for elementary school classrooms, it can be incorporated into language arts and content-area classes for a variety of grades. I therefore will be using the Common Core Anchor Standards for College and Career Readiness for Reading, Writing, and Speaking and Listening. Reading Amulet and incorporating the teaching suggestions above promotes critical thinking and its graphic novel format provides verbal and visual story telling across subject areas while addressing multi-modal teaching. Here's a more detailed look:

Knowledge of Language: Apply knowledge of language to understand how language functions in different contexts, to make effective choices for meaning or style, to comprehend more fully when reading or listening.

Range of reading and level of text complexity: Read and comprehend complex literary and informational texts independently and proficiently

Meryl Jaffe, PhD teaches visual literacy and critical reading at Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth OnLine Division and is the author of Raising a Reader! and Using Content-Area Graphic Texts for Learning. She used to encourage the "classics" to the exclusion comics, but with her kids' intervention, Meryl has become an avid graphic novel fan. She now incorporates them in her work, believing that the educational process must reflect the imagination and intellectual flexibility it hopes to nurture. In this monthly feature, Meryl and CBLDF hope to empower educators and encourage an ongoing dialogue promoting kids' right to read while utilizing the rich educational opportunities graphic novels have to offer. Please continue the dialogue with your own comments, teaching, reading, or discussion ideas at meryl.jaffe@cbldf.org and please visit Dr. Jaffe at http://www.departingthe text.blogspot.com.
Please help support CBLDF's important First Amendment work by making a donation or becoming a member of CBLDF! All images (c) Kazu Kibuishi.

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Using Graphic Novels in Education: Amulet

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Welcome to Using Graphic Novels in Education, an ongoing feature from CBLDF that is designed to allay confusion around the content of graphic novels and to help parents and teachers raise readers.

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Fun Stuff for Kids and Teens | Smithsonian Institution

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Entertaining activities, games, and fun stuff to do online from the Smithsonian's museums, research centers, and zoo.

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Our pages Ireland for Kids provides interesting and fun facts about Ireland, its geography, its landmarks and attractions.

Here are some interesting Ireland Facts which were choosen and researched by kids especially for kids.

Ireland is the third largest island of Europe and the second largest island of the British isles - Great Britain is the largest.

Here we will refer to the Republic of Ireland as Ireland, as this is the name also commonly used for the country to the west of the Great Britain and to the south of Northern Ireland.

Ireland Facts for Kids

Ireland for Kids

Population: about 5.2 million people live in the Republic of Ireland (2021)

Capital: Dublin with 1.2 million inhabitants

Government: Parliamentary Republic

Religion: mainly Christians, 78% are Roman Catholics

Currency: 1 Euro = 100 cents

National Anthem: 'Amrán na bhFiann' (The Soldier's Song)

National Holiday: 17 March - Saint Patrick's Day

National Symbol: harp, shamrock (young clover leaf), blue and green (national colours)

History: Celtic tribes settled on the island of Ireland from 600 BC. Later Normans invaded the island in the 12th century. The big famine (hunger) in Ireland led many people to emigrate. Ireland was neutral in World War II. Independence from the UK was gained in 1921, then the republic became part of the Irish Free State. Since 1949 Republic of Ireland. The Republic of Ireland is part of the EU (European Union).

Ireland for Kids | Geography

The Republic of Ireland is a country in Western Europe and located on the island of Ireland.

The Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland that belongs to the UK share the island of Ireland which is situated in the North Atlantic Ocean.

The Republic of Ireland shares a border with Northern Ireland, that belongs to the UK.

The border between the two countries is about 490 km/ 304 miles long. Take note that Northern Ireland's land area is about five times smaller than that of the Republic of Ireland.

Ireland is well known for its green pastures, the many medieval monuments and castles such as Kilkenny Castle, the shamrock, a young clover leaf, which is one of the national symbols and Saint Patrick, the national patron saint.

Ireland's nickname is 'Emerald Isle' due to the lush vegetation, green pastures and soft rolling hills.

Ireland's name 'Éire' comes from the Gaelic language. 'Eriu' is the name of the goddess of the country.

Ireland for Kids | Ireland Facts

The island is 486 km/ 302 miles long and 275 km/ 171 miles wide.

Ireland is slightly larger than the state of West Virginia/ USA and slightly bigger than the countries of Georgia or Sri Lanka.

The landscape is dominated by rolling plains and rugged cliffs on the country's western coast. The western part of the country has many mountains and poorer soil conditions.

The climate is temperate but humid, with mild winters and cool summers.

Ireland for Kids | Geography Superlatives

Ireland's highest mountain is called Carrauntoohill. Ireland's highest peak measures 1,038 m/ 3,407 ft in height. The mountain is located in Country Kerry in southwestern Ireland.

The longest river of Ireland is the Shannon River. It travels across the island over 350 km/ 224 miles. The river runs through Limerick. The river is often quite shallow, but navigable.

The largest lake in the Republic of Ireland is Lough Corrib which is also the second largest lake of the island and the deepest lake of the island. The island's largest lake is Lough Neagh which is located in Northern Ireland! Lough is the Irish word for 'lake'.

Achill Island off the country's west coast is the largest of the Irish isles. The first human settlement on this island dates back to 3,000 BC! The island is known for the third highest sea cliffs in Europe and nearby Keem Bay is popular for its beautiful beach.

Ireland for Kids | Landmarks and Attractions in Ireland

Dublin: Ireland's capital city houses many fine attractions. Among them are the famous Liffey Bridge, also called 'Ha'Penny Bridge' by the locals. This bridge that was built in 1826 and replaced the old ferry. Then when crossing the bridge one had to pay toll - with exactly the same amount as a ferry crossing would have cost! Today one of the most famous bridges of the city is the Samuel Beckett Bridge, which is also referred to as 'Harp Bridge' due to its shape. The harp is one of Ireland's national symbols.

Trinity College: Ireland's oldest university near Dublin was founded by Queen Elizabeth I and established in 1528. Trinity College is one of the most prestigious university colleges in Europe. The Campanile (or clocktower) in Parliament Square is one of the landmarks of Ireland.

Limerick: This is an old medieval city at the Shannon River, Ireland's longest river. The city is known for its Georgian architecture. St Mary's Cathedral founded in 1138 is the oldest building of the city. The 800-year-old St John's Castle and the buzzing market life at the Milk Market are among other popular attractions of this city.

Cliffs of Moher: The Cliffs of Moher in the west of the country are among the most visited sites in Ireland. The cliffs are about 14 km/ 9miles long. More than 1.5 million people visit this famous landmark of Ireland every year!

Newgrange: Part of the Brú na Bóinne UNESCO world heritage sites, Newgrange is one of three prehistoric sites in Ireland. A neolithic passage tomb from about 3,200 BC was discovered in a huge circular mount. Ancient fossil bones and tools were discovered here. The Newgrange tomb is older than Stonehenge or the Egyptian Pyramids! Many of the stones there show megalithic art.

Glendalough is known for an early medieval monastery. Glendalough is a glacial valley and the cathedral is one of the famous medieval ruins in the valley. Other monuments in the Lower Glen include the Round Tower and the Gateway.

Ireland for Kids | Irish People

Dublin was settled by various ethnic groups already over 9,000 years ago. Among the earliest settlers in Ireland were the Corcu Loígde, Dál Riada and Iverni people. Later Vikings, Normans, Welsh and Flemish groups settled in the region.

Today Ireland is a multicultural country, however, the vast majority of the people are Irish (82%). About 40% of the Irish speak Gaelic and 78% of the people in the republic are Roman Catholics.

Ireland is known for its Irish Celtic music and Irish dance. Famous dance companies such as 'Riverdance' or 'Lord of the Dance' tour the world and fascinate people everywhere with their Irish dance programmes.

Most of the people live in the eastern part of the country, mainly around the capital city Dublin. About 40% of the population in the Republic of Ireland live in and around Dublin.

The biggest cities of Ireland are Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway. Dublin is the only city with more than one million inhabitants.

Ireland Facts for Kids | Economy

Natural resources in Ireland include natural gas, copper, zinc, peat (also called turf) and limestone.

Most of the land is used for agriculture (66%), mainly for growing potatoes, wheat and barley.

About 10% of the country are covered by forests.

The main trade partners of Ireland are the UK and the USA, Belgium and Germany.

Ireland is located on the major air and sea routes between Europe and North America. The main sea ports in the Republic of Ireland are Dublin and Cork.

Ireland for Kids | Irish Food

Ireland's cuisine is known for quite hearty dishes which often contain root vegetables such as potatoes and carrots or grains such as barley and wheat.

Fish including salmon is caught in Ireland's longest river Shannon while oysters can be found along the country's West Coast, especially around Galway. The most commonly eaten meats include pork, beef and lamb.

Popular food in Ireland are:

Boxty: These potato fritters are usually served for breakfast. The fried raw potato cakes are eaten with sour cream and onion pickle

Bacon and Cabbage: slices of boiled bacon are served with cabbage and potatoes

Colcannon: This is a traditional Irish dish and simply is made with mashed potatoes that have been mixed with shredded kale. The four main ingredients are: potatoes, butter, milk and kale.

Irish Stew: the typical Irish stew is mainly made with either lamb or beef meat. Irish stew consists of a thick soup made with onions, carrots and potatoes, fresh herbs and spices.

Soda bread: The typical Irish bread is prepared with baking soda instead of yeast. The soda bread has a cross cut on top - whether people believe this is to let the devil or the fairies out, it is helping the dough to rise during the baking process.

Barmbrack: Traditional Irish bread or cake made with yeast and filled with raisins and sultanas.

Barmbrack is usually shared at Halloween. The bread or cake will then contain a ring, a coin and a piece of cloth, these three items will symbolise love, wealth and bad luck.

Ireland for Kids | Animals

In the coastal waters around Ireland, there are bottlenose dolphins, orca whales and sea turtles, even giant squid have been spotted.

On land, there are only 26 species of mammals native to the island. Red foxes, hedgehogs, badgers and otters can be encountered, whereas the Irish hare or the red deer are more elusive and mainly encountered in nature reserves.

There are about 80,000 farms in Ireland. Many farmers raise cattle or sheep. About seven million cattle are raised in Ireland. The most famous dairy cattle is the Kerry cattle which is native to Ireland. County Kerry is famous for its superior butter and milk as dairy cattle here graze on lush pastures. You probably have seen 'Kerrygold' butter in the shops, now you know where this butter comes from!

There are about four million sheep in Ireland, although there is an old saying that there are more sheep in Ireland than people.

There are more than 400 species of birds in Ireland. Robins, blackbirds and wrens are amongst the most common birds. Robins are known for their red breast feathers.

Popular Pages

Ireland for Kids | Useful Resources

For this Ireland for Kids page we used the following resources:

Central Statistics Office. "Population and Migration Estimates." . Last accessed 23 June 2021

UNESCO. "Brú na Boínne - Gallery." WorldHeritageSites. Last accessed 21 June 2021

Central Intelligence Agency. "Ireland". CIA World Fact BookLast updated 8 June 2021. Last accessed 23 June 2021

Tourism Ireland. "Flavours of Ireland." Ireland.com. Last accessed 23 June 2021

Official Ireland Tourism. "Island of Ireland - 2018". TourismIreland. Last accessed 30 July 2019. Last accessed 23 June 2021

Image Credits on Ireland for Kids page: Shutterstock.com and wikipedia commons Return from Ireland for Kids to Kids-World-Travel-Guide Homepage

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Ireland for Kids | Ireland Facts for Kids | Ireland Geography | Travel

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Our Ireland for Kids page provides lots of fun facts about Ireland, about the country and people, landmarks, animals, economy, geography and so much more.

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On 14 October 2013 Neil Gaiman gave our second annual lecture at the Barbican Centre, London. The following is a full transcript of the lecture.
It's important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of member's interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. I'm going to tell you that libraries are important. I'm going to suggest that reading fiction, that reading for pleasure, is one of the most important things one can do. I'm going to make an impassioned plea for people to understand what libraries and librarians are, and to preserve both of these things.

And I am biased, obviously and enormously: I'm an author, often an author of fiction. I write for children and for adults. For about thirty years I have been earning my living though my words, mostly by making things up and writing them down. It is obviously in my interest for people to read, for them to read fiction, for libraries and librarians to exist and help foster a love of reading and places in which reading can occur.

So I'm biased as a writer.

But I am much, much more biased as a reader. And I am even more biased as a British Citizen.

And I'm here giving this talk tonight, under the auspices of the Reading Agency: a charity whose mission is to give everyone an equal chance in life by helping people become confident and enthusiastic readers. Which supports literacy programs, and libraries and individuals and nakedly and wantonly encourages the act of reading. Because, they tell us, everything changes when we read.

And it's that change, and that act of reading that I'm here to talk about tonight. I want to talk about what reading does. What it's good for.

I was once in New York, and I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons - a huge growth industry in America. The prison industry needs to plan its future growth - how many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be, 15 years from now? And they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple algorithm, based about asking what percentage of ten and eleven year olds couldn't read. And certainly couldn't read for pleasure.

It's not one to one: you can't say that a literate society has no criminality. But there are very real correlations.

And I think some of those correlations, the simplest, come from something very simple. Literate people read fiction.

Fiction has two uses. Firstly, it's a gateway drug to reading. The drive to know what happens next, to want to turn the page, the need to keep going, even if it's hard, because someone's in trouble and you have to know how it's all going to end...

...that's a very real drive. And it forces you to learn new words, to think new thoughts, to keep going. To discover that reading per se is pleasurable. Once you learn that, you're on the road to reading everything. And reading is key. There were noises made briefly, a few years ago, about the idea that we were living in a postliterate world, in which the ability to make sense out of written words was somehow redundant, but those days are gone: words are more important than they ever were: we navigate the world with words, and as the world slips onto the web, we need to follow, to communicate and to comprehend what we are reading.

People who cannot understand each other cannot exchange ideas, cannot communicate, and translation programs only go so far.

The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy giving them access to those books and letting them read them.

I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children. Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children's books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading. I've seen it happen over and over; Enid Blyton was declared a bad author, so was R. L Stine, so were dozens of others. Comics have been decried as fostering illiteracy.

It's tosh. It's snobbery and it's foolishness.

There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn't hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is the gateway drug to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you.

Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st century equivalents of Victorian "improving" literature. You'll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.

We need our children to get onto the reading ladder: anything that they enjoy reading will move them up, rung by rung, into literacy.

(Also do not do what this author did when his eleven year old daughter was into R. L. Stine, which is to go and get a copy of Stephen King's CARRIE, saying if you liked those you'll love this! Holly read nothing but safe stories of settlers on prairies for the rest of her teenage years, and still glares at me when Stephen King's name is mentioned.)

And the second thing fiction does is to build empathy. When you watch TV or see a film, you are looking at things happening to other people. Prose fiction is something you build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world, and people it and look out through other eyes. You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You're being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you're going to be slightly changed.

Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.

You're also finding out something as you read vitally important for making your way in the world. And it's this:

THE WORLD DOESN'T HAVE TO BE LIKE THIS. THINGS CAN BE DIFFERENT.

I was in China in 2007, at the first party-approved of Science Fiction & Fantasy Convention in Chinese history. And at one point I took a top official aside and asked him Why? SF had been disapproved of for a long time. What had changed?

It's simple, he told me. The Chinese were brilliant at making things if other people brought them the plans. But they did not innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So they sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, and they asked the people there who were inventing the future about themselves. And they found that all of them had read science fiction when they were boys or girls.

Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different.

And while we're on the subject, I'd like to say a few words about escapism. I hear the term bandied about as if it's a bad thing. As if "escapist" fiction is a cheap opiate used by the muddled and the foolish and the deluded, and the only fiction that is worthy, for adults or for children, is mimetic fiction, mirroring the worst of the world the reader finds herself in.

If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill, and someone offered you a temporary escape, why wouldn't you take it? And escapist fiction is just that: fiction that opens a door, shows the sunlight outside, gives you a place to go where you are in control, are with people you want to be with(and books are real places, make no mistake about that); and more importantly, during your escape, books can also give you knowledge about the world and your predicament, give you weapons, give you armour: real things you can take back into your prison. Skills and knowledge and tools you can use to escape for real.

As J. R. R. Tolkien reminded us, the only people who inveigh against escape are jailers.

Another way to destroy a child's love of reading, of course, is to make sure there are no books of any kind around. And to give them nowhere to read those books.

I was lucky. I had an excellent local library growing up. I had the kind of parents who could be persuaded to drop me off in the library on their way to work in summer holidays, and the kind of librarians who did not mind a small, unaccompanied boy heading back into the children's library every morning and working his way through the card catalogue, looking for books with ghosts or magic or rockets in them, looking for vampires or detectives or witches or wonders. And when I had finished reading the children's' library I began on the adult books.

They were good librarians. They liked books and they liked the books being read. They taught me how to order books from other libraries on inter-library loans. They had no snobbery about anything I read. They just seemed to like that there was this wide-eyed little boy who loved to read, and would talk to me about the books I was reading, they would find me other books in a series, they would help. They treated me as another reader - nothing less and more - which meant they treated me with respect. I was not used to being treated with respect as an eight year old. But

Libraries are about Freedom. Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information.

I worry that here in the 21st Century people misunderstand what libraries are and the purpose of them. If you perceive a library as a shelf of books, it may seem antiquated or outdated in a word in which most, but not all, books in print exist digitally. But that is to fundamentally miss the point.

I think it has to do with nature of information.

Information has value, and the right information has enormous value. For all of human history, we have lived in a time of information scarcity, and having the needed information was always important, and always worth something: when to plant crops, where to find things, maps and histories and stories - they were always good for a meal and company. Information was a valuable thing, and those who had it or could obtain it could charge for that service.

In the last few years, we've moved from an information scarce economy to one driven by an information glut. According to Eric Schmidt of Google, every two days now the human race creates as much information as we did from the dawn of civilisation until 2003. That's about five exobytes of data a day, for those of you keeping score. The challenge becomes, not finding that scarce plant growing in the desert, but finding a specific plant growing in a jungle. We are going to need help navigating that information to find the thing we actually need.

Libraries are places that people go for information. Books are only the tip of the information iceberg: they are there, and libraries can provide you freely and legally with books. More children are borrowing books from libraries than ever before - books of all kinds: paper and digital and audio. But libraries are also, for example, a place that people, who may not have computers, who may not have internet connections, can go online without paying anything: hugely important when the way you find out about jobs, apply for jobs or apply for benefits is increasingly migrating exclusively online. Librarians can help these people navigate that world.

I do not believe that all books will or should migrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams once pointed out to me, over twenty years before the kindle turned up, a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath-resistant, solar operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them. They belong in libraries, just as libraries have already become places you can go to get access to ebooks, and audiobooks and DVDs and webcontent.

A library is a place that is a repository of, and gives every citizen equal access to, information. That includes health information. And mental health information. It's a community space. It's a place of safety, a haven from the world. It's a place with librarians in it. What the libraries of the future will be like is something we should be imagining now.

Literacy is more important than ever it was, in this world of text and email, a world of written information. We need to read and write, we need global citizens who can read comfortably, comprehend what they are reading, understand nuance, and make themselves understood.

Libraries really are the gates to the future. So it is unfortunate that, round the world, we observe local authorities seizing the opportunity to close libraries as an easy way to save money, without realising that they are, quite literally, stealing from the future to pay for today. They are closing the gates that should be open.

According to a recent study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, England is the "only country where the oldest age group has higher proficiency in both literacy and numeracy than the youngest group, after other factors, such as gender, socio-economic backgrounds and type of occupations are taken into account".

Or to put it another way, our children and our grandchildren are less literate and less numerate than we are. They are less able to navigate the world, to understand it to solve problems. They can be more easily lied to and misled, will be less able to change the world in which they find themselves, be less employable. All of these things. And as a country, England will fall behind other developed nations because it will lack a skilled workforce. And while politicians blame the other party for these results, the truth is, we need to teach our children to read and to enjoy reading.

We need libraries. We need books. We need literate citizens.

I do not care - I do not believe it matters - whether these books are paper, or digital, whether you are reading on a scroll or scrolling on a screen. The content is the important thing.

But a book is also the content, and that's important.

Books are the way that we communicate with the dead. The way that we learn lessons from those who are no longer with us, that humanity has built on itself, progressed, made knowledge incremental rather than something that has to be relearned, over and over. There are tales that are older than most countries, tales that have long outlasted the cultures and the buildings in which they were first told.

I think we have responsibilities to the future. Responsibilities and obligations to children, to the adults those children will become, to the world they will find themselves inhabiting. All of us - as readers, as writers, as citizens: we have obligations. I thought I'd try and spell out some of these obligations here.

I believe we have an obligation to read for pleasure, in private and in public places. If we read for pleasure, if others see us reading, then we learn, we exercise our imaginations. We show others that reading is a good thing.

We have an obligation to support libraries. To use libraries, to encourage others to use libraries, to protest the closure of libraries. If you do not value libraries then you do not value information or culture or wisdom. You are silencing the voices of the past and you are damaging the future.

We have an obligation to read aloud to our children. To read them things they enjoy. To read to them stories we are already tired of. To do the voices, to make it interesting, and not to stop reading to them just because they learn to read to themselves. Use reading aloud time as bonding time, as time when no phones are being checked, when the distractions of the world are put aside.

We have an obligation to use the language. To push ourselves: to find out what words mean and how to deploy them, to communicate clearly, to say what we mean. We must not to attempt to freeze language, or to pretend it is a dead thing that must be revered, but we should use it as a living thing, that flows, that borrows words, that allows meanings and pronunciations to change with time.

We writers - and especially writers for children, but all writers - have an obligation to our readers: it's the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were - to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all. We have an obligation not to bore our readers, but to make them need to turn the pages. One of the best cures for a reluctant reader, after all, is a tale they cannot stop themselves from reading. And while we must tell our readers true things and give them weapons and give them armour and pass on whatever wisdom we have gleaned from our short stay on this green world, we have an obligation not to preach, not to lecture, not to force predigested morals and messages down our readers' throats like adult birds feeding their babies pre-masticated maggots; and we have an obligation never, ever, under any circumstances, to write anything for children to read that we would not want to read ourselves.

We have an obligation to understand and to acknowledge that as writers for children we are doing important work, because if we mess it up and write dull books that turn children away from reading and from books, we've lessened our own future and diminished theirs.

We all - adults and children, writers and readers - have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.

Look around you: I mean it. Pause, for a moment and look around the room that you are in. I'm going to point out something so obvious that it tends to be forgotten. It's this: that everything you can see, including the walls, was, at some point, imagined. Someone decided it was easier to sit on a chair than on the ground and imagined the chair. Someone had to imagine a way that I could talk to you in London right now without us all getting rained on.This room and the things in it, and all the other things in this building, this city exist because, over and over and over, people imagined things. They daydreamed, they pondered, they made things that didn't quite work, they described things that didn't yet exist to people who laughed at them.

And then, in time, they succeeded. Political movements, personal movements, all began with people imagining another way of existing.

We have an obligation to make things beautiful. Don't leave the world uglier than we found it, not to empty the oceans, not to leave our problems for the next generation. We have an obligation to clean up after ourselves, and not leave our children with a world we've shortsightedly messed up, shortchanged, and crippled.

We have an obligation to tell our politicians what we want, to vote against politicians of whatever party who do not understand the value of reading in creating worthwhile citizens, who do not want to act to preserve and protect knowledge and encourage literacy. This is not a matter of party politics. This is a matter of common humanity.

Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was both simple and wise. "If you want your children to be intelligent," he said, "read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."

He understood the value of reading, and of imagining. I hope we can give our children a world in which they will read, and be read to, and imagine, and understand.

Thank you for listening.

Photos from the evening

Get involved

Read more about Neil Gaiman's lecture in the press. Articles appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, The Bookseller and The Yorkshire Post and on the BBC website. The Guardian have published an edited version of the lecture.

Catch up with what people said about the lecture on social media via our #ReadingAgencyLecture storify.

At the lecture young Reading Activists asked lecture guests what they'd like to see in their 'library of the future'. You can join this activity via twitter or by emailing us what you'd like to see in future libraries.

Read more about Peter James announcing the author fund.

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Neil Gaiman lecture in full: Reading and obligation

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On 14 October 2013 Neil Gaiman gave our second annual lecture at the Barbican Centre, London. The following is a full transcript of the lecture. It's important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of member's interests, of a sort.

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The year is 1946, and the Lee family has moved from Metropolis' Chinatown to the center of the bustling city. While Dr. Lee is greeted warmly in his new position at the Metropolis Health Department, [...]

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The Scottish Mathematical Council © 2014-2021. The SMC is a charitable body, registered in Scotland with number SC046876. Tha Comhairle Matamataig na h-Alba na carthannas, clàraichte ann an Alba, Àireamh SC046876. Frontier Theme

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How do you feel about the ways companies use your personal data? What times of the day are you at your best? Can you tell the difference between real and fake news stories? And how noisy is your classroom or workplace?

These are just some of the research questions posed on nQuire, the Open University's online citizen science platform, which aims to educate the general public in thinking scientifically and empower them to act as scientists, solve problems that interest them and their communities, and develop critical thinking skills that allow them to judge the information they hear.

Unlike existing citizen science projects, nQuire involves members of the public at every stage of creating and managing scientifically structured investigations, from design, to recruiting participants, to accessing and analysing findings, to sharing results. This helps develop understanding of the scientific process.

It began with a series of smaller scale collaborations with schools, funded by the Economic and Social and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Councils and with the Sheffield University Technical College, funded by the Nominet Trust, which offers grants to support socially motivated tech.

The platform was then redesigned to accommodate large-scale scientific investigations involving thousands of users, to provide secure data storage and support research projects through downloads of anonymised data and built-in consent forms. It is open to anyone, accessible via mobile devices and allows investigations to be set up and managed in areas from social sciences to the community and environment.

A £185,000 partnership with the BBC helped nQuire to reach diverse audiences, while the Open University's ethics board ensured the process of approving investigations in terms of ethical and research quality would meet required university standards.

The platform was tested through the television programme Springwatch, which involved more than 220,000 people taking part in structured investigations into garden birds, mammals and insects. Findings from these investigations highlighted the need for log piles, long grass and hedgehog feeding to promote biodiversity.

Another investigation, involving 6,000 people and including OU students, suggested sleep patterns varied by age and gender and by the hours people reported they were at their best

The project has received further funding from the Higher Education Innovation Fund and UK Research and Innovation. External partners in nQuire investigations or "missions" have included the British Trust for Ornithology, UCL, the University of Exeter and University of Bristol.

The OU is now working with other academic partners in Europe, aiming to extend the reach of nQuire beyond the UK.
Project: Setting City Area Targets and Trajectories for Emissions Reduction (SCATTER)
Researchers at the University of Manchester have been conducting groundbreaking research into climate change for 20 years.

They have demonstrated the importance of limiting global average temperature increases to 2 degrees centigrade -- the figure recognised by the Paris Climate Agreement -- have shown how carbon budgeting can help society meet climate change targets, have incorporated aviation and shipping emissions in national climate change plans, and allocated carbon budgets between developed and developing nations.

This work won the research team £180,000 in government funding for the Setting City Area Targets and Trajectories for Emissions Reduction [SCATTER] project, developed in collaboration with Greater Manchester Combined Authority and consultancy firm Anthesis.

This involved supporting a number of UK cities in setting and developing carbon targets and policies.

Tools and methodologies developed through the project make it possible to calculate the total emissions that can be emitted at local levels to keep in line with the Paris Agreement and to devise carbon budgets for individual local authorities, regions and organisations.

It has made many local authorities more ambitious in setting environmental targets; Greater Manchester, for example, has moved from aiming for 80% carbon reduction by 2050 to zero by 2038. Many, including West Midlands Combined Authority, Sheffield City Council and Leeds City Region, have also revised their long-term and short-term goals, using interim carbon budgets and setting annual percentage reduction targets.

Organisations including Electricity Northwest, Manchester City Football Club, Bruntwood and Manchester Housing Partnership have all revised their strategies to contribute to delivering Manchester's new city-wide target on carbon reduction.
Project: Epidyolex
Ten years ago, a team from the University of Reading published results from animal studies that would change the lives of a group of sick children.

They had found that none-psychoactive cannabinoids, including cannabidiol (CBD) - parts of cannabis not associated with the high that cannabis smokers enjoy - reduced the number and severity of seizures experienced by animals treated to model the symptoms.

Epilepsy affects around 50 million people worldwide. Most can control their seizures with anti-epileptic drugs but for 30% of patients these fail to work or produce intolerable side effects.

Among those unable to benefit from these drugs are children with two rare forms of the disease, Dravet syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome. These children can experience dozens and sometimes hundreds of seizures a day, causing cognitive disabilities and confining them to a wheelchair before they reach secondary school. One third die before they reach adulthood.

Professor Claire Williams, a psychologist at the University of Reading, had been involved in research on cannabinoids since the 1990s, while Ben Whalley, professor in neuropharmacology at the university, had conducted experiments on the effect of cannabinoids on rat brain tissue slices.

They were approached, together with another Reading pharmacology professor, Gary Stephens, by GW Pharmaceuticals, a company specialising in plant-derived cannabinoid therapeutics, to test the use of cannabinoids in reducing seizures.

The success of these tests prompted GW Pharmaceuticals and a Japanese company, Otsuka Pharmaceutical, to award the team more than £1 million to conduct further research, with a view to developing a drug.

As a result of their work, CBD was recommended for approval as the medicine Epidiolex by the US Food and Drug Administration in April 2018. By the end of September 2019 it had been prescribed to more than 15,000 US patients.

The European Medicines Agency has also approved the drug, and since January 2020 it has been available to patients on the NHS. Research is now being conducted into how it can be used in the treatment of other diseases.

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Research impact: award winner and runners-up

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How do you feel about the ways companies use your personal data? What times of the day are you at your best? Can you tell the difference between real and fake news stories? And how noisy is your classroom or workplace?

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MIT School of Engineering | » Does hot water freeze faster than cold water?

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A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars By Yaba Badoe

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A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars By Yaba Badoe

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Each month Storytime comes with high quality teaching resources. There are also free sample teaching resources on our site that anybody is welcome to download.

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As of Tuesday 5 January, England is once again under national lockdown with emergency measures to control the rapid spread of coronavirus.

With schools now closed, solidarity to any parents who are homeschooling and find themselves once again struggling to provide interesting, educational and absorbing things for their children to do, day after day.

Thankfully the internet exists and is one of the best places to look when it comes to educating your children at home.

There are thousands of websites all geared towards helping children of all ages to learn everything from Maths and languages to art, yoga and mindfulness.

We have rounded up the best websites for your children to learn from.

We chose sites which were easy to navigate, offered activities to do at home which supported the teaching, were interesting to parents, and would ensure young brains were fully engaged for at least 30 minutes or so.

Within our selection there are sites which cater to all ages and stages - including parents!

Some sites were dedicated to one discipline or topic, while others offer a broad spectrum of subjects.

You can trust our independent reviews. We may earn commission from some of the retailers, but we never allow this to influence selections, which are formed from real-world and expert advice. This revenue helps us to fund journalism across The Independent.

We absolutely love this collection of educational video content byTedTalks. You've got a wealth of videos to watch - from a couple of minutes up to 20 minutes long, catering to all ages and covering all sorts of topics. Everything from " the hidden life of Rosa Parks" to " the bug that poops candy" and " how vaccines work ". Each video is marked with its length and what area of learning it relates to, from health to science and technology. While this is geared towards children, we bet parents and teachers will get just as much out of it. We are not ashamed to say we've been watching loads of these on our own outside of "school" hours.

Just because they can't visit in person, doesn't mean children can't still enjoy the benefits of this famous old museum. Take a virtual tour, letting David Attenborough guide you around the enormous Hintze Hall, getting a good look at Hope, the blue whale suspended from the museum's ceiling, or simply digitally browse the library books.

There is also a range of downloadable activities and lesson plans available too, each helpfully labelled with the learning stage they apply to. We particularly enjoyed the Dino Directory which boasts images, facts and figures for some 300 dinosaurs. The " try this at home " section is wonderful too - especially as it teaches little ones, amongst other things, how to make a volcano.

Covering primary age all the way to 16-plus, BBC Bitesize is split into three categories - all children will have something to learn here. Whether you've got a teenager learning about the Spanish Armada or a young child exploring phonics - Bitesize has it covered. There are daily lessons for all ages from 9am in core subjects such as English and Maths - the content is supported by activities, videos and tests. Parents and carers, including those of SEN (special educational needs) children, can also find help.
Visit now
We are totally thrilled by what Tate Kids has up its digital sleeves to help children learn about artists and the process of making all different types of art. Some of the world's most famous artists are brought into focus under the " explore" tab, where you are asked " who is Salvador Dali?", " who is Berthe Morisot?" and so on. The site offers click through options to pages on the life and works of a variety of different painters and sculptors. You can take a deep dive into different eras or styles of art - including pop art and impressionism or discover how different pieces of art might be grouped together.

The " make" tab talks you through making friendship bracelets, painting like JMW Turner or embarking on some experimental photography. While the " games and quizzes " section gives children the chance to challenge themselves and put themselves within an art context.
Visit now
While travelling the world seems little more than a fantasy right now, National Geographic has provided a wealth of classroom resources which help keep children connected to and interested in little-known wonders from all over the globe. The collection of "at home" lessons suit all age groups and encompass topics such as ecology and social studies. More specific subjects, such as climate change and storytelling, have dedicated areas of the site designed for immersive exploration. As you'd expect, the photography is world class and makes using this space feel really special.
Visit now
This is an American website which might mean there are differences in curriculum or vocabulary, but generally, this is a brilliant space for children to enhance their education and learn new things. Each day is unique over at BrainPOP; there is a fresh topic to focus on each day, as well as the huge vault of information always on offer.

We loved how easily and intuitively children could navigate this colourful learning hub. Covering 14 subjects including Maths and English, as well as space and sport. There's plenty to get stuck into, but we think this is best suited for children who are already confident readers. Alternatively, this is a great resource for parents of younger children to explore together - you could get wonderfully lost here for hours, drinking in the history and heritage of the Incas or brushing up on the times tables. The images used are plentiful, bright and clear.

The UK's largest children's reading charity is a hub of comfort, fun and security for families. Here bookworms will find reading recommendations, including "gentle books for troubled times", and so much more.

There's an entire section dedicated to what authors and illustrators are offering online for children - from illustration classes, read alongs and even "story starters" to encourage youngsters in their creative writing . There are quizzes, competitions and even book-based recipes to work on - as well as print out activities meaning there is something for all children to enjoy - even those who think they hate reading!

The go-to for any fledgling scientists, Fuse School focuses on Maths, Chemistry, Biology and Physics. There are hundreds of videos created by teachers available here - all of which are short and concise, so as not to be overwhelming, which in turn encourages learning. From neuroscience to radiation, these are big topics condensed into powerful nuggets of meaning. Fuse School is a booster to main lessons and a brilliant way of revising. There's even a social network, which means children can safely talk about their specialist topics or share queries with peers all over the globe.

Making sure your children get their exercise is tough at the moment, especially for those with no outdoor space. Cosmic Kids offers yoga and mindfulness classes for children aged three and older. Lead by the friendly and enthusiastic Jaime, the videos are what she calls "active screen time, where we get up and move". Jaime tells stories via yoga poses, including kids' favourites like Frozen, Moana and the Harry Potter films - meaning that even reluctant yogis will find themselves enthralled!

We loved that Jaime has a variety of different yoga options - "zen den", a series designed to help children keep calm and talk about their feelings or "brain breaks" for when kids need a quick pause from the books for a burst of exercise. What we loved most about Cosmic Kids is that it is honing children's emotional intelligence and provides some much-needed balance from academics. It is free for the first two weeks, after which it's £7.78 for a month or £50.56 for the year.

Free to visit and use for as long as coronavirus keeps children locked down, after which the subscription costs £6 per year, Phonics Play is, as the name suggests, a way for little ones to learn phonics in a fun, playful way. The games are brilliant - words and letters disguised in among plenty of colourful characters to keep things light. Games cater to different levels of ability so there is a sense of having things to work towards. We really appreciated the section for parents, many of whom either have no idea what phonics is, much less how to teach it to small children.

TEDEd gets our vote because of the scope for family learning. Of course, it helps that the subject matters offered are broad and the topics unusual and highly engaging. But, what we liked most was how each topic nicely tees up and there is plenty of post-video discussion.
Best homeschooling books to educate kids during lockdown Best online baby and toddler classes for parents The online resources for English, history and geography The online resources for maths, science and computing

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11 best educational websites for kids: Free online resources to help with homeschooling

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As of Tuesday 5 January, England is once again under national lockdown with emergency measures to control the rapid spread of coronavirus. With schools now closed, solidarity to any parents who are homeschooling and find themselves once again struggling to provide interesting, educational and absorbing things for their children to do, day after day.

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East Dunbartonshire - Building the Science curriculum in Millersneuk Primary

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Water can exist as a solid (ice), liquid (water) or gas (vapour or gas). Adding heat can cause ice (a solid) to melt to form water (a liquid). Removing heat causes water (a liquid) to freeze to form ice (a solid).

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Terrific Websites for Science | Common Sense Education

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Terrific Websites for Science is a Top Picks list of 46 apps and websites curated by Common Sense Education edtech editors.

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This section contains links to websites and online tools that provide learning and teaching support for science teachers.

australianscreen is developed in partnership with the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) by Curriculum Corporation through The Le@rning Federation. The site brings together material from the vast collections of the NFSA, the National Archives of Australia, the ABC, SBS, and AIATSIS in a unique collaboration.

BBC Learning - provides an extensive array of digital resources to support the Science classroom.

Science and Mathematics Specialist Centres enable students to see the relevance of science and mathematics to their lives - academically, career-wise and for active citizenship. For more information, see: Science and Mathematics Specialist Centres

Marine Discovery Centre - an educational facility that includes a visitor's aquarium, student laboratory, classroom and resource room.

Melbourne Aquarium - offers education programs for primary through to senior secondary level students, comprehensive teacher resources, student interactive activities and the opportunity for secondary students to undertake work experience.

Museum Victoria - offers education programs, resources and experiences. The Mind and Body and Science and Life galleries are particularly useful for the learning and teaching of science.

Natural Resources Conservation League of Victoria - advocates sustainable management of forest ecosystems and provides environmental education.

Royal Botanic Gardens - utilises the natural and cultural resources of both the Melbourne and Cranbourne sites to provide learning opportunities for primary and secondary students.

Scienceworks and the Melbourne Planetarium - offers hands-on exhibits, live demonstrations, school programs, tours, activities and shows that enable students and teachers to explore science and technology.

Victorian Space Science Education Centre (VSEEC) - promotes the learning of science by providing engaging, hands-on activities for students and teachers.

Zoos Victoria - oversees three zoos in the state. The Zoo education service offers programs on all aspects of animal biology including structure and function, adaptation, habitat, conservation.

Amphibian Research Centre (ARC) - encourages students to learn about frogs practically. Excursion programs that can be coupled with a Melbourne Water visit are offered.

CERES Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies - offers programs and can design programs to suit schools' specific needs.

CSIRO Science Education Centre (CSIROSEC) - Australia's national science agency. The Victorian website provides information on school programs, educational events, and the Melbourne CSIRO Science Education Centre.

Discovery Centre Bendigo - focuses on science and technology and offers assistance to teachers in excursion planning and curriculum-related workshops.

Questacon - Australia's National Science and Technology centre. It has online resources for both teachers and students and conducts an annual outreach program.

Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) - provides hands-on opportunities for students to learn about animal biology and welfare

Australian Stem Cell Channel - supported by the Victorian Government, this site utilises interactive media to describe diseases that are targets for stem cell research and offers footage of microscopic procedures.

Kitchen Chemistry - provides interactive activities for both a virtual and physical kitchen.

Australian National Chemistry Quiz (ANCQ) - The Quiz is a unique chemical education activity. It provides a major focus for secondary school students on the relevance of chemistry in an exciting way.

Earth Science Literacy Initiative - this short resource developed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science provides an overview of the big ideas in Earth Science.

Geoscience Australia (GA) - offers a wide range of downloadable education resources and offers publications, maps, models and education kits for sale.

Visible Earth - this searchable directory from NASA contains many images of the Earth from space.

Volcano World - includes a list of currently active volcanos and an emergency eruption simulation game, plus other information resources and activities for students.

World-Wide Earthquake Locator - aims to provide up-to-date information and detailed dynamic maps of earthquakes across the world. This website also includes a database of past earthquakes, an animation of the past month's earthquakes and statistical earthquake prediction.

Catalyst - interactive website focusing on stories featured on the ABC Catalyst program, from scientific breakthroughs, issues, and how scientists work in the field.

Nova - the Australian Academy of Science publishes this website which examines topical science issues. The material is suitable for secondary students and teachers.

Australian Antarctic Division - offers a range of information and educational resources about the Antarctic for teachers and the general public.

ABC Science - an excellent resource for both teachers and students covering science news, controversial topics, science information and more.

Bureau of Meteorology - offers a wide range of educational resources including lesson plans, brochures and information about weather phenomena and availability of weather kits. If you live in regional or rural Australia, regional offices welcome school visits, subject to availability of staff and operational requirements.

Clean Up Australia - provides information on Clean Up Australia Day, environmental campaigns and resources.

CSIRO - offers science programs and resources for schools, special events around Australia and a range of at-home science for all ages.

Encyclopedia of Australian Science - Provides a register of the people and the many industries, corporations, research institutions, scientific societies and other organisations that have contributed to Australia's scientific, technological and medical heritage.

EPA Victoria School Resources - offers a range of free resources to support schools in teaching and learning about environmental issues.

Newton's Apple - this is an American family science program hosted by public television (the equivalent of Australia's ABC). The website describes scientific demonstrations and also provides science quizzes.

Science Image - is an image library specialising in science and nature images. Images are readily downloadable.

The Exploratorium - from the world-renowned San Francisco Exploratorium, the site provides information for students, often supported with animations and interactive activities.

The Mad Scientists Network - provides a global archive of recently asked questions and lists answers provided by correspondents from around the world. The Mad Scientists' Network also has a library with links to a wide range of science fields.

Science, Optics & You! - contains activities and information about lenses, light and optics.

Leonardo da Vinci - from the Museum of Science in Boston, this website explores the life and inventions of Leonardo da Vinci, including the simple machines found in many of his designs.

Secrets of Lost Empires - explores the simple machines used by several ancient cultures in their building and construction works.

Skateboard Science - gives you the science behind those skating tricksters.

Hubble Telescope - contains news, information and education resources about this major project.

Imagine the Universe - this NASA site has extensive information about the universe, planets, stars and astronomical facts.

NASA Education - a comprehensive index to NASA's extensive resources for teachers.

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Fossils, flowers, galaxies and a rare "lefty" snail.

FOSSILS FROM LOST WORLDS
Written by Damien Laverdunt
Illustrated by Hélène Rajcak
Translated by Daniel Hahn

SCIENCE AND ME
Written by Ali Winter
Illustrated by Mickaël El Fathi

WHAT'S INSIDE A FLOWER?
And Other Questions About Science & Nature
Written and illustrated by Rachel Ignotofsky

THE SNAIL WITH THE RIGHT HEART
A True Story
Written by Maria Popova
Illustrated by Ping Zhu

THE BOY WHOSE HEAD WAS FILLED WITH STARS
A Life of Edwin Hubble
Written by Isabelle Marinov
Illustrated by Deborah Marcero

As parents home-schooling during the Covid epidemic have discovered, explaining science to kids is hard. It can expose the deficiencies in our own understanding - what exactly is a gene anyway? - or leave us unable to communicate what we do know, in language accessible to young children. (How do you define DNA for someone who doesn't know what a molecule is?) These are problems that authors, illustrators and editors of children's science books wrestle with all the time. The solutions they have found have never been more varied or creative, offering many routes into the world of science for all sorts of young readers, and their grown-ups.

Many children's nonfiction books take the form of what I call "the list," with each spread covering one topic within the greater whole. It's not difficult to make books like this look exciting: some bright artwork, a bit of fashionable design and an author prepared to squirt words like grouting around a set of tiles. What is harder is to use the list structure to add to the information communicated, and to make a meaningful marriage of pictures and words.

Image

From "Fossils From Lost Worlds." Credit... Hélène Rajcak

"Fossils From Lost Worlds," by Damien Laverdunt and Hélène Rajcak - who also collaborated on the picture books "Small and Tall Tales of Extinct Animals" and "Unseen Worlds: Microscopic Creatures Hiding All Around Us" - shows how well this format can work. Each spread features a different prehistoric creature, chosen for what it reveals about the history of life on earth and the science of paleontology. The illustrations use an elegant color palette but don't sacrifice adventure, humor or information for design. There are familiar favorites here, such as T. rex and Protoceratops, beloved of young dino-freaks, and lesser-known species, too: Anomalocaris, a bug-eyed invertebrate from more than 500 million years ago, and Megacerops, an S.U.V.-size mammal from more than 30 million years ago. The careful curation of this parade of creatures takes readers on a comprehensive journey through the fossil record. I enjoyed the paleontologists, depicted in droll graphic-novel-style comics interspersed throughout, almost as much as I enjoyed the paleontology.

In "Science and Me," by Ali Winter and Mickaël El Fathi, another fine example of the list format, the scientists come before their science. We learn about 13 Nobel laureates in physics, chemistry and medicine, starting with my girlhood hero, Marie Curie, and ending with Donna Strickland, who won the physics prize in 2018 for her breakthroughs in laser technology. There isn't much room for an explanation of scientific discoveries on one double-page spread, but Winter and El Fathi give a satisfying flavor of the work that guided scientific and moral compasses, while highlighting aspects of the scientists' personal histories. An important moment from each life, such as Guglielmo Marconi's meeting with Titanic survivors whose rescue his wireless radio helped to enable, is captured in acollaged image. The inclusive promise of the title is, to some extent, delivered on by the space-suited "every child" figure who appears throughout, and by the invitation issued at the end of the book to think about what science means to you.

The challenge of igniting children's curiosity is akin to lighting a fire. You can't put something as large as a log on a spark; you have to start with something smaller. "What's Inside a Flower?" - written and illustrated by Rachel Ignotofsky ("Women in Science") - is the best kind of tinder for little sparks. It is a highly accessible gateway to botany that doesn't shy away from real scientific words but doesn't overload readers with too much information. The book answers the simple, child-centered question of the title in a succession of exquisite images with sparse, well-targeted text and captions. Readers will learn not only the internal structure of a flower, but also how flowers create relationships with pollinators and play a vital role in ecosystems and food production.

Of all the devices for communicating information, my favorite is the narrative: humanity's psychological carry-on bag, in use since we huddled around our first fires. It can hold both factual information and ideas, real and imagined aspects of human experience. "The Snail With the Right Heart," written by Maria Popova (yes, the Brain Pickings blogger!) and illustrated by Ping Zhu, tells the extraordinary true story of Jeremy, the lefty snail. Snails with left-spiraling shells are a one-in-a-million rarity, and the search for a mate for Jeremy became a British media sensation. Popova's lyrical retelling and Ping Zhu's simple, charming artwork add so much to an already marvelous story, introducing readers to the genetic significance of Jeremy's rare mutation and to the concept of deep time (and how life exists within it).

The cyclical nature of many scientific phenomena provides writers with ready-made narrative structures, but a human life story can be tricky to handle in a picture book: What to include, what to leave out when you have so few words and pages? In "The Boy Whose Head Was Filled With Stars," Isabelle Marinov and Deborah Marcero get it just right. Edwin Hubble is a colossal figure in astronomy. His research proved that the Milky Way is just one among an infinite number of galaxies. He's difficult to summarize. Beginning with the words "Edwin was a curious boy," Marinov succeeds in distilling Hubble's life to the essence of youthful curiosity, bringing readers back time and again to the three key questions to which he sought answers: "How many stars are in the sky? How did the universe begin? Where did it come from?" (themselves typeset in a glimmering silver foil). Marcero's tender illustrations remind readers on every page that the experience of looking at a dark, starry sky shaped Edwin's life.

Of course there are many things missing from this small biography. No book can tell you everything, nor should it try to. The job of nonfiction is to build the fire of curiosity and to instill in readers the idea that while knowledge is finite, questions and the ability to ask them are not. In Edwin Hubble's words, "We do not know why we are born into the world, but we can try to find out what sort of world it is."

Nicola Davies is a zoologist and prolific children's author. Her most recent picture books are "Grow: Secrets of Our DNA" and "Last: The Story of a White Rhino."

FOSSILS FROM LOST WORLDS
Written by Damien Laverdunt
Illustrated by Hélène Rajcak
Translated by Daniel Hahn
72 pp. Gecko. $29.99.
(Ages 7 to 10)

SCIENCE AND ME
Written by Ali Winter
Illustrated by Mickaël El Fathi
40 pp. Lantana. $17.99.
(Ages 7 to 11)

WHAT'S INSIDE A FLOWER?
And Other Questions About Science & Nature
Written and illustrated by Rachel Ignotofsky
48 pp. Random House. $17.99.
(Ages 4 to 7)

THE SNAIL WITH THE RIGHT HEART
A True Story
Written by Maria Popova
Illustrated by Ping Zhu
44 pp. Enchanted Lion. $18.95.
(Ages 7 to 12)

THE BOY WHOSE HEAD WAS FILLED WITH STARS
A Life of Edwin Hubble
Written by Isabelle Marinov
Illustrated by Deborah Marcero
52 pp. Enchanted Lion. $17.95.
(Ages 6 to 10)

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5 Picture Books About the Wonders of Science (Published 2021)

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Fossils, flowers, galaxies and a rare "lefty" snail. FOSSILS FROM LOST WORLDS Written by Damien LaverduntIllustrated by Hélène RajcakTranslated by Daniel Hahn SCIENCE AND ME Written by Ali WinterIllustrated by Mickaël El Fathi WHAT'S INSIDE A FLOWER?

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A Special Story Time: Rachel Ignotofsky presents "What’s Inside a Flower"

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Develop scientific literacy and understanding through group discussion. Created by teachers, this resource contains over 40 beautifully illustrated picture cards and language prompts to facilitate discussion.

Develop scientific literacy

Includes picture cards and prompts to facilitate discussion

Covers a variety of topics

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Develop scientific literacy and understanding through group discussion. Created by teachers, this resource contains over 40 beautifully illustrated picture cards and language prompts to facilitate discussion. Develop scientific literacy Includes picture cards and prompts to facilitate discussion Covers a variety of topics

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DK Find Out! | Fun Facts for Kids on Animals, Earth, History and more!

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Visit DK Find Out! to learn about dinosaurs, space, animals, nature & more. Fun learning activities for kids with videos, quizzes & galleries at DKFindOut.com

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Science Associations in the UK

Practical science resources
Biology Chemistry Physics
Teaching resources
Science Physics Chemistry
Science videos for the classroom and to develop subject knowledge

Developing science subject knowledge

Physics subject knowledge

Chemistry subject knowledge

1. CPD for science teachers - getting the right feedback

2. Next steps for beginning science teachers

3. Essential reads for science teachers

4. A timeline of science education in England

5. Useful websites for science teachers

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Useful websites for science teachers | the science teacher

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Science Associations in the UK Association for science education (ASE) Society of Biology Royal Society of Chemistry Institute of Physics Practical science resources Science Practical work for learning Demonstrations in science by science teacher Alom Shaha CREST Awards - a great ... Useful websites for science teachers Read More "

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Welcome to IOPSpark - Unlimited Access to Over 2,000 Physics Teaching Resources | Teaching resources for 5-14 year olds | Here you can browse the entire back catalogue of Marvin and Milo physics activities.

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Since this site was developed as a teaching tool for educating students about how to search better on the Internet (see About This Site for more details), we have published on this page a list of the lessons, handouts, and other tools that we have used with our own students.

We encourage you to send us your own ideas. If you have created other lessons using our site, or you have suggestions or comments to make about the plans and materials included here, we would love to hear from you. Write to us at teachers@allaboutexplorers.com.

One note about the Treasure Hunts we have included here. On the main page you will see a list of links to the individual hunt pages. These are differentiated so that you may assign different hunts to students with different ability levels. Next to each is a colored dot which indicates the level of challenge:

Basic level
These hunts contain fact-oriented questions. The answers are relatively easy to locate on the page.

Moderate level
These hunts contain fact-oriented questions which will take some additional searching or deeper reading to answer.

Advanced level
Advanced hunts are more challenging and may require students to use inference and logic to determine answers.

Lessons

We have developed a series of lessons designed to introduce students to the skills and concepts of good Internet researching. Click the title of the lesson below to see the full lesson plan.

Students go on an Internet treasure hunt to find information about a famous world explorer. They compare information from two different sites to come to a conclusion about whether they can trust all Internet sources.

Students are taught about the difference between publishing a book and posting a web site, emphasizing the selectivity of the publishing process. The "1 - 2 - 3" approach to researching on the Internet is introduced. Students then get a chance to try out the first two steps.

In this lesson, search engines are introduced in more detail. Emphasis is placed on the fact that these are collections rather than selections and that there are no humans involved in the collection process. Students explore some search engines to see the differences in results.

Students learn about how to decode a URL and that it is the address for locating a web page. They also learn how to begin evaluating a site based on the top level domain (e.g. .com, .org, or .edu), as well as a few other tricks for determining the quality of the site.

Students research the correct facts and draft an email to the All About Explorers site webmaster to fix the mistakes they discovered in Lesson 1.

Materials

All materials are available in Adobe Portable Document (PDF) format. For PDF documents, you must have Adobe Reader installed on your computer. You can download the file at the Adobe web site:

Additional Resources

References

Fritz, Jean. Around the World in a Hundred Years: From Henry the Navigator to Magellan. New York: Putnam & Grosset Group, 1998.

Great Explorations (series). 22 vols. Tarrytown, New York: Marshall Cavendish/Benchmark, 2002-2007.

Goodman, Joan E. A Long and Uncertain Journey: The 27,000-Mile Voyage of Vasco Da Gama. New York: Mikaya Press, 2001.

Goodman, Joan E. Beyond the Sea of Ice: The Voyages of Henry Hudson. New York: Mikaya Press, 1999.

Kline, Trish. Discover the Life of an Explorer (series). 8 vols. Vero Beach, Florida: Rourke Publishing, 2002-03.

Matthews, Rupert. Explorer. New York: Dorling Kindersley/Eyewitness Books, 2005.

Meltzer, Milton. Ferdinand Magellan : First to Sail Around the World. Tarrytown, New York: Marshall Cavendish/Benchmark Books, 2001.

Molzahn, Arlene Bourgeois. Explorers! (series). 8 vols. Berkeley Heights, New Jersey: Enslow Publishers, 2004-2005.

Moore, Christopher. Champlain. Plattsburgh, NY: Tundra Books, 2004.

Parker, Nancy Winslow. Land Ho! Fifty Glorious Years in the Age of Exploration. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2001.

St. George, Judith. So You Want to Be an Explorer? New York: Philomel Books, 2005.

Starkey, Dinah. Scholastic Atlas of Exploration. New York: Scholastic, 1993. OP

Wolinsky, Art. Internet Power Research Using the Big6 Approach, Revised Edition. Berkeley Heights, New Jersey: Enslow Publishers, 2005.

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Since this site was developed as a teaching tool for educating students about how to search better on the Internet (see About This Site for more details), we have published on this page a list of the lessons, handouts, and other tools that we have used with our own students.

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The statutory programmes of study and attainment targets for computing at key stages 1 to 4.

Applies to England

Documents

Details

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National curriculum in England: computing programmes of study

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The statutory programmes of study and attainment targets for computing at key stages 1 to 4.

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great short stories to show on the IWB

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Jibraan is encouraged by his father to discover his many gifts.

Read along with the animated book

LET'S DISCUSS THE STORIES ~ IDEAS FOR TALKING WITH KIDS

1. In this story, Jibraan's dad encourages him to try different things. Why do you think he does this? What do you think this might say about family?

1. How does Jibraan discover his many gifts, in this story?

2. What kinds of things have you tried, and discovered you have a gift for?

Bedtime Story written by Hans du Toit

Illustrated by Chantelle and Burgen Thorne

Designed by Ezra Harerimana

Edited by Alison Ziki

Music Video from zapsplat.com

* THE STORY 'THE BEST GIFT' WAS CREATED BY BOOK DASH AND IS LICENSED UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION 4.0 LICENSE. MINOR FORMATTING CHANGES HAVE BEEN MADE TO THE ORIGINAL WORK FOR EASE OF READING ON OUR WEBSITE.
Family Trying

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The Best Gift | Short Stories for Kids | Bedtime Stories

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Jibraan is encouraged by his father to discover his many gifts. 1. In this story, Jibraan's dad encourages him to try different things. Why do you think he does this? What do you think this might say about family? 1. How does Jibraan discover his many gifts, in this story?

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Using dataloggers to develop children's enquiry skills, particularly interpretting data

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Datalogging And Eco-Monitoring - CPD Units | Primary Science Teaching Trust

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This CPD unit is based on the Eco-monitoring at Key Stage 2 project, run in Bath and South Gloucestershire schools in 2008-9, and as a cluster project in...

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A great resource for collecting and organising ideas

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Important — Popplet.com service is ending July 1, 2026. Please read the official announcement here,and visit our new site Superstructures.io.

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In our Ear for Reading webinar this week we have been talking about embedding auditory approaches into everyday teaching of reading. One of the things we highlighted was the importance of rhythm for the development of reading fluency and in particular the vital connection with music. Ozernove- Palchik and Patel (2018) write:

There is mounting evidence for links between musical rhythm processing and reading-related cognitive skills, such as phonological awareness. This may be because music and speech are rhythmic: both involve processing complex sound sequences with systematic patterns of timing, accent, and grouping. (p1)

In their research paper, 'Musical Rythm and Reading Development: does beat processing matter?', Ozernove- Palchik and Patel point to the benefits of being able to identify and respond to beats. This is not an intuitive finding as the English language is not beat-based. While there is still further research needed to unpick exactly what the connections are between rhythms, beats and reading, there strong indications pointing to the benefits of developing sensitivity to rhythm. Music is an important subject in its own right, we are learning more all the time about its value to learning across the board.

Ideas for Teaching Rhythm

There are some useful online resources for teaching rhythm and you might start by taking a look at the BBC's programme for Key Stage One Bring the noise. or for KS2 BBC Bitesize's resource for distinguishing between pulse (beat) and rhythm. Rhythmically Speaking has some ideas for tuning children into rhythm, using a popular drama clapping and naming game as you can see in the video below.

Movement lessons are essential and are a good opportunity for you to assess whether children find it hard to identify and move in time to a beat or rhythm. Look for ways to build this into your teaching sequences. For instance, in our Take One Book sequence for Hans Christian Andersen's The Steadfast Tin Soldier, we have built-in opportunities for marching to a beat. For a light, quick march, try the 'March' from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. You could contrast with the slow sombre pace and mood of Purcells's 'March for the Funeral of Queen Mary.' Fleetwood Mac's Tusk has a strong beat.

A simple way to introduce the distinction between pulse (beat) and rhythm is to use well-known nursery rhymes. Try this one:

Hick-ory, dick-ory, dock.

The clock struck one,

The mouse ran down.

Hick-ory, dick-ory, dock

To find the beat, clap a steady tick-tock, tock-tock as you read the poem. Now to find the rhythm clap the syllables.

For older children progress from rhymes and songs with clear beats to syncopated rhythms, like Scott Joplin's The Entertainer.

Copy Cat rhythms can be developed in conjunction with rhythmic books. For example, if you are reading Steve Webb's Tanka Tanka Skunk, read a page and then have the children either echo read the page emphasising the same rhythm or perhaps clap the rhythm back to you. Try it yourself with this page to get the idea.

For a collaborative reading of Kes Grey's The Diddle That Dummed, divide the class into five groups and assign each group a line of diddles to read and clap as they share the reading with you. Group five needs to remember to end with a dum.

Great Books with Rhythm

Poetry and stories with a strong rhythm are important too. If a book has a regular rhythm, then it is essential that the text scans. You should be able to read it without haltering. If you baulk because the rhythm doesn't work, or you have to work hard by forcing stresses then the text doesn't scan. For younger children read books with a strong regular rhythm like Bill Martin Jnr's Brown Bear, Brown Bear or Janet and Allan Ahlberg's Each Peach Pear Plum. You don't have to overemphasise the rhythm as you read; focus instead on an expressive reading to communicate meaning. The rhythm is the heartbeat that underpins the text and the rhythm will be maintained without you hammering it home. For older readers try books with less regular rhythms. The texts in Julie Fogliano's A House That Once Was and Joanne Schwarz's Town is by the Sea provide a lift and lilt that suits the subtly melancholic tones in each book. Here's a selection of some of our favourites to get you rockin':

Allan and Janet Ahlberg Each Peach Pear Plum

Stella Blackstone My Granny Went to Market

Bill Martin Jnr Brown Bear Brown Bear

James Carter Once Upon a Rhythm

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler The Snail and the Whale

Julie Fogliano and Lane Smith A House that Once Was

Kes Grey and Fred Blunt The Diddle that Dummed

Anne Vittur Kennedy The Farmer's Away Baa! Neigh!

Lloyd Moss Zin! Zin! Zin A Violin

Todd Tuell and Tad Carpenter Ninja, Ninja, Never Stop!

Steve Webb Tanka Tanka Skunk

Find your rhythm book collection

We have put together a collection of ten great books that feature strong rhythms. Visit our bookshop to find out more.

Webinar: Ear for Reading

For further ideas and to hear about some of the research underpinning this approach and further ideas for integrating auditory approaches into your teaching, view our webinar. We look forward to seeing you online soon.

Other resources that might be of interest
Herts for Learning Fluency Project Rhythm for Reading: a reading intervention
This post was written by Nikki Gamble

Nikki Gamble
Formerly a teacher (secondary and primary) and university lecturer, with over 35 years' experience, Nikki has worked extensively in schools across the UK and internationally. She is the author of Exploring Children's Literature now in its fourth edition (Sage, 2019) Co-author of Guiding Readers, winner of the UKLA Academic Book award (UCL, 2016). Nikki runs workshops for teachers, librarians, students and researchers on different aspects of children's literature, an online summer school and an Audience with events, celebrating writers and illustrators who have made an exceptional contribution to the world of children's books. Further information exploringchildrensliterature.uk

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In our Ear for Reading webinar this week we have been talking about embedding auditory approaches into everyday teaching of reading. One of the things we highlighted was the importance of rhythm for the development of reading fluency and in particular the vital connection with music.

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DK facts about plants. great photo images

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DK Find Out! | Fun Facts for Kids on Animals, Earth, History and more!

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Visit DK Find Out! to learn about dinosaurs, space, animals, nature & more. Fun learning activities for kids with videos, quizzes & galleries at DKFindOut.com

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Welcome to IOPSpark - Unlimited Access to Over 2,000 Physics Teaching Resources | Teaching resources for 5-14 year olds | Here you can browse the entire back catalogue of Marvin and Milo physics activities.