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Put my name in the hat - Idioms by The Free Dictionary

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Put my name in the hat - Idioms by The Free Dictionary

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(redirected from put my name in the hat)

put (one's) name in the hat

To submit one's own or someone else's name for consideration in a selection, such as a competition, application pool, election, etc. I'm thinking about putting my name in the hat for class president! Just so you know, I put your name in the hat for a chance to win an all-expenses-paid trip to Florida! As has been widely predicted, the governor announced today that he was putting his name in the hat for the presidential election next year.

Want to thank TFD for its existence? Tell a friend about us, add a link to this page, or visit the webmaster's page for free fun content.

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(redirected from put my name in the hat) To submit one's own or someone else's name for consideration in a selection, such as a competition, application pool, election, etc. I'm thinking about putting my name in the hat for class president!

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I have been trying to share as many of our favorite books as possible in different ways. Here is an overview of all of the lists so far. Picture Book lists can be found at the bottom. Happy reading! Chapter Books: The Best Books for Middle School According to My Students: The Favorite Reads of...

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Common Sense Education provides educators and students with the resources they need to harness the power of technology for learning and life. Find a free K-12 Digital Citizenship curriculum, reviews of popular EdTech apps, and resources for protecting student privacy.

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GoEnglish.com Idioms = "Barking Up The Wrong Tree" = Today's English Idioms & Phrases

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GoEnglish.com Idioms = "Barking Up The Wrong Tree" = Today's English Idioms & Phrases

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"Barking Up The Wrong Tree"(look for it in the wrong place...)Barking up the wrong tree is looking for something in the wrong place. Example: If you are looking for someone to lend you money, don't talk to me. You're barking up the wrong tree.

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Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - The Free Dictionary

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Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - The Free Dictionary

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Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - The Free Dictionary

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The World's most comprehensive free online dictionary, thesaurus, and encyclopedia with synonyms, definitions, idioms, abbreviations, and medical, financial, legal specialized dictionaries

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Teaching Writing - Resource Topics - National Writing Project

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Teaching Writing - Resource Topics - National Writing Project

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Teaching Writing - Resource Topics - National Writing Project

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October 2015 Being a Writer is a flexible writing curriculum for grades K–6 based on the writers workshop model. The curriculum is also based on NWP’s widely shared principles of literacy and language learning. Originally developed by the Development Studies Center (DSC…

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For a little more information click here . For tips on how to participate click here . To see the map of participating schools click here .﻿

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Kid Zone! | National Center on Improving Literacy

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Kid Zone! | National Center on Improving Literacy

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Kid Zone! | Kid Zone! National Center on Improving Literacy

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Kid Zone! | Kid Zone! | National Center on Improving Literacy

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The Literacy Playground for Kids and Families!

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Ms. Greene weaves the latest scientific discoveries with Karen's story and the stories of children with disabilities and their families. The book explores our attachment to dogs, what constitutes a productive life, and what can be accomplished with unconditional love.

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Grammar Bytes! Grammar Instruction with Attitude

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Grammar Bytes! Grammar Instruction with Attitude

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This grammar review site includes detailed terms, interactive exercises, handouts, PowerPoints, Twitter practice, videos, teacher resources, and more!

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Log in to access free reading comprehension and writing exercises sure to improve your critical thinking skills.

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ClassHook | Educational Clips from Popular Media

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ClassHook | Educational Clips from Popular Media

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"ClassHook is the creative piece I've been looking for YEARS!! Anytime I see a clip in a movie that I could use, I try and make a mental note but usually have a hard time accessing the movie. Because I teach anatomy, there are SOOOO many possibilities. This is a fantastic site."

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ClassHook | Educational TV and Movie Clips

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Make learning relevant with educational scenes from TV shows & movies.

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(1) Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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(1) Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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It's time to improve literacy skills during social studies instruction and ensure that readers of all abilities have what they need to access grade-level social studies concepts.

Join us on Thursday, December 7 for a look at scaffolded materials that provide extra literacy support while building key social studies concepts and skills.

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Newsela | Content and assessment platform

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Content Aligned To National & State Standard, Flexible To Support Relevant Curriculum. Find the Perfect Piece Of Content For Lessons. Go beyond the book.

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Reviews & Age Ratings - Best Movies, Books, Apps, Games for Kids

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Reviews & Age Ratings - Best Movies, Books, Apps, Games for Kids

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Jump to navigation

Parents and kids say

Russian brutality, kept interested but too much nudity

The movie is interesting with good story line but not a family movie as too violent, women are yet again sexualized. Too much nudity and sex scenes and inappropriate language for young minds in my opinion.

This book is definitely my new favorite! I love it so much! Ready Player One has such a great plot. Once I hit Chapter 6, I couldn't seem to put it down. I'm a huge fan of the '80s so it just made this book even better

Common Sense is grateful for the generous support of our foundation partners:

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Jump to navigation Russian brutality, kept interested but too much nudity The movie is interesting with good story line but not a family movie as too violent, women are yet again sexualized. Too much nudity and sex scenes and inappropriate language for young minds in my opinion.

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BrainPOP - Animated Educational Site for Kids - Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts & Music, Health, and Technology

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Our templates are 100% customizable, super user-friendly, and designed specifically to help you create outstanding school newspapers with our free Cloud Designer. Below are a few of the 100s of templates available to you.

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what does it take to start a school newspaper

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Our templates are 100% customizable, super user-friendly, and designed specifically to help you create outstanding school newspapers with our free Cloud Designer. Below are a few of the 100s of templates available to you.

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French I | Foreign Language | CliffsNotes

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French I | Foreign Language | CliffsNotes

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French I | Foreign Language | CliffsNotes

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Need a little extra French I? CliffsNotes offers extensive homework help and test prep to help you get an A on your next foreign language exam!

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Spanish I | Foreign Language | CliffsNotes

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Spanish I | Foreign Language | CliffsNotes

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Spanish I | Foreign Language | CliffsNotes

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Need a little extra Spanish I help? CliffsNotes offers extensive homework help and test prep to help you get an A on your next foreign language exam!

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The Kid Should See This | Smart videos for curious minds of all ages: Science, art, nature, animals, space, technology, DIY, food, music, animation, and more

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The Kid Should See This | Smart videos for curious minds of all ages: Science, art, nature, animals, space, technology, DIY, food, music, animation, and more

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Buy your own copy here!
How to Tell the Difference: A Guide for Evaluating Children's Books for Anti-Indian Bias by Doris Seale, Beverly Slapin and Rosemary Gonzales explains Oyate's very basic criteria for evaluating books about native peoples, or that engage Native themes. This book has been helpful to so many authors, parents and educators over the years that we believe we have helped raise our collective expectations, which in turn has enriched the publishing industry.

was published in 2000 and the content is reproduced in How to Tell the Difference A Broken Flute. Since then, we have continued to compile and clarify criteria to help us discern honest portrayals of our peoples in children's books containing retellings of traditional Indian stories, as well as contemporary stories and representations of Native peoples. You can buy your own copy of How to Tell the Difference from Oyate.

A.1) In ABC books, is "E" for "Eskimo" or "I" for Indian present? A.2) In Counting books, are "Indians" counted? A.3) Are children shown as "playing Indian"? A.4) Are animals dressed as "Indians"? A.5) Do "Indians" have ridiculous names, like "Indian Two Feet," or "Little Chief"?
B.1) Are Native peoples portrayed as savages, or primitive craftspeople, or simple tribal people, now extinct?

B.2) Are Native societies oversimplified and generalized? Are Native people all one color, one style?

B.3) Is the art a mishmash of "generic Indian" designs?

Select Only Books which pay attention to accurate, appropriate design and color, and in which are clothes, dress, houses drawn with careful attention to detail.

C.1) Are there insulting overtones to the language in the book? Are racist adjectives, like "primitive," "pristine," "simple," "Injun" or "savage" used to refer to Indian peoples?

D.1) Are Native people depicted as stereotypically alike, or do they look just like whites with darker faces?

E) LOOK FOR DISTORTION OF HISTORY

E.1) Is there manipulation of words like "victory," "conquest," or "massacre" to justify Euro-American conquest of the Native homelands? Are Native Nations presented as being responsible for their own "disappearance?" Is the U.S. government only "trying to help?"

F) LOOK FOR VICTIMIZATION
F.1) Does the story encourage children to believe that Native peoples accepted defeats passively? F.2) Are Native heroes limited to those who, in some way or another, are believed to have aided Europeans in the conquest of their own people (Examples include some popular depictions of Pocahontas, or La Malinche)?
G) LOOK AT THE LIFESTYLES

G.1) Are Native cultures presented in a condescending manner? Are there paternalistic distinctions between "them" and "us?" Are Native peoples depicted as needing aid from outsiders, and having no ability to govern their own land and people effectively?

G.2) Are Native peoples discussed in the past tense only, supporting the "vanished Indian" myth? Is the past unconnected to the present? (Be thorough - use of the past tense is a pervasive issue in books about Native peoples. Remember that any general reference to a tribe which is not explicitly to historical events, should be written in the present tense. For example, the sentence "Many California tribes used acorn in their meals" should actually have been written in the PRESENT tense, as this is still a widely consumed food among many California Natives.)

G.3) Is a society portrayed in a distorted or limited way? Are religions described as "superstitions," with backward or primitive connotations?

G.4) Is there an ethnocentric Western focus on material objects, such as baskets, pottery, rugs? Examples include depicting these objects strictly as "art," or as a means to trade with Euro-Americans.
G.5) Are Native peoples shown as "relentlessly ecological"? H.1) Do the People speak in either a sort of "early jawbreaker," broken English, or in the oratorical style of the "noble savage"?
I) LOOK FOR STANDARDS OF SUCCESS

I.1) In modern times, are Indian people portrayed as childlike and helpless? Does a white authority figure - pastor, social worker, teacher - know better than Native people themselves what is "good for them?" Are Indian children "better off" away from their families?
I.2) Do Native people and their communities contrast unfavorably with the "norm" of white middle-class suburbia? I.3) Does it require Native people to adhere to "white" values and standards in order to get ahead or experience success?
J) LOOK AT THE ROLE OF WOMEN

J.1) Are women completely subservient to men? Do they do all the work, while the men loll around, waiting for the next hunt?

K) LOOK AT THE ROLE OF ELDERS

K.1) Are elders treated as a dispensable burden upon their People, to be abandoned in times of trouble or famine? Are they portrayed as querulous, petulant, demanding, nagging, irritating, or boring?

L) LOOK FOR THE EFFECTS ON A CHILD'S SELF-IMAGE

L.1) Is there anything in the story that would embarrass or hurt a Native child? Are there any explicit or implicit lessons that would be harmful if instilled upon a child, Native or non-Native?

M) LOOK AT THE AUTHOR'S OR ILLLUSTRATOR'S BACKGROUND

M.1) Is the background of the author and illustrator devoid of qualities that enable them to write about Native peoples in an accurate, respectful manner? Is there an ethnocentric bias that leads to distortions or omissions?

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Buy your own copy here! How to Tell the Difference: A Guide for Evaluating Children's Books for Anti-Indian Bias by Doris Seale, Beverly Slapin and Rosemary Gonzales explains Oyate's very basic criteria for evaluating books about native peoples, or that engage Native themes.

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New book reviews are in!

book reviews

Review: Shi-shi-etko

Shi-shi-etko is one of the finest examples of an age-appropriate lesson to teach children about a dark chapter in Native history. In vivid, tender prose, Campbell conveys for children the true impact of residential school policies for Indian communities in the United States and Canada.

Read more...

Review: Darkness Under the Water

As it stands, Darkness Under the Water is a travesty, a melodrama marketed specifically to young people in Vermont-including Abenaki young people-who will probably be told this is how it was.

Read more...

Review: Chicora and the Little People

The first Lumbee legend to be told in a children's picture book, this story teaches children the importance of honoring the wisdom of children and other "small" voices, and of being courageous in the face of riducule.

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A beautiful expression of the belief that all things in creation are sacred. The text is easy for very early readers.

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http://www.oyate.org/modules/mod_image_show_gk4/cache/judy_doris_cora_cropslider-wrapper.jpg link http://www.oyate.org/modules/mod_image_show_gk4/cache/shipping_cropslider-wrapper.jpg link http://www.oyate.org/modules/mod_image_show_gk4/cache/judy_doris_readingslider-wrapper.jpg link http://www.oyate.org/modules/mod_image_show_gk4/cache/robette_danielle_cropslider-wrapper.jpg link New book reviews are in! book reviews Review: Shi-shi-etko Shi-shi-etko is one of the finest examples of an age-appropriate lesson to teach children about a dark chapter in Native history. In vivid, tender prose, Campbell conveys for children the true impact of residential school policies for Indian communities in the United States and Canada.

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American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL)

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American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL)

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American Indians in Children's Literature (AICL)

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Designed to help readers develop a critical eye about representations of American Indians in children's and young adult books

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One day last year, a citizen on a prairie path in the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst came upon a teen boy chopping wood. Not a body. Just some already-fallen branches. Nonetheless, the onlooker called the cops.

Officers interrogated the boy, who said he was trying to build a fort for himself and his friends. A local news site reports the police then "took the tools for safekeeping to be returned to the boy's parents."

Elsewhere in America, preschoolers at the Learning Collaborative in Charlotte, North Carolina, were thrilled to receive a set of gently used playground equipment. But the kids soon found out they would not be allowed to use it, because it was resting on grass, not wood chips. "It's a safety issue," explained a day care spokeswoman. Playing on grass is against local regulations.

And then there was the query that ran in Parents magazine a few years back: "Your child's old enough to stay home briefly, and often does. But is it okay to leave her and her playmate home while you dash to the dry cleaner?" Absolutely not, the magazine averred: "Take the kids with you, or save your errand for another time." After all, "you want to make sure that no one's feelings get too hurt if there's a squabble."

The principle here is simple: This generation of kids must be protected like none other. They can't use tools, they can't play on grass, and they certainly can't be expected to work through a spat with a friend.

And this, it could be argued, is why we have "safe spaces" on college campuses and millennials missing adult milestones today. We told a generation of kids that they can never be too safe-and they believed us.

We've had the best of intentions, of course. But efforts to protect our children may be backfiring. When we raise kids unaccustomed to facing anything on their own, including risk, failure, and hurt feelings, our society and even our economy are threatened. Yet modern child-rearing practices and laws seem all but designed to cultivate this lack of preparedness. There's the fear that everything children see, do, eat, hear, and lick could hurt them. And there's a newer belief that has been spreading through higher education that words and ideas themselves can be traumatizing.

How did we come to think a generation of kids can't handle the basic challenges of growing up?

Beginning in the 1980s, American childhood changed. For a variety of reasons-including shifts in parenting norms, new academic expectations, increased regulation, technological advances, and especially a heightened fear of abduction (missing kids on milk cartons made it feel as if this exceedingly rare crime was rampant)-children largely lost the experience of having large swaths of unsupervised time to play, explore, and resolve conflicts on their own. This has left them more fragile, more easily offended, and more reliant on others. They have been taught to seek authority figures to solve their problems and shield them from discomfort, a condition sociologists call "moral dependency."

This poses a threat to the kind of open-mindedness and flexibility young people need to thrive at college and beyond. If they arrive at school or start careers unaccustomed to frustration and misunderstandings, we can expect them to be hypersensitive. And if they don't develop the resources to work through obstacles, molehills come to look like mountains.

This magnification of danger and hurt is prevalent on campus today. It no longer matters what a person intended to say, or how a reasonable listener would interpret a statement-what matters is whether any individual feels offended by it. If so, the speaker has committed a "microaggression," and the offended party's purely subjective reaction is a sufficient basis for emailing a dean or filing a complaint with the university's "bias response team." The net effect is that both professors and students today report that they are walking on eggshells. This interferes with the process of free inquiry and open debate-the active ingredients in a college education.

And if that's the case already, what of the kids still in grammar school, constantly reminded they might accidentally hurt each other with the wrong words? When today's 8-year-olds become the 18-year-olds starting college, will they still view free speech as worthy of protecting? As Daniel Shuchman, chairman of the free speech-promoting Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), puts it, "How likely are they to consider the First Amendment essential if they start learning in fifth grade that you're forbidden to say-or even think-certain things, especially at school?"

Parents, teachers, and professors are talking about the growing fragility they see. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the overprotection of children and the hypersensitivity of college students could be two sides of the same coin. By trying so hard to protect our kids, we're making them too safe to succeed.

If you're over 40, chances are good that you had scads of free time as a child-after school, on weekends, over the summer. And chances are also good that, if you were asked about it now, you'd go on and on about playing in the woods and riding your bike until the streetlights came on.

Today many kids are raised like veal. Only 13 percent of them even walk to school. Many who take the bus wait at the stop with parents beside them like bodyguards. For a while, Rhode Island was considering a bill that would prohibit children from getting off the bus in the afternoon if there wasn't an adult waiting to walk them home. This would have applied until seventh grade.

As for summer frolicking, campers don't just have to take a buddy with them wherever they go, including the bathroom. Some are now required to take two-one to stay with whoever gets hurt, the other to run and get a grown-up. Walking to the john is treated like climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.

After school, kids no longer come home with a latchkey and roam the neighborhood. Instead, they're locked into organized, supervised activities. Youth sports are a $15 billion business that has grown by 55 percent since just 2010. Children as young as third grade are joining traveling teams-which means their parents spend a lot of time in the car, too. Or they're at tutoring. Or they're at music lessons. And if all else fails, they are in their rooms, online.

Even if parents want to shoo their kids outside-and don't come home till dinner!-it's not as easy as it once was. Often, there are no other children around to play with. Even more dishearteningly, adults who believe it's good for young people to run some errands or play kickball down the street have to think twice about letting them, because busybodies, cops, and social workers are primed to equate "unsupervised" with "neglected and in danger."

You may remember the story of the Meitivs in Maryland, investigated twice for letting their kids, 10 and 6, walk home together from the park. Or the Debra Harrell case in South Carolina, where a mom was thrown in jail for allowing her 9-year-old to play at the sprinkler playground while she worked at McDonald's. Or the 8-year-old Ohio boy who was supposed to get on the bus to Sunday school, but snuck off to the Family Dollar store instead. His dad was arrested for child endangerment.

These examples represent a new outlook: the belief that anytime kids are doing anything on their own, they are automatically under threat. But that outlook is wrong. The crime rate in America is back down to what it was in 1963, which means that most of today's parents grew up playing outside when it was more dangerous than it is today. And it hasn't gotten safer because we're hovering over our kids. All violent crime is down, including against adults.

And yet it doesn't feel safer. A 2010 study found "kidnapping" to be the top parental fear, despite the fact that merely being a passenger in a car is far more dangerous. Nine kids were kidnapped and murdered by strangers in 2011, while 1,140 died in vehicles that same year. While Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker writes in 2011's The Better Angels of Our Nature that life in most countries is safer today than at any time in human history, the press keeps pushing paranoia. This makes stepping back feel doubly risky: There's the fear of child kidnappers and the fear of Child Protective Services.

At times, it seems like our culture is conjuring dangers out of thin air, just to have something new to worry about. Thus, the Boulder Public Library in Colorado recently forbade anyone under 12 to enter without an adult, because "children may encounter hazards such as stairs, elevators, doors, furniture, electrical equipment, or other library patrons." Ah, yes, kids and library furniture. Always a lethal combo.

Happily, the library backed off that rule, perhaps thanks to merciless mocking in the media. But saner minds don't always prevail. At Mesa Elementary School, which also happens to be in Boulder, students got a list of the items they could not bring to the science fair. These included "chemicals," "plants in soil," and "organisms (living or dead)." And we wonder why American children score so low on international tests.

But perhaps the single best example of how fantastically fearful we've become occurred when the city of Richland, Washington, got rid of all the swings on its school playgrounds. The love of swinging is probably older than humanity itself, given our arboreal origins. But as a school district spokesman explained, "Swings have been determined to be the most unsafe of all the playground equipment on a playground."

You may think your town has avoided such overkill, but is there a merry-go-round at your local park, or a see-saw? Most likely they, too, have gone the way of lawn darts. The Consumer Product Safety Commission even warns parks of "tripping hazards, like...tree stumps and rocks," a fact unearthed (so to speak) by Philip Howard, author of 2010's Life Without Lawyers.

The problem is that kids learn by doing. Trip over a tree stump and you learn to look down. There's an old saying: Prepare your child for the path, not the path for your child. We're doing the opposite.

Ironically, there are real health dangers in not walking, or biking, or hopping over that stump. A Johns Hopkins study this summer found that the typical 19-year-old is as sedentary as a 65-year-old. The Army is worried that its recruits don't know how to skip or do somersaults.

But the cost of shielding kids from risks goes well beyond the physical, as a robust body of research has shown.

A few years ago, Boston College psychology professor emeritus Peter Gray was invited by the head of counseling services at a major university to a conference on "the decline in resilience among students." The organizer said that emergency counseling calls had doubled in the last five years. What's more, callers were seeking help coping with everyday problems, such as arguments with a roommate. Two students had dialed in because they'd found a mouse in their apartment. They also called the police, who came and set a mousetrap. And that's not to mention the sensitivity around grades. To some students, a B is the end of the world. (To some parents, too.)

Free play has little in common with the "play" we give children today. In organized activities, adults run the show. It's only when the grown-ups aren't around that the kids get to take over. Play is training for adulthood.

Part of the rise in calls could be attributed to the fact that admitting mental health issues no longer carries the stigma it once did, an undeniably positive development. But it could also be a sign, Gray realized, that failing at basic "adulting" no longer carries the stigma it once did. And that is far more troubling.

Is this outcome the apotheosis of participation-trophy culture? It's easy to scoff at a society that teaches kids that everything they do deserves applause. But more disturbing is the possibility that those trophies taught kids the opposite lesson: that they're so easily hurt, they can't handle the sad truth that they're not the best at something.

Not letting your kid climb a tree because he might fall robs him of a classic childhood experience. But being emotionally overprotective takes away something else. "We have raised a generation of young people who have not been given the opportunity to...experience failure and realize they can survive it," Gray has said. When Lenore's son came in eighth out of nine teams in a summer camp bowling league, he got an eighth-place trophy. The moral was clear: We don't think you can cope with the negative emotions of finishing second-to-last.

Of course, it's natural to want to see kids happy. But the real secret to happiness isn't more high fives; it's developing emotional resilience. In our mania for physical safety, coupled with our recent tendency to talk about "emotional safety," we have systematically deprived our children of the thousands of challenging-and sometimes upsetting-experiences that they need in order to learn that resiliency. And in our quest to protect them, we have stolen from children the best resilience training known to man: free play.

All mammals play. It is a drive installed by Mother Nature. Hippos do backflips in the water. Dogs fetch sticks. And gazelles run around, engaging in a game that looks an awful lot like tag.

Why would they do that? They're wasting valuable calories and exposing themselves to predators. Shouldn't they just sit quietly next to their mama gazelles, exploring the world through the magic of PBS Kids?

It must be because play is even more important to their long-term survival than simply being "safe." Gray's main body of research is on the importance of free play, and he stresses that it has little in common with the "play" we give kids today. In organized activities-Little League, for example-adults run the show. It's only when the grown-ups aren't around that the kids get to take over. Play is training for adulthood.

In free play, ideally with kids of mixed ages, the children decide what to do and how to do it. That's teamwork, literally. The little kids desperately want to be like the bigger kids, so instead of bawling when they strike out during a sandlot baseball game, they work hard to hold themselves together. This is the foundation of maturity.

The older kids, meanwhile, throw the ball more softly to the younger ones. They're learning empathy. And if someone yells, "Let's play on just one leg!"-something they couldn't do at Little League, with championships (and trophies!) on the line-the kids discover what it means to come up with and try out a different way of doing things. In Silicon Valley terms, they "pivot" and adopt a "new business model." They also learn that they, not just grown-ups, can collectively remake the rules to suit their needs. That's called participatory democracy.

Best of all, without adults intervening, the kids have to do all the problem solving for themselves, from deciding what game to play to making sure the teams are roughly equal. Then, when there's an argument, they have to resolve it themselves. That's a tough skill to learn, but the drive to continue playing motivates them to work things out. To get back to having fun, they first have to come up with a solution, so they do. This teaches them that they can disagree, hash it out, and-perhaps with some grumbling-move on.

These are the very skills that are suddenly in short supply on college campuses.

"Free play is the means by which children learn to make friends, overcome their fears, solve their own problems and generally take control of their own lives," Gray writes in 2013's Free to Learn (Basic Books). "Nothing we do, no amount of toys we buy or 'quality time' or special training we give our children, can compensate for the freedom we take away. The things that children learn through their own initiatives, in free play, cannot be taught in other ways."

Unstructured, unsupervised time for play is one of the most important things we have to give back to kids if we want them to be strong and happy and resilient.

It's not just that kids aren't playing much on their own. These days, they're not doing much of anything on their own. In an article in The Atlantic, Hanna Rosin admits that "when my daughter was 10, my husband and I suddenly realized that in her whole life, she had probably not spent more than 10 minutes unsupervised by an adult."

In earlier generations, this would have seemed a bizarre and wildly overprotective upbringing. Society had certain age-related milestones that most people agreed on. Kids might be trusted to walk to school by first grade. They might get a latchkey at 8, take on a newspaper route around 10, start babysitting at 12. But over the past generation or so, those milestones disappeared-buried by fears of kidnapping, the rise of supervised activities, and the pre-eminence of homework. Parents today know all about the academic milestones their kids are supposed to reach, but not about the moments when kids used to start joining the world.

It's not necessarily their fault. Calls to eight newspapers in North Carolina found none that would take anyone under the age of 18 to deliver papers. A police chief in New Albany, Ohio, went on record saying kids shouldn't be outside on their own till age 16, "the threshold where you see children getting a little bit more freedom." A study in Britain found that while just under half of all 16- to 17-year-olds had jobs as recently as 1992, today that number is 20 percent.

The responsibility expected of kids not so long ago has become almost inconceivable. Published in 1979, the book Your 6-Year-old: Loving and Defiant includes a simple checklist for what a child entering first grade should be able to do: Can he draw and color and stay within the lines of the design being colored? Can he ride a small two-wheeled bicycle without helper wheels? Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to a store, school, playground, or friend's home?

Hang on. Walk to the store at 6- alone?

It's tempting to blame "helicopter parents" for today's less resilient kids. But when all the first-graders are walking themselves to school, it's easy to add yours to the mix. When your child is the only one, it's harder. And that's where we are today. Norms have dramatically changed. The kind of freedom that seemed unremarkable a generation ago has become taboo, and in some cases even illegal.

In Waynesboro, Georgia, "trick or treaters" must be 12 or younger; they must be in a costume; and they must be accompanied by an adult at least 21 years of age. So if you have kids who are 15, 10, and 8, you can't send them out together. The 15-year-old is not allowed to dress up, yet she won't be considered old enough to supervise her siblings for another six years. And this is on the one night of the entire year we traditionally let children pretend to be adults.

Other schools and community centers now send letters home asking parents not to let their children wear scary costumes. Some even organize "trunk or treats"-cars parked in a circle, trunks open and filled with candy, thus saving the kids from having to walk around the neighborhood or knock on doors. (That would be tiring and terrifying.) If this is childhood, is it any wonder college kids also expect to be micromanaged on Halloween?

At Yale in 2015, after 13 college administrators signed a letter outlining appropriate vs. inappropriate costume choices for students, the childhood development expert and campus lecturer Erika Christakis suggested that it would be better to allow kids to think for themselves. After all, Halloween is supposed to be about pushing boundaries. "Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little obnoxious...or, yes, offensive?" she wrote. "Have we lost faith in young people's capacity-your capacity-to ignore or reject things that trouble you?"

Apparently, yes. Angry students mobbed her husband, the professor Nicholas Christakis, surrounding him in the courtyard of the residential college where he served as master. They screamed obscenities and demanded he apologize for believing, along with his wife, that college students are in fact capable of handling offensive costumes on Halloween. "Be quiet!" a student shouted at him at one point. "As master, it is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students!" She did not take kindly to his response that, to the contrary, he sees it as his job to create a space where students can grow intellectually.

As it turns out, Halloween is the perfect Petri dish for observing what we have done to childhood. We didn't think anything was safe enough for young people. And now we are witnessing the results.

When parents curtail their kids' independence, they're not just depriving the younglings of childhood fun. They are denying themselves the grown-up joy of seeing their kids do something smart, brave, or kind without parental guidance.

It's the kind of joy described by a Washington Post columnist who answered the phone one day and was shocked to find her 8-year-old son on the other end. He'd accidentally gone home when he was supposed to stay after school. Realizing she wasn't there, he decided to walk to the store a few blocks away-his first time. The mom raced over, fearing God knows what, and rushed in only to find her son happily helping the shopkeeper stock the shelves with meat. He'd had a snack and done his homework, too. It was an afternoon he'd never forget, and neither would his very proud mother.

When we don't let our kids do anything on their own, we don't get to see just how competent they can be-and isn't that, ultimately, the greatest reward of parenting? We need to make it easier for grown-ups to let go while living in a society that keeps warning them not to. And we need to make sure they won't get arrested for it.

By trying to keep children safe from all risks, obstacles, hurt feelings, and fears, our culture has taken away the opportunities they need to become successful adults. In treating them as fragile-emotionally, socially, and physically-society actually makes them so.

To combat this problem, we have established a new nonpartisan nonprofit, the Let Grow Foundation. Our goal is to restore resilience by overthrowing the culture of overprotection. We teamed up with Gray, the professor whose research we highlighted above, and FIRE's Shuchman, a New York investment fund manager who is now our chairman.

We are building an organization that seeks to change the social norms, policies, and laws that pressure and intimidate parents, schools, and towns into coddling their kids. We will research the effects of excessive caution, study the link between independence and success, and launch projects to give kids back some free time and free play. Most of all, the Let Grow Foundation will reject the assumption of fragility and promote intellectual, physical, and emotional resilience.

Children know that their parents had more freedom to roam than they do, and more unscheduled time to read or tinker or explore. They also realize that older generations were trusted to roll with some punches, at school and beyond. We hope kids today will start demanding that same independence and respect for themselves. It's their freedom that has been chiseled away, after all.

We want them to insist on their right to engage not just with the physical world, but also with the world of ideas. We want them to hear, read, and voice opinions that go against the grain. We want them to be insulted by the assumption that they and their classmates are so easily hurt that arguments must stop before they start. To this end, we hope to encourage their skepticism about the programs and policies that are ostensibly there to "protect" them from discomfort.

If this effort is successful, we'll soon see kids outside again. Common setbacks will be considered "resilience moments" rather than traumas. Children will read widely, express themselves freely, and work through disagreements without automatically calling on authority figures to solve their problems for them. The more adults step back, the more we believe kids will step up, growing brave in the face of risk and just plain happy in their independence.

Children today are safer and smarter than this culture gives them credit for. They deserve the freedom we had. The country's future prosperity and freedom depend on it.

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One day last year, a citizen on a prairie path in the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst came upon a teen boy chopping wood. Not a body. Just some already-fallen branches. Nonetheless, the onlooker called the cops. Officers interrogated the boy, who said he was trying to build a fort for himself and his friends.

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Stories & Lesson Plans | Global Oneness Project

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Stories & Lesson Plans | Global Oneness Project

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Forvo: the pronunciation dictionary. All the words in the world pronounced by native speakers

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Forvo: the pronunciation dictionary. All the words in the world pronounced by native speakers

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Bookshare | An Accessible Online Library for people with print disabilities

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Bookshare | An Accessible Online Library for people with print disabilities

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Bookshare | An Accessible Online Library for people with print disabilities

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Bookshare makes reading easier. People with dyslexia, blindness, cerebral palsy, and other reading barriers can customize their experience to suit their learning style and find virtually any book they need for school, work, or the joy of reading.

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Brightly | Helping Parents Grow Lifelong Readers

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Brightly | Helping Parents Grow Lifelong Readers

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Brightly | Helping Parents Grow Lifelong Readers

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Find great books for kids, reading strategies, age-specific book lists, exclusive author content, and more.

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Bookopolis is a safe online community for young readers to share their favorite books and discover new ones

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Kids Book Reviews and Ratings at DOGO Books

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Kids Book Reviews and Ratings at DOGO Books

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Kids Book Reviews and Ratings at DOGO Books

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Read book reviews written by kids for thousands of kids books. Follow reviewers, track the books you like, rate books, write your own book review, and more!

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Who are you as a reader is a question that shapes our experience together in room 235D.

At first, their answers are typically short. ..

I am a reader because I like to read.

I hate reading.

I only read because I am told to.

As the year progresses so do their thoughts. They start to realize the parts that were there all along and that they are discovering and so gradually their answers change.

I am a reader who only reads a certain type of book.

I read because it takes me away.

I am a picky reader who loves to read but struggles with finding the next great book.

As their identities develop, the responsibility shifts from me to them. They set the goals at the beginning of the year, I make sure they revisit them, but I also ask them, "Now what?" when they say they don't like reading.

I ask them, "Then what?" when they say they cannot find a book.

I ask them, "How can I help?" when they tell me they don't know what to do as readers.

These questions subtly change the power of the room, the control of the learning. they may seem insignificant but they add up.

As the year progresses, our conversations shift. No longer a focus on what I need to do but rather on what they need to do. But this doesn't just happen, I ask them to take responsibility, to figure out their own part so that I can help guide them rather than lead them.

Today, as we settled back after a long weekend break, I asked them to tell a partner who they were as readers. I modeled it and then let them loose.

Their words surrounded us for a few minutes and then they turned their eyes on this reflection.

Only four questions, but again, such a simple reflection of the thinking that needs to happen. The ownership that needs to be taken and honed.

I read their answers and am reminded once again how such a small assignment can help me grow so much.

They need my help still with book shopping.

They want more time to read.

They have grown but are still not sure that reading is for them.

They ask me to speak to them more about their reading.

And they see their own role in what it means to be a reader. As one child writes, "Ms. Ripp doesn't have to do anything to help me. I think that this is something I need to work on myself."

So much growth, all from the little things we can do that go beyond handing a child a book and giving them time to read.

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Who are you as a reader is a question that shapes our experience together in room 235D. At first, their answers are typically short. .. I am a reader because I like to read. I hate reading. I only read because I am told to. As the year progresses so do their thoughts.

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Reviews: Adult Books 4 Teens, May 2012 | School Library Journal

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Reviews: Adult Books 4 Teens, May 2012 | School Library Journal

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CHUNG, Catherine. Forgotten Country. 304p. Riverhead. 2012. Tr $26.95. ISBN 978-1-59448-808-5. LC 2011047577. The Joy Luck Club (Putnam, 1989) and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake (Houghton, 2003), Chung's graceful debut novel portrays immigrant family life in modern times. Tied to the traditions of Korea, Jamie's parents expect the world of her, and more. Her younger sister, Hannah, feels many of the same pressures, but doesn't have the coping mechanism to deal with them. When Hannah packs up and leaves one day, leaving no note, Jamie is expected to find her and bring her back. Chung weaves haunting stories from the family's past, of sisters from each generation who go missing, and of survival during war, with promises for the future in Jamie's schooling and the heartbreak of illness. Jamie's desire to be everything her parents wish her to be while longing for a path of her own will resonate with teens as will Hannah's departure. The Forgotten Country showcases a family whose members struggle to stay together while finding their individual identity. This lyrical tale filled with heartbreak and forgiveness illustrates the bonds that hold a family together.-S ara Campbell,Rowan Public Library, Salisbury, NC
Adult/High School- Like Amy Tan's

DERMONT, Amber. The Starboard Sea. 320p. St. Martin 's. 2012. Tr $24.99. ISBN 978-0-312-64280-8. LC 2011041100. Looking for Alaska (Dutton, 2005), and this more contemplative novel shares a similar central suspense and tension.- Angela Carstensen, Convent of the Sacred Heart, New York City
Adult/High School-On the day he turns 18, Jason Prosper leaves Upper East Side Manhattan and heads north to Bellingham Academy, a last-chance boarding school for kids expelled from better institutions, caught by the "safety net of parents' wealth." That first afternoon he spies what looks like a cormorant wading several yards out to sea, only to realize that it's a girl about to do herself harm. Aidan only laughs when he plunges in to save her, easily walking to shore. Jason is entranced by this strange creature with a troubled past of her own. Their budding relationship helps him begin to heal from the loss of Cal, his best friend, roommate, and sailing partner. One year earlier, when their relationship moved beyond friendship, Jason's betrayal precipitated Cal's suicide, and Jason likens his loss to losing a limb. Now he kicks around with a group of disaffected, immature fellow seniors, Race, Kriffo, and Tazewell. The 1987 stock market crash places the novel in historical context, as does the faculty's cavalier attitude toward student discipline, particularly the ubiquitous hazing. Otherwise, today's young adults will recognize the ever-shifting tensions and alliances among teen boys, the agony of losing a friendship, the shame of disappointing a parent, and the exhilaration of being young and talented. Jason is a champion sailor and his descriptions of sailing are exquisite. After the arrival of a hurricane coincides with a student death, he focuses on solving what he comes to believe was a murder by fellow students. Aidan and Jason's relationship brings to mind Alaska and Miles's relationship in John Green's

MCCLEEN, Grace. The Land of Decoration: A Novel. 320p. Holt. 2012. Tr $25. ISBN 978-0-8050-9494-7. LC 2011038132. Gilead (Farrar, 2004), Jo Walton's Among Others (Tor, 2011), and (strangely) Roald Dahl's Matilda (Viking, 1998), mining those novels' themes of the paradoxical relationship between power and powerlessness; the richly interconnected worlds of faith and imagination; and the tragic delicacy of the relationships between single parents and their children. These are enormous themes for a first-time novelist, but in McCleen's deft hands they dovetail naturally into one another, at the same time that they flow effortlessly from the intricately wrought characters of Judith and John. They are also themes that are at the very heart of what it means to grow up, and though some teens uncomfortable with the overt religiosity of this novel may require a push, they will be greatly rewarded by a work that speaks deeply to the rich ambiguity of young adulthood.- Mark Flowers, John F. Kennedy Library, Vallejo, CA
Adult/High School-While 10-year-old Judith McPherson and her widower father John try fervently to hold to their apocalyptic religious beliefs, they are both mercilessly bullied: John by local tough Doug Lewis for being a scab at the town factory, and Judith by Doug's son Neil. When a pair of freak snow storms and a strict substitute teacher begin to foil Neil's pranks at school, Judith begins to believe that she has caused these miracles and is herself an Instrument of God. But these miracles only push Neil to escalate his violent bullying after school, and soon John and Judith each must face severe crises of faith. McCleen's exquisite debut recalls at various times such disparate works as Marilynne Robinson's

RICE, Anne. The Wolf Gift. 416p. Knopf. 2012. Tr $25.95. ISBN 978-0-307-59511-9. LC 2011043740. San Francisco Observer. On assignment, he travels north to research a famous Mendocino Coast property coming on the market. He is captivated by the house and grounds, and by Marchent Nideck, the striking heiress who shows him her uncle's estate. That night he is the only survivor of a horrendous attack on the house, during which he is bitten in the face by a savage beast. Nothing can explain his incredible recovery; within two weeks he leaves the hospital unscarred and stronger than ever. Even before his release, Reuben is tortured by the cries of those in harm's way. Eventually, his need to save them brings about the change and he leaps across city rooftops to rescue a woman from her rapist, an old woman from a younger woman's torture, and a gay teenage boy from bullies, brutally killing their attackers in the process. When he learns that Marchent has left him the Nideck estate, he escapes there, where the surrounding redwood forest shields him from what has become a national obsession with the "Man Wolf." What begins as a thriller morphs into an origin story that reveals the mythology of the creature Reuben has become. Wrapped up in the action are musings on human nature, justice, good and evil, the existence of God, and the importance of family. In pondering his own monstrous actions and reconciling his human and wolf natures, Reuben moves beyond his family's expectations and comes into his own.- Angela Carstensen, Convent of the Sacred Heart, NY
Adult/High School-Reuben, dubbed "Sunshine Boy" by his celebrated and wealthy parents, is just out of college and working as a reporter with the
Nonfiction Graphic Novels
ALLISON, Rachel Hope. I'm Not a Plastic Bag. 88p. Archaia. 2012. Tr $19.95. ISBN 978-1-936393-54-1. LC number unavailable. - Francisca Goldsmith, Infopeople Project, CA
Adult/High School-Allison's beautifully rendered art shows what life-yes, life-is like on the world's largest "garbage patch," a floating mass of plastic and other detritus that has been caught by the Pacific's swirling currents to form a kind of gelatinous island. Using words only as they might appear on pieces of debris, including the I "love" New York logo on a shopping bag, the manuscript-style "please" that would have decorated an old tin sign, and the like, the story moves accessibly through time, giving readers entry at the point where a child's umbrella, an empty shopping bag, a tire, a bagged goldfish in transit from shop to home, and a businessman's binder are all caught in the weather to be cast adrift. Readers see them arrive on the "great garbage patch" and then the well-plotted story opens out as readers see how tides and wind reconfigure the mass and each of the pieces in it, how gulls and squid use and even view it, and other aspects of its makeup, from a condom to a bit of rope. But best of all, in Allison's imaginative tale, is that the garbage patch itself is expressive, its flotsam forming gesturing arms, tires positioning themselves as eyes, and those worded signs so often appearing in its innocently smiling "mouth": "Welcome," "Playground," and the binder's front tag, "Hello, my name is..." Science and fantasy are perfectly entwined in this narrative, offering readers a way to imagine feelings and values beyond their own.

GAULD, Tom. Goliath. 96p. Drawn & Quarterly. 2012. Tr $19.95. ISBN 978-1-77046-065-2. LC number unavailable. The New Yorker and The Guardian, brings his simple but evocative style to a retelling of the Biblical story from the giant's point of view. In this version, the Philistine army is a bureaucratic organization and Goliath is a content administrator, a gentle soul with no love of bear fighting or boasting. In simple line cartoons, burnished with an era-appropriate bronze, readers accompany him to a mystifying meeting with the king and watch his befuddlement as he is provided with a nine-year-old shield bearer and a large but rather haphazardly built coat of armor. Then there is the 40 days' wait for an answer from the enemy to the challenge Goliath reads aloud daily. And, in the end, poor Goliath-as readers' sympathies have come to lie with him not as opposed to the Israelites but as opposed to his fellow Philistines-is killed. Gauld's panels offer wonderful portraits of Goliath's final six weeks or so of life, including the unchanging rock piles in the desert and the brightness of the moon against a black sky. Quick to read but easy to consider and reconsider, the humor and pathos in Goliath's worldview requires longer thought than reading time. An eminently discussable graphic novel.- Francisca Goldsmith, Infopeople Project, CA
Adult/High School-Gauld, who frequently draws for

HERMANN. Afrika. tr. from French by Jemiah Jefferson. 56p. Dark Horse. 2012. Tr $15.99. ISBN 978-1-59582-844-6. LC number unavailable. - Francisca Goldsmith, Infopeople Project, CA
Adult/High School-Hermann's short story provides a front row seat on the nexus between contemporary international politics in Africa, the volatile conditions of a wildlife preserve, and interpersonal relationships. In large, lushly painted panels, the jungle, the natural interactions of large mammals, and the fear-mongering behaviors of political leaders and of seemingly apolitical men all become real. Readers' viewpoint is largely focused on a white preserve keeper, Ferrer, a man willing to bend to few social graces both in his professional and private life. When a female reporter descends on his home and requests a "tour" of his purview, his eventual permission is grudging. Meanwhile, political leadership backing the "trade" profits that can be realized by poachers set out to rid themselves of Ferrer's interference. While the ranger and the journalist escape into the jungle and toward another country, his wife is sweet talked into giving up hope of his return and leaves the country to pursue the material world available to her new lover in Europe. Violence, sexual expression, and a simplification of political ends are all appropriate here, and Hermann depicts them with art but not by neglecting the ugly plot and visual details that make his slice-of-life story so compelling.

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CHUNG, Catherine. Forgotten Country. 304p. Riverhead. 2012. Tr $26.95. ISBN 978-1-59448-808-5. LC 2011047577. The Joy Luck Club (Putnam, 1989) and Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake (Houghton, 2003), Chung's graceful debut novel portrays immigrant family life in modern times. Tied to the traditions of Korea, Jamie's parents expect the world of her, and more.

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Below are the winners of the prestigious Newbery Award. Several books receive this award each year, so this list is several pages long. Be sure to click the "more" arrow at the bottom of the page to see more.

We LOVE getting likes! It makes us want to keep making these lists! :) Please press LIKE if you found this information helpful. And help us spread the word by sharing the page.

Or Pin this page to your Pinterest board to share it and remember it for later. :)

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Below are the winners of the prestigious Newbery Award. Several books receive this award each year, so this list is several pages long. Be sure to click the "more" arrow at the bottom of the page to see more. We LOVE getting likes! It makes us want to keep making these lists!

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Past and Present NBGS Books (Notable Books for a Global Society) - CL/R SIG (Children's Literature and Reading - Special Interest Group)

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Past and Present NBGS Books (Notable Books for a Global Society) - CL/R SIG (Children's Literature and Reading - Special Interest Group)

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children's literature and reading special interest group

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Past and Present NBGS Books (Notable Books for a Global Society) - CL/R SIG (Children's Literature and Reading - Special Interest Group)

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The Children's Literature and Reading Special Interest Group (IRA CL/R SIG) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the International Reading Association (IRA). Membership is open to all who have an abiding interest in the development of literacy and in promoting high quality literature, Pre-K through 12 teachers, librarians, teacher candidates, administrators, university professors, authors and publishers.

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This presentation includes information about the structures, rituals and routines of reading workshop using information and ideas from both The Book Whisperer ...

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Open a World of Possible | #sharepossible | Scholastic

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Open a World of Possible | #sharepossible | Scholastic

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Open a World of Possible - helping children discover the pleasure and power of reading. Share ways to build reading into every day using #sharepossible!

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Nerdy Book Club | A community of readers

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Nerdy Book Club | A community of readers

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NWP leaders study and share effective practices that enhance youth writing and learning, work collaboratively with other educators, design resources, and…

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BECAUSE LITERARY READING BRINGS WISDOM TO THE INFORMATION AGE
"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." - Mark Twain

To honor African American History Month we are proud to provide two recently updated Google Lit Trips designed to increase awareness of the Civil Rights Movement.

Our 35 Most Popular Google Lit Trips have been upgraded to
extensively enhanced new Premier Edition Google Lit Trips

Featuring more extensive multi-media, automatic updates, and ability to view on all platforms
Our most recent additions appear in bold print below

Grades K-5 Titles: A Family Apart, A Small Dog's Big Life, A Walk in London, Abuela, Big Anthony: His Story, Bud, Not Buddy, Lost!, Make Way for Ducklings, The Armadillo from Amarillo,Paddle-to-the-Sea, Riding Freedom, Sam Patch Daredevil Jumper, Seaman: The Dog who Explored with Lewis and Clark, The Lamp the Ice and the Boat Named Fish, Number the Stars, White Jade Tiger

Grades 6-8 Titles: Hana's Suitcase, Marching for Freedom, Walk Two Moons, A Long Walk to Water, Esperanza Rising, Fever 1793, My Brother Sam is Dead,The Slave Dancer, The Watsons go to Birmingham - 1963

Grades 9-12 Titles: Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, Flesh & Blood So Cheap, Frankenstein, Night, The Aeneid, The Catcher in the Rye,The Grapes of Wrath, The Kite Runner, The Odyssey - A Mediterranean-Wide Interpretation
VIEWING THE NEW GOOGLE LIT TRIP PREMIERE COLLECTION

What is a Google Lit Trip?
Lit Trips are downloadable files that mark the journeys of characters from famous literature on the surface of Google Earth. Along the way, placemarks with pop-up windows contain "just in time" resources including relevant media, thought-provoking discussion starters, and links to supplementary information about "real world" references in that portion of the story. Our focus is on creating engaging and relevant literary experiences for students.
Watch the video on the left for a simulation of the experience.

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BECAUSE LITERARY READING BRINGS WISDOM TO THE INFORMATION AGE "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." - Mark Twain To honor African American History Month we are proud to provide two recently updated Google Lit Trips designed to increase awareness of the Civil Rights Movement.

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ClassHook | Educational Clips from Popular Media

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ClassHook | Educational Clips from Popular Media

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"ClassHook is the creative piece I've been looking for YEARS!! Anytime I see a clip in a movie that I could use, I try and make a mental note but usually have a hard time accessing the movie. Because I teach anatomy, there are SOOOO many possibilities. This is a fantastic site."

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ClassHook | Educational TV and Movie Clips

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Make learning relevant with educational scenes from TV shows & movies.

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The Stinky Cow Principle: How to Tell Stories that Make People Trust You

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The Stinky Cow Principle: How to Tell Stories that Make People Trust You

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Details-even the gory ones-make you more likable.

Last week I led a strategic storytelling workshop in which a millennial digital marketer named Max related the tale of how he came to his profession:

I was living in Los Angeles, trying to make it in the film business. But it wasn't working out. So I moved back in with my parents. Then I found an internship in digital marketing, and I'm doing that today.

Aside from lacking a certain oomph, the story, as Max told it, made him come off as a bit of a quitter. I had the feeling Max's story didn't reflect who he truly was, so I asked him:

Can you describe the moment you knew you were not cut out for the film business?

That's when Max told the class about a van, the Discovery Channel, and a smelly cow-endearing himself forever to everyone who was there, and serving up a priceless opportunity to demonstrate how well-crafted stories help you build trust with people you've never met.

Max's "Stinky Cow" revealed

Executive leaders like Max attend my workshops to learn how to structure pitch narratives for their companies, products, and ideas. To familiarize them with narrative structure, I first ask them to share a story about themselves.

Specifically, I ask them to recall a time in their lives when something happened that forced them to take action. Screenwriters (and readers of my posts) will recognize this as what Hollywood screenplay guru Robert McKee calls the "inciting incident":

In the movies, inciting incidents kick off the action. Nemo gets lost. Vader kidnaps Leia. Harry meets Sally.

Max's inciting incident, in his story's initial telling, was simply that his Hollywood film career was "not working out." But when I asked if he could recall the moment he decided to throw in the towel, this is what he said:

"I'll tell you exactly when it was. I was working on a shoot for the Discovery Channel, and part of the set was this carcass of a dead cow. It smelled to high heaven. I was a lowly production assistant, so after the filming was over, it was my job to ride in a van with this stinky, rotting mass of flesh. Wasps filled the air, and I could barely breathe. That's when I said to myself, 'Maybe this is not going to work out.'"

Nearly all of Max's classmates were smiling now, so I asked them to share how their impressions of Max (whom they had never met before) changed after hearing the new details of his story. They said things like:

"I feel like I can trust him more."

"He's someone who's not afraid to change course when things truly aren't working, not someone who just gave up."

"I can't explain it, but he seems more creative now."

I sometimes say that stories are a "write API" for humans - that is, a channel for inserting beliefs into other people's brains. After all, if Max had simply stood up and said, "I'm trustworthy, I can change course, and I'm creative," I doubt that anyone would have come away believing those things about him.

Of course, in order for your story's "API call" to work its magic on an audience, you have to structure it properly. Can we generalize about why the extra details made Max's story more effective?

The Stinky Cow Principle: Tell inciting incidents as scenes, not summaries

When you're telling a story-whether writing a novel or relating recent events to a colleague-you're constantly making a choice between the two narrative modes that writers call scene and summary.

"I took the cold keys out of my pocket, pressed the automatic unlock button, and heard the doors snap open" is scene.

"I drove to work" is summary.

The big change that I got Max to make was telling his inciting incident as a scene ("...this stinky, rotting mass of flesh...I could barely breathe...") rather than as summary ("not working out"). The details, sights and smells put us right there with him in the van, forcing us to imagine ourselves facing the same decision he did.

In tribute to Max, I've christened this the Stinky Cow Principle: Stories connect better with audiences when you convey your inciting incident as a scene-especially when it involves suffering, failure, disillusionment or struggle on your part.

"I decided to start a high-quality printing shop," a woman named Melinda said during another recent workshop I led. When I probed for scenic details, Melinda described her own Stinky Cow, which happened to be her boss:

I was working at a printing shop where the owner never cared about doing quality work. One day this man comes in to complain about a shoddy job we had done, but my boss just argued with him and told him to take a hike. That had happened dozens of times, but this time was the straw that broke the camel's back-the one where I realized that if I wanted to deliver quality work that made people happy, I would have to quit and open my own shop.

I hope you'll agree that the Stinky Cow version of Melinda's story is far more effective at conveying her values - not to mention at positioning her as a compelling option for someone in need of high-quality printing.

Apply the Stinky Cow Principle to all of your stories-business and personal

Because my workshops are ultimately geared to business storytelling, the stories that participants tell often revolve around their careers.

But the Stinky Cow Principle makes any business or personal story more effective at connecting with people. For example, the next time you tell a customer success story, instead of just saying, "they had X problem," paint a full picture - in all its Stinky Cow glory - of how your customers were suffering before you helped them make a change.

The Stinky Cow Principle also applies to happy inciting incidents: The next time someone asks why you first started dating your significant other, instead of summarizing the reasons, describe the scene.

As Max learned, everyone you talk to will feel more connected to the people in your stories - and to you.

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The Stinky Cow Principle: How to Tell Stories that Make People Trust You

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Last week I led a strategic storytelling workshop in which a millennial digital marketer named Max related the tale of how he came to his profession: I was living in Los Angeles, trying to make it in the film business. But it wasn't working out. So I moved back in with my parents.

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Children’s Choices | Children's Book Council

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Children’s Choices | Children's Book Council

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Children's Choices | Children's Book Council

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Since 1974, Children's Choices has been a trusted source of book recommendations used by teachers, booksellers, librarians, parents, caregivers - everyone who wishes to encourage young people to read for pleasure - and children themselves.

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archein, which means "original or old"; and typos, which means "pattern, model or type". The combined meaning is an "original pattern" of which all other similar persons, objects, or concepts are derived, copied, modeled, or emulated. The psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung, used the concept of archetype in his theory of the human psyche.

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Student-Made E-Books: A Beautiful Way to Demonstrate Learning | Cult of Pedagogy

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Student-Made E-Books: A Beautiful Way to Demonstrate Learning | Cult of Pedagogy

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
You've reached the end of a unit or year, and you want students to demonstrate their learning in a way that requires them to synthesize information, apply it in new ways, and reflect on how they have grown. To achieve any of these goals, an end-of-unit exam doesn't quite cut it. You could have students do presentations...that's always an option. But here's one more: Have students create their own PDF e-books, packaging up some aspect of their learning into a finished digital product they can enjoy and share for years.

What Kind of E-Book Are We Talking About?

When you hear the term "e-book," you might be thinking about the kind of thing you can read on a Kindle or Nook, and yes, those are e-books. But a broader definition includes PDF files, which don't require any kind of special device to read. They also don't require any high-tech software to create; I'll show you how that works in a minute.

To get these templates, see the link at the end of this post.

Because this kind of e-book is ridiculously easy to create, having students make them is an excellent option for all kinds of final projects. And because lots of businesses now use e-books like these in their own work, assigning them to students gives them an extra skill they can take into their adult lives.

The Power of Visual Packaging

For some students, having an opportunity to put their words together with images and arrange it all into one tidy package creates a different kind of work ethic than you'd find if you just assigned a paper. Because the finished looks and feels a lot more like a "real" product of some kind, and has the potential to be a visually appealing one at that, you may find that students put a bit more effort into it.

Paintings in these images were created by Gwenn Seemel. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.

So Many Possibilities

Once your students have learned how to create e-books (and there's a video below that shows them how), you can use this medium to have them create a massive array of projects. E-books could be assigned to a whole class or as a way to offer additional challenge to advanced students. Here's just a beginning list of ideas for student-created e-books:

Mini-Textbooks that teach a single concept or group of ideas from your course material.

Book Reports or analyses that take the reader through the most significant moments of a book, compare several books to one another, introduce a selection of works from one author, or look at a central theme (e.g., "Images of Fatherhood") as it is depicted in a collection of books.

Portfolios of a student's art, photography, writing, or poetry.

To get these templates, see the link at the end of this post.

Year-in-Review Books that explore concepts from the school year like lessons learned, best moments, special people, turning points, or important challenges throughout the year.

Children's Books that explore a concept learned in class or simply tell a good story.

Guidebooks offering advice and instructions for next year's students.

How-To Books that teach the reader something about which a student has some level of expertise (think informational writing!)

Collections where students curate their favorite books, movies, quotes, video games, apps, memories, or even photos of meaningful places, objects, or people.

Reflective Journals students keep and build throughout the year to document their growth or thinking on a particular topic.

Memoir-Style Books that document a student's journey through a Genius Hour or 20% Time project.

Club or Activity Books that chronicle the accomplishments of members of a sports team or club.

Professional Portfolios that could eventually be used as part of a job search. Teachers could also build their own professional portfolios in this same way.

How to Make an E-Book

If you have PowerPoint, which many, many people do, you already have all the tools you need to create an e-book. This video shows you how it works:

Get the Templates

The designs used to create the e-books in this post are available as individual PowerPoint templates or all together in a bundle. Each template also includes a link to the same template set up in Google Slides!! Click the image below to learn more:

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Student-Made E-Books: A Beautiful Way to Demonstrate Learning

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Need a fresh idea for the end of a unit? Instead of writing a paper or doing presentations, have students create PDF e-books they can enjoy and share for years.

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This Surprising Reading Level Analysis Will Change the Way You Write — The Content Strategist

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This Surprising Reading Level Analysis Will Change the Way You Write — The Content Strategist

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The other day, a friend and I were talking about becoming better writers by doing a "reading level analysis" of our work. Scholars have formulas for automatically estimating reading level using syllables, sentence length, and other proxies for vocabulary and concept complexity. After the chat, just for fun, I ran a chapter from my book through the most common one, the Flesch-Kincaid index:

I learned, to my dismay, that I've been writing for eighth graders.

Curiosity piqued, I decided to see how I compared to the first famous writer that popped in my head: Ernest Hemingway. So I ran a reading level calculation on The Old Man and the Sea. That's when I was really surprised:

Apparently, my man Ernest, the Pulitzer- and Nobel Prize-winning novelist whose work shaped 20th-century fiction, wrote for elementary schoolers.

Upon learning this, I did the only thing a self-respecting geek could do at that point: I ran every bestselling writer I had on my Kindle through the machine. I also ran some popular crime and romance novelists, a few political books I despise, and a couple of business writers who bought their way onto bestseller lists (i.e., their work wasn't notable enough to sell on its own). I grabbed each author's most well-known work, pasting in enough text to gain a statistical confidence.

For reference, I threw in a few other things: an academic paper about reading level indices, another paper about chess expertise, a Seth Godin blog post, the text of the Affordable Care Act, and the children's book Goodnight Moon.

Here's what came out:
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What this shows is the approximate number of years of education one needs to be able to comprehend the text. Flesch-Kincaid is the most popular calculator, but some scholars argue that other indices, like Gunning-Fog and SMOG are better. For the above chart, I ran everything through the five most popular calculators, and took an average.

Another highly regarded measure is the Flesch-Kincaid "Reading Ease" score. It estimates how fast a piece of writing is to get through.

Here's a look at the reading ease of those same books:
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Reading ease roughly correlates to reading index, but you'll see that some of the works shift when calculated this way. For example, Hemingway moved up a rank.

Since fiction and nonfiction are not apples to apples, here's a breakdown by category:
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Note how none of these guys wrote above a ninth-grade level.

Nonfiction is a little different, but you'll notice that these bestselling books tend to hover at or below ninth grade as well, with a few exceptions that are known for their difficulty (e.g., Good to Great is exceptional material but only really accessible to college students) or that were just crappy books (the authors who bought their own books in order to become bestsellers):
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The initial surprise from my little data experiment is that writers whose work we regard highly tend to be produce work at a lower reading level than we'd intuit.Cormac McCarthy, Jane Austen, and Hunter S. Thompson join J.K. Rowling in the readability realm of pre-teens. The content of McCarthy's and Thompson's novels isn't meant for children, but these writers' comprehensibility is rather universal.

I wasn't shocked that academic documents rank difficult. However, I was surprised that the ones I studied were only 12th- and 13th-grade reading level.

Most of us don't read at that level, it turns out. (Or if we can, we hate to.) Here's what research says about how many Americans even can read well:

In other words:

I did an informal poll of some friends while writing this post. Every one of them told me that they assumed that higher reading level meant better writing. We're trained to think that in school. But data shows the opposite: lower reading level often correlates with commercial popularity and in many cases, how good we think a writer is.

I recently wrote a post about three important ingredients for "shareable" writing: novelty, identity, and fluency. "Novelty," of course, has to do with surprising or new ideas and stories. "Identity" means the reader can relate to the subject or characters. And "fluency" means the reader can get through the writing quickly, without having to think so hard about the words themselves.

My reading level data verifies that Hemingway et al. write with more fluency than others. That's what makes them exceptional. And it gives them a better chance to reach larger audiences.

In eras past, sophisticated writers aimed to entertain and persuade a sophisticated audience with big vocabulary and complex ideas. (Case in point: Ben Franklin's autobiography-one of my favorites-is written at a 13th-grade level.) In recent years, it seems an increasing number of sophisticated thinkers have intended to reach larger audiences through literary simplification (e.g., Malcolm Gladwell, one of the smartest people I've met, who certainly could write at a 13th-grade level but intentionally writes at an eighth-grade level in order to bring complex ideas to an audience that wouldn't hang at a higher level). Yet school teaches us that higher reading level equals credibility, which is why so many of us try to sound more sophisticated when we speak and write. In fact, that's what most business and academic writers still do: They get verbose and pack their work with buzzwords and heavy diction in order to appear trustworthy.

Turns out, that's counter-productive.

Let's look at Vox's Ezra Klein, the former Washington Post and American Prospect writer who made his mark in the journalism world through the opposite practice. Klein's job, like any good reporter, is to take sophisticated information and explain it in a way that a larger audience can understand. He does it exceptionally well. Here's what that looks like in a couple of his recent posts:

Now, at a reading ease of 57 out of 100, Klein's articles are not Goodnight Moon. But he significantly increases the percentage of people who can actually comprehend some very complex material. And that's made his career.

I posit that this idea has a lot to do with the unlikely popularity of blogs in general. When blogging became a thing 15 or so years ago, journalists frequently scoffed. How can amateurs possibly win an audience's trust like we pros can? Movies and TV shows made a trope of the enterprising young blogger who gets no respect from the newsroom.Yet blogs-with their conversational prose-took off.

For one last comparison, I grabbed a top story from a bunch of news sites around the web. It's not a wholly scientific comparison (entertainment stories will contain different vocabulary than policy or business stories), but I tried to take samples that represented each publication's standard work. Here's what I found:
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I was curious why GQ was more complex than The Los Angeles Times, and Cosmopolitan less complex than GQ. Turns out that esoteric vocabulary that you tend to find in fitness and health articles (like the one I sampled for GQ) clocks in at a higher reading level, even if the rest of the prose is simple.

You may not be surprised to learn that the third-grade-level BuzzFeed post was the most-shared article on the list. The top BuzzFeed News article, on the other hand, dealt with weightier subject matter and was more advanced reading (and shared much less). The Economist, of course, publishes the most complex writing. Strange, however, that The Huffington Post's big news stories tend to be complex as well. This is a product of subject matter to a degree, but I suspect it also has to do with having more seasoned writers on staff and an aim over recent years to appear more sophisticated. They're not writing at a level that a well-educated person can't jibe, but the fact that 50 percent of the country isn't going to comprehend the top general interest story on HuffPo is pretty interesting.
What does this all mean?
We shouldn't discount simple writing, but instead embrace it. People freak out that teenagers are reading fifth-grade-level books, but it turns out that's not a bad sign. Of course, we want to teach teens to comprehend higher reading levels than Harry Potter, but just because we can doesn't mean we should be forced to waste time slogging through Ph.D.-level papers when the Ph.D.s could write more fluently.

The other lesson from this study is that we should aim to reduce complexity in our writing as much as possible. We won't lose credibility by doing so. Our readers will comprehend and retain our ideas more reliably. And we'll have a higher likelihood of reaching more people.

Of course, nobody's going to be excited enough to read or talk about something just because it's easy. To make an impact, writing has to be interesting, too.

It might not be reasonable (or desirable) to write business texts at a fourth-grade reading level. Gladwell and Hemingway are different beasts.But within a given genre, the best writers tend to write the simplest.

And in case you're wondering, this blog post got an 8.6.
Joe Tabacca

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This Surprising Reading Level Analysis Will Change the Way You Write - The Content Strategist

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The other day, a friend and I were talking about becoming better writers by doing a "reading level analysis" of our work. Scholars have formulas for automatically estimating reading level using syllables, sentence length, and other proxies for vocabulary and concept complexity.

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TeachingBooks.net | Author & Book Resources to Support Reading Education

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TeachingBooks.net | Author & Book Resources to Support Reading Education

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TeachingBooks | Author & Book Resources to Support Reading Education

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TeachingBooks strives to enrich everyone's experience reading children's and young adult books with our original and curated literary resources.

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The Crossover Book Review and Ratings by Kids - Kwame Alexander

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The Crossover Book Review and Ratings by Kids - Kwame Alexander

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The Crossover has 60 reviews and 23 ratings. Reviewer Basketball Wiz wrote: The Crossover is about two twin brothers, JB [ Jordan Bell] Filthy McNasty [Josh Bell]. In the book they go through many problems such as when JB starts to not hang out with Filthy and only hangs out with his girlfriend.

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Searchable Databases : Online resources for high quality books that you can search online: The Database of Award-Winning Children's Literature, the Picture Book Database at Miami University, the Canadian Children's Literature Database, the International Children's Digital Library (database of books in languages from around the world), and the Barahona Center for the Study of Books in Spanish (at California State University, San Marcos).