Fun Children's Literacy/Literature Pages

I've come across quite a few interesting Children's Literature web sites, and figured that I would share them with you, and why I found them interesting:

Database of Award Winning Children's Literature (by Lisa Bartle)
http://www.dawcl.com
This web site is truly amazing. It gives the viewer the opportunity to sort through, and search thousands of children's literature texts. Through this site, you can search for texts based upon age, genre, award, time period and many more. This is a vital resource for teachers of any age, and can save so much time and resources when trying to pick out those "Just Right" books for our students.

American Library Association: Caldecott Medal Page
http://www.ala.org/ala/alsc/awardsscholarships/literaryawds/caldecottmedal/caldecotthonors/caldecottmedal.htm
This site lists and describes all the Caldecott Medal recipients from its inception. This site lists the Honor Books as well, and gives a good insight into what the book is about, and how you could effectively use it in the classroom.


Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Page
http://www.carolhurst.com/
What an amazing site. This site showcases, a "featured texts" which pulls from the books in its database and highlights the content and benefits of using the books that are featured. This offers a great search function, and also allows educators to search through lesson plans to help them plan for an effective lesson on the book.

Random House
http://www.randomhouse.com/teachers/
The tabbed feature at the top of the page allows for easy navigation of the page based upon grade level, as well as a master index of awards and teacher resources. Pages such as this allow educators to search through categorized texts in which the work has already been done! Too often time is spent on choosing a book and trying to figure out the level of the book, rather than identifying key themes to the text and such.

BookHive
http://www.bookhive.org/
The BookHive website was really appealing to the eye, with its bright colors and easy to navigate website. This site allowed the user to search a variety of categories, and listed detailed descriptions and pictures of the books that were featured. Much like the other sites, it allowed a filter to search for award winning books as well.


These websites were particularly interesting, and appealing to me because of the content that they offered, and the idea that it can really aid educators in finding a text that will be useful in their classroom. However, in the opinion of this future educator, picking a book is the easy part. The challenging part is having the book come alive in your classroom, and allow every reader (even the most withdrawn) to be actively engaged.

Ways to engage students in reading and learning can be anything from writing their own short story, to storytelling, and having an engaged read aloud. Participation during the read aloud is one of the most vital aspects of this tool. The kids love making sounds (Woo-Hoo of an owl, as I did in the book Owl Moon), or being able to "turn and talk" to their reading partners with a prompt given by the teacher.

As the title of my blog indicates, Reading is FUN, and its the job of the teacher to ensure that every student loves, and is engaged in reading.