FREE Audio and Lesson Plans from Mailbox Magazine

We’re excited to be sponsoring the latest edition of The Mailbox e-newsletter. Featured in the newsletter are activities and free audiobook excerpt downloads for three books from Recorded Books-published Dr. Janet Allen’s Plugged-in to Nonfiction Grades 4-5, Horrible Science: Angry Animals, Abraham Lincoln: The Life of America’s Sixteenth President, and On the Halfpipe with…Tony Hawk.
Let [...]

Free Audio for Halloween!

Frankenstein is back, wishing you a Happy Halloween from Recorded Books! In case you missed it, AudioFile Magazine has a free download of several Edgar Allen Poe stories. You must download before October 31, 2009.
You can also check out the free audio downloads and lesson plans we offered last year for a few spooky stories: [...]

Win an Audiobook to Cure Your Back to School Blues

Contest close. Congratulations to winner Nikki Coates! Stay tuned for next month’s contest.It’s September—and that means it’s back to school for students and teachers all over the country! Sure, summer is over, but we’ve got a giveaway to help you beat the blues!
We’re giving away a copy of Newbery Medal Winner Dear Mr. Henshaw [...]

RB Teacher’s Guide Samples

Do you use Recorded Books Teacher’s Guides? They are available for many titles in our catalog at $1.25 each, and come free in Homework Packs and Class Sets where available. Each reproducible Teacher’s Guide features:

Book summary
Author bio
Warm-up questions
Comprehension questions
Creative thinking questions
“Extending the lesson” cross-curricular section
two student assessments

Don’t know what an RB Teacher’s Guide is? Download [...]

August Audiobook Winner

The winner of our August giveaway is…Nancy McKeever!

Though Nancy says she does not have a favorite inventor or invention, she does teach her 5th graders each year about the Industrial Revolution, its inventors, and its effect on us today. Adding Brainstorm! to her Industrial Revolution unit will help connect the time period to the inventions [...]

Scott Westerfeld Offers Book for Free

Best-selling author Scott Westerfeld is offering the first book in his Uglies series, Uglies, for free in PDF form on his blog through the end of the month. Go HERE to download. This is a great opportunity – download the book and keep it on hand to share with students on computers, in printed form, [...]

Contest! Fly Away with Recorded Books

On June 4, 1783, Joseph-Michel Montgolfier and his brother Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier completed the first public demonstration of a hot air balloon in order to claim their invention. Their prototype, which flew for approximately 10 minutes and traveled 1.2 miles at altitudes above 5,000 feet, finally made air travel for humans a possibility, though many were [...]

Enter to win! Or download National Poetry Month freebies today!

In celebration of National Poetry Month, we’re giving away excerpts and accompanying activities for some of our favorite poetry on audio for K-12. Poetry on audio is a great way to introduce students to poetry—they hear proper meter, diction, and pronunciation, allowing them to more easily analyze complex figurative language. If you use this or [...]

What do you think of our freebies?

We frequently offer free lesson plans and accompanying audio excerpts here at the blog. Please let us know what you think of them in our first poll. In our second poll, let us know a little about yourself and how you use audio in the classroom. It’ll be a great help and let us know [...]

More SLMS Booktalk Excerpts

This excerpt from The Great Gatsby would be great to use as a booktalk, introducing students to the text. In this excerpt from the first chapter, Nick Carraway reflects on his first impressions and lasting opinions about Gatsby.
Our recording, narrated by Frank Muller, is an AudioFile Earphones Award winner.

(Right click to save the file to [...]