Take Your Students Through the Looking-Glass

With the recent widely-anticipated box office release of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, we think it’s the perfect time to introduce students to Lewis Carroll’s classics. Burton’s movie is a continuation of Carroll’s tale that takes place when Alice is transitioning into adulthood. Read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass—both available unabridged from Recorded Books—to get the background story on the real Alice (not just the one in the Disney® movie!).

Use the excerpts and lesson plans below to introduce students to this classic text while covering important strategies and standards. For use with Grade 6 and up. To download files, right click and ‘save as.’

AUDIO: Jabberwocky, narrated by John McDonough
Listen online (To download, right click above link and ‘save as.’)

LESSON PLANS:
• Jabberwocky: Students will learn about poetry and portmanteau.
• The Walrus and the Carpenter: Students will analyze a poem using background information.

Have you discussed Alice in Wonderland with your students? Students who enjoy Carroll’s work may also enjoy Victorian authors like Oscar Wilde. Share what you’re doing in your own classroom!

You can also follow the Lewis Carrol Society of America on twitter: @AliceAmerica.

Happy Holidays!

We hope you’re all enjoying a much-deserved break from the classroom for a while. Here are a few links to check out while you’re lounging on the couch drinking hot cocoa (or frantically working on lesson plans for January!).

• Help Santa stuff teachers’ stockings with audiobooks and get a free download in our holiday game from last year.
• Check out our lesson plans and audio excerpts for Strider, written by teacher Laurie Stone. (This links to Part 2 – click the link in that post to get to Part 1 of the lessons).
• Free lesson plans and audio for Bridge to Terabithia. Part 1 and Part 2
• A coworker tipped me off to this one. A Christmas Carol, as shortened by Dickens himself for an 1868 reading. (We also offer the complete, unabridged audio narrated by audiobook legend Frank Muller.)
• Check out the Alan Sitomer BookJam! Join in the discussion with Alan himself at the BookJam Ning, check out the main website at http://www.thebookjam.com, or take the BookJam Tour.
• Check out the extensive resources section at the BookJam website. It might just get the wheels turning for some exciting January plans!
• Are you a fan of Janet Allen? Check out the Plugged-in blog for Dr. Janet Allen’s Plugged-in to Reading.
• Join other educators at the Plugged-in Educators’ Ning and get the latest info on the Plugged-in Workshop—dates recently announced!
• Check out some public domain audiobooks at Librivox. These are audio recordings done by amateur volunteers of public domain texts. Lots of cool archaic stuff to be had, plus all the public domain classics.
• Follow us on twitter! Recorded Books K-12, Plugged-in, and The BookJam are all on twitter. Follow, say hello, and I promise to return the favor. You’ll get advance notice of any freebies we offer or contests we have, plus audiobook and education news and an inside track to RB!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We here at Recorded Books are thankful for all of our wonderful customers, and to say thanks we’re offering a free audio excerpt from The Adventurous Life of Myles Standish and accompanying lesson plans. Click here for information on how to download the audio and lesson plans.

Two other excellent suggestions for Thanksgiving reading are The Thanksgiving Beast Feast by Karen Gray Ruelle or Molly’s Pilgrim by Barbara Cohen.

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 full Teacher’s Guides here for free (you must first create an RB online username)—your choice of over 50 titles! Or download a Teacher’s Guide for one of these pre-selected titles:

• Al Capone Does My Shirts Teacher’s Guide
• No More Dead Dogs Teacher’s Guide
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower Teacher’s GUide

If you use our guides, tell us how you use them and what you like about them. If you don’t or you see ways we could improve the guides, share that, too!

TCEA Free Download Offer

Hello, visitors from TCEA! As promised on your freebies from the booth, here are free lesson plans and audio excerpts from Waiting for Normal by Leslie Connor and Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr. Check back next week for a fun audio excerpt and activity to use on Valentine’s Day. (Right click on links below to download files, or click on audio links to listen online.)

Waiting for Normal excerpt – the 2009 Schneider Family Award winner!
Character Sketch Chart
Bonus Worksheet – Making Decisions
“This book persuades that good people and delightful possibilities are all around, even in the most unpromising circumstances.”—KLIATT

Ink Exchange excerpt
Prediction Worksheet
“Another highly addictive read … Compulsive enough to give the Twilight series a run for its money, and dizzyingly more sinister.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

If you’re at TCEA now, be sure to stop by the Recorded Books booth (#2617) and find out more info on the Book Mob – or follow us on twitter to be at the Book Mob when it happens! We’ll post more here after the first Mob!

Winter Break Inspiration

Need inspiration to start off the new semester the right way? Try our Free Audio & Lesson Plans category for some great freebies and samples, including both audio and downloadable worksheets. Look for some more free stuff coming your way after the new year, including some material that will be perfect for election-related exercises.

And to anyone is joining us after reading the Listen Up! column in Library Media Connection‘s magazine, “hello!” We hope you stick around and let us know what you think.

Excerpts with Worksheets

Hello visitors from TCEA Magazine! As promised, here are links to audio samples and worksheets for two recently featured titles. We’ll highlight these again during the TCEA conference in February. And to all you non TCEA-ers, also enjoy the downloads. FYI, you can get these and more freebies via email by signing up for our mailing list.

Ink Exchange by Melissa Marr
• Includes a prediction worksheet!
“Another highly addictive read … Compulsive enough to give the Twilight series a run for its money, and dizzyingly more sinister.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

Waiting for Normal by Leslie Connor
• Includes 2 bonus worksheets!
“This book persuades that good people and delightful possibilities are all around, even in the most unpromising circumstances.”—KLIATT

Free Lesson Plans by Email

We’re emailing free lesson plans and audiobook excerpts in Nov. and Dec. to our mailing list members. Join now to stay updated on the latest Recorded Books offers and news and get other exclusive goodies!

Also, you may have noticed that we now have a twitter feed on the blog. If you have a twitter account, follow @recordedbooks! Let us know if you have any problems, questions, suggestions, or comments. I’m usually on 7:30-3:30 Eastern time. (I, by the way, am Jennah Watters—editor, product development person, and web tech/blog gal for Recorded Books K-12. Say hello!)

Halloween Activities and Audio

Looking for some reading to get your students into the Halloween spirit? Here’s free audio and activities from RB! Even if your school doesn’t celebrate Halloween, these books will be winners in your classroom. Enjoy audiobook excerpts from these fun and spooky titles. Play the audio excerpt (listen online or right click to download) and have students fill out the free Activity Worksheet discussing the mood and setting of what they hear.

Activity Worksheet – Students will explore how mood is set with words, sounds, sights, and actions.

Elementary School
Dracula vs. Grampa
at the Monster Truck Spectacular by Kirk Scroggs | audio excerpt
*An AudioFile Earphones Award-winning recording!
Text available from Recorded Books. “Wiley and Grampa triumph over the supernatural forces invading their hometown. In the first book, they meet Colonel Dracula and his Mudsucker–a blood-guzzling vampire truck … a welcome high-interest choice for younger or reluctant readers.”—School Library Journal

Middle School
The Story of Ichabod Crane by Washington Irving | audio excerpt
Share with students the original story of Ichabod Crane and the headless horseman. This audio is excerpted from Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle and the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Text is available at Project Gutenberg.

High School
Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley | audio excerpt – chapter 20
This classic Gothic masterpiece really comes to life with the narration of AudioFile Golden Voice George Guidall. Guaranteed to set a spooky mood in any classroom! Text is available at Project Gutenberg.

*Problems downloading or listening to audio from the blog? Try it on your home computer—and ask your school or district IT department to put us on the “safe list”!*

Strider lesson plans for days 6-10

Enjoy this second set of lesson plans for Strider, the sequel to Beverly Cleary’s Newbery Award winner Dear Mr. Henshaw. These lesson plans follow our first set of plans posted on 9/15/08 and lead students through vocabulary, using their storyboard to write a summary, completing a character trait chart, and a final project of creating a character fact file.

Laurie McGrath, Instructional Resource Teacher at Park Hall Elementary and a former 5th grade teacher, wrote these lesson plans for Strider based on the Maryland Voluntary State Curriculum.

*We’ve resumed audio downloads of these Strider excerpts! Enjoy part 1 of the lesson plans as well. Let us know what you think!! * (Right click to download audio)
DOWNLOAD January 12 | January 26 | March 12 | April 29

LESSONS
Strider – Lesson Plans
Strider – Vocabulary Chart
Strider – Character Trait Chart
Strider – Nouns & Verbs

Listen online: Strider – January 12

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Listen online: Strider – January 26

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Listen online: Strider – March 12

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Listen online: Strider – April 29

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For more lesson plans and FREE audio, see our other posts in the FREE AUDIOBOOK LESSON GUIDES category. Let us know what you think!