Avoid Mistakes in Blog Assignments

Check out this article on how to avoid the most common mistakes in student blog assignments. Do you blog? Do you have your students blog? What challenges have you run into?

If you’d like to share your blog will all of our readers, leave a comment!
(And take our poll!)

Shakespeare on Playaway

Looking for a fun way to help some students with required Shakespeare reading? Try Shakespeare on Playaway! Our Playaway Shakespeare titles are all full-cast recordings from SmartPass, the award-winning audio company that makes our SmartPass Guides to Shakespeare. We’re sure the Bard himself would approve! Our Shakespeare titles on Playaway include:

~ King Lear • Romeo and Juliet • Henry V • Macbeth • Twelfth Night • Othello • Hamlet ~

We are proud to announce that the SmartPass Guide to Romeo and Juliet was recently voted by British public as the THIRD best audiobook ever! SmartPass Guides to Shakespeare feature the same great full-cast recordings, paired with helpful guided commentary and a CD-ROM of classroom activities. SmartPass Guides are available on CD or MP3-CD. Try our free sample audio, script, and project below from the SmartPass Guide to Shakespeare for Romeo and Juliet. To hear more audio samples and place an order, go to www.recordedbooks.com or www.smartpass.org.

Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
Class Project
Act 1, Scene 1 script excerpt
Act 1, Scene 1 (part 1) audio ©Recorded Books

Act 1, Scene 1 (part 2) audio ©Recorded Books

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

To download, right click on file names above and choose “Save As,” or listen online through November 1. If you’d like your lesson plan to be featured, send us your idea!

You think recorded books are important for…

…everything! Our June survey at recordedbooks.com asked what you think recorded books are most important for. 35% said audio is most important for reluctant readers, 29% said students with IEPs, 21% said below grade readers, and 15% said English language learners.

Audio is useful in all these areas for the same reasons: it gives struggling readers the extra support they need, allowing them access to the same materials as other students, and it gives these readers a much-needed confidence boost when they start seeing improvements.

Now is a great time to start thinking about teaching methods for the next school year. Look for upcoming posts with ideas on how you can reach every student with audio and create a whole classroom of successful readers.

We feature a new survey every month, so head on over to recordedbooks.com to give us your opinion!

FREE Audio & Lesson Plans for Joyful Noise

We are now offering a series of FREE lesson plans on the blog, with downloadable audio available for a limited time. This is a great opportunity to see first-hand what other educators are doing with audiobooks, and to give audiobooks in the classroom a risk-free try yourself! This month’s free audio lesson guide is for 1989 Newbery Medal winner Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman. Lesson Plans are by Hillary Wolfe, librarian at Northview High School in Covina, California.

Hillary says … First, I chose Joyful Noise because I thought it could work for different age levels, and it is short enough to do in one class period. Also, since there are 14 poems, it’s a great vehicle for partner work. These lessons came from ideas I got from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and they are all standards-based.

There are several parts to this lesson, which get more sophisticated. So, younger grades would only need to do parts 1 and 2, whereas upper grades could continue with parts 3 and 4 and use this lesson as a springboard to other poetry and literature lessons. Recorded Books will post each lesson separately.

Listen to or download (for a limited time) the audio clips below and download the corresponding lesson plan (in pdf format). Leave comments for other teachers on your additions or modifications to the lesson plan—we want to share your ideas with educators around the country!

LESSON 1 – Objective: Identify how sound (form) influences content (function).
Joyful Noise – Lesson 1 – Lesson Plans
Joyful Noise – Lesson 1 – Student Worksheets
Joyful Noise audio – Grasshoppers-WaterStriders-Mayflies
Joyful Noise audio – Fireflies-BookLice

Listen online: Grasshoppers, Water Striders, Mayflies

---

Listen online: Fireflies, Book Lice

Stay tuned to the blog for Lesson 2 and more audio from Joyful Noise on May 12, 2008. Lessons 3 and 4, as well as audio for the rest of the poems in Joyful Noise, will be posted later in May.

If you’d like your lesson plan to be featured, send us your idea!

“…with audiobooks, they choose to read.”

In our follow-up visit to White Marsh Elementary, we again got some great feedback from the teachers and students. The kids especially love the Playaway audiobooks.

Check back soon—we’ll be running a series of feature stories Mrs. Cord and Mrs. McGrath shared with us about how audiobooks changed their classroom experience.

The first batch of catalogs, which features more about the audiobook experience with real teachers and students, was mailed out today—so look for yours in the mail soon! (And don’t forget to tell us what you think!)

Teaching Shakespeare with SmartPass

The award-winning SmartPass Audio Guides to Shakespeare are exclusively available from Recorded Books. SmartPass creator Phil Viner recently sat with us to discuss the benefits of using audio to teach Shakespeare, and how SmartPass Guides can help engage students in the study of Shakespeare.

Also, check out SmartPass’s home on the web, where you can listen to audio samples and place an order through the Recorded Books website.

Do you use SmartPass or other audio to teach Shakespeare in your classroom? Tell us how it helped you!