Learning Beyond the Classroom adds more summer fun

ReadWriteThink.org offers even more summer learning opportunities for all grade levels

How can you encourage children and teens to read and write all summer long? ReadWriteThink.org has a simple solution. At Learning Beyond the Classroom, available online at www.readwritethink.org/beyondtheclassroom/summer/, caregivers and tutors will find everything they need to help children ages 4–18 make the most of those long summer months—all of it completely free.

The Learning Beyond the Classroom site, which has been available since May 2007, is growing this year. As a brand new feature, the site now offers two podcast series that users can download and listen to. Chatting about Books reviews books for children in the early and middle elementary grades, offering tips and activities for sharing them with children. Text Message offers book talks for children and teens in middle and high school, exploring the themes and messages raised in a variety of new and classic texts. New episodes will be available each month throughout the summer.

The collection of out-of-school literacy activities on the Learning Beyond the Classroom site is expanding as well. All activities are based on Read-WriteThink.org lesson plans and include a materials list, step-by-step instructions, and a clear explanation of the literacy skill that the activity promotes. New activities include the following:

For children ages 4–8, learning new vocabulary on a virtual “field trip” to the moon and getting important information about how to stay safe
For children ages 8–11, creating Bio-Cubes about themselves and sending postcards to friends and family after a summer concert
For children ages 11–14, making magnetic poetry kits and writing fractured fairy tales
For teens, exploring graphic novels, writing a blog, and filming their own public service announcements

The Learning Beyond the Classroom site also has a variety of tip sheets available for the online, interactive ReadWriteThink.org Student Materials that are used in the activities. New tip sheets will be added, including several for the new online Crossword Puzzles tool, one for the Bio-Cube, and another for the Fractured Fairy Tales tool. These printable sheets explain not only how to use the tools but also what literacy skills the tools help develop. They also offer additional suggested activities. Find a complete list of the tool tip sheets online at www.readwritethink.org/beyondtheclassroom/summer/tooltipsheets/index.asp.

Finally, to help you spread the word about Learning Beyond the Classroom, there is a brochure to send home with your students. It highlights what is available on the site and also talks about why summer reading is important to help students maintain the gains they have made over the school year. Visit www.readwritethink.org/beyondtheclassroom/summer/ to find a link to this printable brochure as well as all of the other materials described here.

ReadWriteThink.org is a nonprofit website maintained by the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English with support from the Verizon Foundation, and in association with the Thinkfinity.org program. The site provides free lesson plans, interactive student materials, Web resources, and standards for K–12 classroom teachers of reading and the English language arts.

Learning beyond the classroom adds more summer fun. Reading Today, 25(5), 48.