Summer Dreams
By Patricia Broderick and Allen Raymond

Affordable Success
Looking for a supplementary reading program that really works for all your kids? We found one.

Reading Boosters™ is a comprehensive Language Arts program for K-3 built around poetry and music. What could be better? While focusing on the basics, Reading Boosters provides material to either introduce or reinforce specific skills.

It's a Pick-Up-And-Teach approach. All you need is in the handy hang-up storage bag. Each Reading Booster pack includes a colorful laminated poster (17" x 22"), a CD with vocal and instrumental versions of a song, ready-to-use words to add to your word wall and an eight-page instructional guide. This guide provides a reproducible student-size poster and a balanced literacy theme, a writing activity, center ideas, phonics and word-family focus, games and activity suggestions and a complete scope and sequence chart for the series.

Now the whole series consists of 15 packs, five each in the areas of Balanced Literacy, Working with Words and Comprehension Skills. The approach is multi-sensory and insures covering the learning styles of all the children in your classroom.

Now for the best part: this program was authored by a classroom teacher– now literacy coach. Toni Boyer (subject of our school visit story in the April 2004 issue of Teaching K-8) found the success with her self-developed reading material that had escaped her when she was using various basals. The program worked so well, the school district tried the program in all of their schools.

Toni's program and fame spread. The result? Reading Boosters is now available to all teachers through World Class Learning Materials.

The selling price is $89.95 for each of the five-pack groups, or $264.95 for all 15 packs; a pretty low price for reading success for your kids.

Since there's never too much of a good thing, Toni's Writing Boosters™ will make its appearance this fall.

This product comes with 30 pages of activities and strategies for building writing skills, plus reproducibles, coordinating stationery, a poster, 40-50 story cutouts (includes settings, characters, etc.), CD of a story – plus sound effects, a sheet of pre-scored magnets and a binder to keep it all together.

The writing practice covers content and ideas, organization, sentence fluency, word choices, voice and writing conventions/mechanics. There are two story titles in each binder for grades 1-3.

This series is guaranteed to generate excitement about writing and inspire creativity...the two magic ingredients to get – and keep – kids interested in writing. Writing Boosters is the perfect companion to Reading Boosters. $149.70 plus s/h or at your local school supply dealer. In these days of accountability and testing, it's a pleasure to see material that is fun for you, fun for the kids...and that really works.
World Class Learning Materials
www.wclm.com

Big Book Math™
As appealing as big books are, you'll appreciate this clean, clear approach to math, using 10 big books to cover six math strands: Number, Geometry, Algebra, Measurement, Data Analysis and Number Operations. The approach is to engage children in important concepts including problem-solving and vocabulary thereby building a strong foundation for mathematical development. This series takes the child through counting, one-to-one correspondence, shape recognition, patterning, measurement, sorting and graphing and simple addition and subtraction.

There are the smaller children's versions (9 1/4" x 6 1/2") of the big books available. Call for pricing. Teacher's Guides – one for each big book – accompany the program. These 20-pagers include suggestions for small and large group instruction, individual practice and assessment, and for reteaching and enrichment. Also included are interactive manipulatives (plastic operational numbers, game boards, spinners, etc.). The guides also provide curriculum connection activities. You'll find blackline masters in each guide as well as a math skills scope and sequence. Naturally, the program has been based to support early childhood math standards.

It can be used as a core or supplemental program: it's all up to you. The complete program consists of the 10 big books and 10 Teacher's Guides We're talking around $229.50, plus s/h. Single titles also available.
Abrams & Company
www.abramsandcompany.com

From Your Lips
The inspiration for Mead's Primary Composition Book came directly from teachers. You wanted 1/2" colored ruling conforming to several lettering and writing methods – you got it. You wanted blank space for students to illustrate their work at the top of the page – you got it. You wanted a handy guide that featured both cursive and manuscript styles for easy student reference – you got it.

Mead listened to you and gave you all of this in the Primary Composition Book. The sturdy sewn binding lets the kids keep all of their work in one place. There are 100 sheets (200 pages) in these 9 1/3" x 7 1/2" books. Suggested retail is $1.79 each.

We also received copies of the Coordination Graph Paper which has preprinted axes on regular graph paper allowing students and teachers to concentrate on lessons rather than on graphing formats. A wide-ruled calculation area has also been added. The clean layout cuts down on your grading guesswork. These books are available in one-and four-quadrant formats and appropriate for students as young as fifth grade, The suggested retail on these 11" x 8 1/2" pads of 50 sheets is about $2.29 each.

You'll find these winners at your local school supply dealer or office supply store.
MeadWestvaco Corporation
www.MeadWeb.com

Paragraph Editing Made Easy
We received two samples of Daily Paragraph Editing, one for Grade Two and one for Grade Five from this Evan-Moor. These 176-page books are designed to help students master and retain skill in the mechanics of language and expression through daily practice. The selections for the children's work are the various types of text students encounter in daily reading and writing activities, across the curriculum. There's also a weekly writing activity that allows students to apply the skills they've practiced through the week. There are 36 lessons, for 36 weeks, with a separate lesson for each day. Each week's lessons for Monday through Thursday consist of paragraphs that contain errors in capitalization, punctuation, spelling language usage and more. Editing Key pages are annotated for the teacher.

The various writing areas cover social studies, personal narrative, a science article, realistic fiction, book review, fables, journal entries, instructions and so on. The level of difficulty within these areas increases through the book.

There are many options for use of the material from mini-lessons to individualized practice and customizing instruction to match a language program in use in your classroom. The format of the book provides four lessons, one for each day from Monday through Thursday, on a specific topic. On the fifth day of the week, there is a specific directive to write a paragraph which includes the skills which have been practiced during the week. This seems to us to be a foolproof way of embedding skills which will last kids a lifetime.

There is a sheet of proofreader's marks to be duplicated for each child and a wonderful scope and sequence chart of skills included in the book. These are noted in the various weeks in which they are included.

Evan-Moor, the publisher of this terrific series, has thought of everything. There's an assessment rubric and all the activities are correlated to 145 state standards. View a correlation of a particular book's activities to your state's standards by accessing the website at www.teachingstandards.com (It's a FREE service.)

Daily Paragraph Editing is only one of Evan-Moor's super series. There's Daily Language Review, Daily Handwriting Practice and Building Spelling Skills. These series will make your life a whole lot easier.

You'll love making the acquaintance of the nice folks at Evan-Moor and learning about all of the great, practical products they have to offer. Be sure to visit their website at www.evan-moor.com or give them a call at 800-777-4362.
Evan-Moor Educational Publishers
www.evan-moor.com

Studying Your State
Check with Heinemann Library for their series of Heinemann State Studies books. These are the most comprehensive of the states-in-depth books you'll find. There are separate titles covering the plants and animals, native peoples history, regions and resources.

Not every state's books have been published yet, but they will be. The books are $18.95 (library price), and $27.07 (list price). They have 48 pages, full color photos, a great glossary and an additional bibliography. The publisher states that they're for levels three through five, but we can see their use above that level by kids who have difficulty with informational reading. The format is clean and easily accessible for kids who might be daunted with large blocks of text.

We received the Michigan Series for review and were pleased to find narrative descriptions, graphs, maps and biographical sketches. There's an authentic feel to this book, as there should be since the author hails from Michigan.

Every state has the requirement that we teach about that particular state: these books are a fine way to do just that. The Heinemann name assures us of great quality. Heinemann Library's toll-free number is 888-475-7038.
Heinemann Library
www.heinemannlibrary.com

Rand McNally
There's little more that need be said when one says Rand McNally. If you're teaching geography or the social studies, you can't do it without this company.

We saw a wonderful globe, a Classroom Atlas and two maps: one Intermediate Physical – Political World Map and an Advanced Political Map. These are for grades 4-12. Rand McNally calls these new larger maps "21st Century Cartography." We call it sensational and we think you will, too.

The maps are 70" x 52" and are markable and washable. Eight different colors show eight different elevation levels and the major physical features are labeled. There is a separate map sheet for Alaska and Hawaii, but the nice folks at Rand McNally have glued these together for our Lucky Subscriber. We just couldn't reproduce the grandeur of the maps, but do visit the Rand Mcnally web site www.k12online.com

The Intermediate Physical-Political Globe is 12" in diameter, is markable and washable, and has a full-Meridian mounting. It features raised relief that accurately depicts elevation and the color matches the world wall map for consistency in learning. $140 at your local school supply dealer. Add s/h if you order from Rand McNally.

We also received the Rand McNally Classroom Atlas. It's 112 pages (8 1/2" x 10 3/4") includes world maps of climate, environments, economies, population, plate tectonics and time zones. There's a detailed group of maps from North America, a group from South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and Antarctica. A single copy of the Classroom Atlas is $5.95,

There are many pricing combinations of maps and globes, with classroom sets of the Atlas, so it's best to call 800-678-7263 or visit the website.
Rand McNally Company
www.k12online.com

No One Home?
If you were a "Laugh Lines" winner of one of the Learning Resources gift certificates, or if you were responding to their advertisement and tried to call the company last month, we apologize. The telephone number was changed after we went to press.

Learning Resources has a new number: 800-222-3909, and they're waiting to hear from you.
Learning Resources
www.learningresources.com