Iva Ticic’s Perfect Poems: Springtime
Happy Spring! This one is for children who like it when things melt, new things blossom, temperature rises and short sleeves are in again: Welcome to Spring! To celebrate the new season I’d like to offer you a beautiful, fun poem for the occasion. Let these lines roll off your...
The Library of the History of Human Imagination
What we wouldn’t give for a few lifetimes in this place! There is a place in this world that has a complete Velociraptor skelleton, a page from the Guetenburg bible, and Sputnik all in one room. That place The Library of the History Human Imagination. This 3,000+ square foot...
What I Learned From Learning Differently
Everyone learns differently. This is a universally accepted truism. But that one student may have a markedly dissimilar learning process from those around him or her and shouldn’t necessarily mean a decreased chance in success for that student. The idea of alternative learning processes has been a recurring...
What’s Going On With The Word Gap?
Written by: Molly McManus, PhD Candidate in Educational Psychology, University of Texas at Austin. Note: We Read Together presents this article in order to facilitate dialogue. WRT doesn’t officially endorse or support the opinions below. Why do rich kids end up doing better than poor kids in school? Of late, one common explanation...
We Read Together on the Radio (Podcast)
Our kids made some great pieces of audio fiction. If you don’t like reading, fist donate to us and we’ll come show you how awesome reading is (if you’re wondering how awesome reading is, the answer is VERY). After you donate, you can scroll to the end of this...
Do Kids Need to Like What They’re Reading to Progress?
Written by: Ryan Spencer, Clinical Teaching Specialist; Lecturer in Literacy Education, University of Canberra. When we think of reading for our children, we are often misled into thinking that we need to focus on one type of book, such as picture books or novels in order to practice specific, reading-related...
Librarian Bans Blameless Book for Social Experiment
Last weekend marked the end of Banned Books Week, the annual book readers’ celebration of drawing attention to the dangerous history of literary censorship. In 2014, the American Library Association (ALA) Office of Intellectual Freedom received 311 challenges. When an individual finds a book unacceptable for any reason, they...
Learning Through War: The Refugee Children of Syria, Croatia and Beyond
Zagreb, Croatia, 9/29/2015 All month long, the Syrian refugees have been flooding my news feed and TV screen. I have a strong need to leave the political aside, to see them for who they are: humans. A World At School website says: Children trapped in conflict zones are the...
Kids and Poetry: Reinvention at the Kitchen Table
The first time I gave a creative writing lesson to young children was a complete accident. I was babysitting a brother and a sister in Brooklyn and one of the things I was asked to do was to help them with their homework, involving a certain poem in a...
What Batman, Swearing, and Cigarettes Can Teach Us About Reading
The Batman movie came out in 1989 when I was eight-and-a-half-years old. I didn’t know who Batman was, but I saw the commercial and knew it was very important I see it. My parents were unsympathetic. It’s rated PG-13 for a reason, they said, and I cried in the...