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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli
Young Misha Pilsudski lives on the streets of Warsaw, Poland and struggles with his identity. When he enters the Jewish ghetto and sees firsthand the evil acts of Hitler's Nazi soldiers, he realizes it's safest of all to be nobody.
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli
One glance and students know that the new girl at Mica High School is not your ordinary high school student. Stargirl Caraway is a free spirit. She has a pet rat named Cinnamon, plays the ukulele in the cafeteria, and refuses to wear the...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Looking for Alaska by John Green
Everybody has a talent. Miles Halter's is knowing the last words of a lot of different people - people like the author Rabelais, whose enigmatic last words "I go to seek a Great Perhaps" inspire the sixteen-year-old to leave his family...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Paper Towns by John Green
Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life - dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Will Grayson, Will Grayson
In the suburbs of Chicago, two teens named Will Grayson - one gay, one straight - have lived their lives completely unaware of the other's existence. But that changes one fateful night when their worlds collide. Their lives begin to...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The Sacrifice by Kathleen Benner Duble
In the year 1692, life changes forever for ten-year-old Abigail Faulkner and her family. In Salem, Massachusetts, witches have been found, and widespread fear and panic reign mere miles from Abigail's home of Andover. When two girls are...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson
This historical fiction book, winner of a 2006 Newbery Honor for children's books, is perfect for girls graduating from the Little House on the Prairie series. Author Kirby Larson based this tale on her own great-grandmother's...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Under a War Torn Sky by l.m. Elliott
Just nineteen years old, Henry Forester is the youngest pilot in his Air Force squadron. Still, he's one of their best fliers, facing Hitler's Luftwaffe in the war-torn skies above France. But when his plane is shot down on a mission...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
Ever since she called 911 from a teen party, Melinda has quieted her voice, literally and figuratively. She only finds it when its needed to prevent a reoccurrence of the same horror. This stunning look at sexual assault and peer...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Hello, America by Livia Bitton Jackson
Eighteen-year-old Elli has a number tattooed onto her arm. It is an indelible remnant of a terrifying past a life lived, for many years, in the death camp of Auschwitz. When Elli arrives in New York City, she can not speak English, and...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
Set in 1943 when the Nazis occupied Denmark, ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen is asked to carry out a heroic deed and aid her uncle in his efforts to smuggle Danish Jews across the sea to Sweden, where they will be safe. She has already...
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Ad lit.org: Guide: Tracking Trash: Flotsam, Jetsam and the Science of Ocean Motion
Part of Houghton Mifflin's excellent Scientists in the Field series Tracking Trash introduces Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a "trash tracker", who studies where trash goes when it is "spilled" in the ocean, to determine the direction of ocean...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
Liesel Meminger is only nine years old when she is taken to live with a foster family, the Hubermanns, on Himmel Street in Molching, Germany, in the late 1930s. She arrives with few possessions, but among them is The Grave Digger's...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Cures for Heartbreak by Margo Rabb
In Cures for Heartbreak, Margo Rabb writes a fictional account of a 15-year old girl whose mother dies just days after being diagnosed with melanoma; then her father falls ill, too. Using vignettes - many appeared elsewhere as short...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Arguably Mark Twain's most famous novel - indeed, one of the greatest works of American literature - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn brings together two people from the lower rungs of society, an ill-educated boy escaping an abusive...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Tweak by Nic Sheff
Nic Sheff was drunk for the first time at age 11. In the years that followed, he would regularly smoke pot, do cocaine and Ecstasy, and develop addictions to crystal meth and heroin. Even so, he felt like he would always be able to quit...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The Curse of the Gloamglozer
In this prequel to the first three volumes, readers meet young Quint long before his sky pirating days, as he becomes the apprentice to Linius Pallitax, the Most High Academe of Sanctaphrax. Shortly after his arrival, Quint is enlisted...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The Last of the Sky Pirates
Fifty years after Captain Twig severed the anchor chain securing the floating rock of Sanctaphrax to Undertown, all is not well in the great floating city or the urban sprawl of Undertown. Rook Barkwater is selected as a Librarian Knight...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The Winter Knights
As the floating city of Sanctaphrax becomes gripped by a harsh and relentless winter, Quint begins his training in the Knights Academy, the venerable school charged with training the elite band of Knights Academic. As the buoyant rock...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: Vox by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
Rook Barkwater's skycraft crashes in the deadly area of the Edge known as Screetown. Rook is rescued, only to be captured on the way back to the sewers that house the Great Library. Mindwashed and forced to work for a sinister goblin...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
She was born with her eyes closed and a word on her tongue, a word she could not taste. Her name was Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, and she spent the first years of her life listening to her aunt's stories...
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Ad lit.org: Reading Discussion Guide: To Dance: A Ballerina's Graphic Novel
To Dance is a graphical memoir of Siena Cherson Siegel, a young girl growing up in Puerto Rico who eventually came to New York to study with the School of American Ballet. It captures the passion of the artist, as well as the discipline...
US Department of Education
U.s. Dept. Of Education: Compact for Reading: Second Grade Activities (Spanish)
Links to one hundred second grade activities arranged by skill set and designed to improve reading and writing. All activities are in PDF format and are ready to print and use. They can be downloaded individually, according to skill set,...
Florida Center for Reading Research
Florida Center for Reading Research: Interventions for Struggling Readers
This site offers links to an action plan a for school-wide intervention program. It includes a PDF of the principal's action plan outline, links to web casts of the intervention plan, and a video about the sounds of the English language...