Language Arts

Audio Books

Award Winning

Read Alouds

Connection Collections

Dear Teachers and Students,

Welcome to Connection Collections, a themed gathering of books and related materials to enrich your classroom.  Many of you have experienced the excitement while receiving these wonderful collections in your classroom. This year, we welcome the addition of 150 more collections, most of which enhance and support cross curricular themes.  These additions, known as “Phase Two” of this project were made possible through the “Children’s Choice” grant received from the International Reading Association. Each year our theme collaborator committee has grown to accomplish this feat. These teachers dedicated many  long hours, their laughter and the sharing of great literature with each other as they completed this monumental task. We applaud their efforts.

Book selection was based on several criteria: the most important involving the text and illustrations which feature young people from many places in the world, problem solving and making positive decisions, and lastly, connections to science, math, language arts and social studies curricula. Some of the books are thought-provoking, a few are sad and others will make you laugh!  We considered the author’s background and in several instances, checked for evidence of credible research.  Of course, after all of the above, the books had to pass the test for visual appeal. We know that books are in a visually competitive world.

We have a great deal of ownership in the process that resulted in the Connection Collections. We invite you to consider these collections as only “seeds” toward expanded possibilities. As you decide on theme topics for your classroom and choose book titles, you, too, will feel the excitement of discovering connections and learning new information.

Each theme has different numbers of titles and books. We believe there are so many exciting ways to become involved in all of the “language arts” that we wanted you to have several options. The following strategies are ones we have tried in classrooms; we think they will work for you, too.  Remember, they are only suggestions.

Contact us