I know a lot of teachers love reading to their classes and providing interesting comprehension activities for them. Here are some links to teacher’s resources from New Zealand and Australian publishers that can use with your classes:
- HarperCollins
- Random House Children’s Books US
- Walker Books Australia and New Zealand – Walker Books Classroom
- Allen and Unwin
- Text Publishing (Australia)
- Bloomsbury
- Barrington Stoke (dyslexia friendly publisher)
- Scholastic free printable resources – heaps of cool book-related colouring and activity sheets
- Scholastic Graphix Guide to Using Graphic Novels with Children and Teens – PDF
- Get Graphic! Graphic Novel Educators Guide from Random House Graphic – PDF
My Best Friends Are Books 
Hi Zac
Your blog is awesome, I realy enjoy seeing what you’re reading next! I’m a librarian in a Yr 1-8 primary school and sometimes find it difficult to decide if some young adult books are suitable for our oldest children (12 and 13 year olds) particularly when I haven’t read them first. Do you have a rule of thumb? I’ve tended to reflect on the age of the protagonist and plot and then consider the usual: language, violence, sex etc. Where do you draw the line? Maybe it could be useful if maybe the tag ‘intermediate fiction’ could be used to identify those books suited to Yr 7/8’s. I don’t know… there’s so many great books I don’t want our kids to miss out on reading because we put a label on them. Any ideas?
Hi Helen,
Thanks for your kind words 🙂 I really appreciate the feedback and I’m going to add an intermediate fiction category now. I used to add a recommended age group at the end of reviews so I’ll start doing this again. I don’t have a particular rule of thumb. Like yourself, I consider the language, plot, violence, sexual content etc. I know it’s often difficult to decide what is appropriate for the Year 7/8 kids as a lot of them want to be reading the really popular Young Adult books but they’re not necessarily appropriate. A good example of this is Will Hill’s Department 19. The first book was fantastic for those Year 7/8 boys who wanted something similar to Anthony Horowitz and Robert Muchamore, but the second book, The Rising is much more violent and bloody so I wouldn’t suggest it for a Primary School library.
It’s very much up to your discretion and you know what the students can handle or what they should stay away from.
Thanks for reading my blog,
Zac
NZ publisher Gecko Press also place teachers notes on their website for some of their titles. http://www.geckopress.co.nz/Teacher_Resources_138_64_328.aspx
Thanks Luke! I’ll add them to the list 🙂
Thanks for the link to the NCEA page!!!! Can’t wai tot use this a the school i work at.
It’s a pleasure 🙂
Fantastic resource, Zac, thanks so much we will reblog this for our library. Thought you’d want to know that a couple of links are not working today – Harper Collins, Random House and Text.
Thanks for pointing that out Helen. I’ve updated the links now.
Fast work – thanks so much!