It is that time of year when we come together as a brand new school community. Students, teachers, administrators, custodians, assistants, secretaries, and all who participate in the school community come together feeling a wide range of emotions.

I'm excited to be starting my year in the Fond du Lac School District at Roberts and Riverside Elementary Schools. Although I am starting my 26th year of teaching, I still feel like everything is new. Starting in a new district does that, which in some ways is refreshing.

In this edition of The Wired Book, I will share with you some books, resources, and tech tips.

September 15 - October 15 is when the United States celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month. In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, I created a Google Slides presentation with links to resources in Capstone Connect, Epic, Teaching Books, and other online sources. You or the students can click on an image to be taken to a resource to read, listen, or watch content. The first page of the slideshow has links to the different topics covered. If you click on the house image, it will take you back to the first page of the slideshow.

A person that I follow on Instagram is the Book Wrangler. On a regular basis he posts content that he uses as a librarian. I enjoy seeing what he puts together. I recently found that he has some great FREE posters for Hispanic Heritage Month. To access the posters, do the following:

1) Click on the link below.

2) Click on Google Drive - Library Freebies

3) Click on Library Posters

4) Scroll down until you find a PDF called HispanicHeritage and click on it.

5) Enjoy!

Teaching Books is a wonderful free resource that gives you access to a database of resources for books, authors, and illustrators. You can search by title, author, and illustrator. You will find a variety of resources such as how to pronounce an author or illustrator's name. There may be short movies, audio book readings, discussion guides, and more. Take a moment to check it out!

Below you will see a few links to books you can find full video readings of as well as other resources for the books. If ever you have a question about how to use Teaching Books, please let me know.

The resource below from Teaching Books contains a list of 30 books for the topic Hispanic Heritage. Take a moment to see the titles compiled by Colorin Colorado

Seesaw worked on adding features to its platform over the summer. New items you can check out include:

• Formative Assessment
• Easier ways to create, assign, and manage activities
• Enhanced Messaging
• Present to Class

This week, take a moment to look over the easier ways to create, assign, and manage activities by clicking on the article linked below. I am more than happy to work with you individually or with your team if you are interested in trying these new features out.

If you have been teaching for any amount of time, you probably have a bunch of bookmarks. One way that you can "make space" in your bookmarks bar, is to shorten the names of your bookmarks or delete the name entirely, leaving only an icon. In the video below, I show you how to do this, giving you more space to put the sites you use on a regular basis on your bookmarks bar.