MS LITERACY

Improving your reading skills will help you across all your subjects. How do you improve? By reading every day! Ready to get started? Check out: Ms. Jess’s Reading Program

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit. Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Writing even for a little bit of time every day is so helpful in improving your writing skills. Here are some resources to help you further develop your writing skills:  

• Maintain a journal - either in hard copy or digitally, using Penzu 
• Continue posting to your school-provided WordPress blog or create a new blog devoted to topics that interest you 
• Need inspiration?  Try out some of these writing prompts or these daily prompts or even these.  
• Need even more inspiration and a bit of a challenge? Try these Visual Writing prompts  
• Join Write the World (for ages 13 and up) 
• Join Camp NanNoWriMo and write a novel during the month of July!  
• Consider entering one of these writing contests. Be sure to check eligibility and deadlines! 
• Publish your writing in one of these places:  
  • Storybird (all ages) 
  • Rattle Young Poets Anthology (for ages 15 and younger) 
  • Stone Soup (for ages 13 and younger) 
  • Teen Ink (for ages 13 and up) 
  • Blue Marble Review (for ages 13 and up) 
  • Or find a place to get published in this list of young writers publications. Be sure to read the note to Young Writers, check eligibility, and deadlines! 
• Further develop your grammar skills with either Quill, the Khan Academy Grammar Course or Daily Grammar 

Part of doing something is listening. We are listening. To the sun. To the stars. To the wind. Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Swiftly Tilting Planet

Podcasts are wonderful for practicing our listening skills while also being super interesting and fun. You could even invite your family to listen with you! Here are a few of our top recommendations:  

• The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel (Fiction series) 
• Eleanor Amplified (Fiction series) 
• The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd (Fiction series) 
• Flyest Fables (Fiction series) 
• What If World (Fiction) 
• Storynory (Fiction) 
• Tumble (Science and Technology) 
• Wow in the World (Science and Technology) 
• But Why: A Podcast for Curious Kids (Science and Technology) 
• Brain’s On! (Science and Technology) 
• StarTalk with Neil Degrasse Tyson (Science and Technology) 
• KidNuz (Current Events) 
• The Big Fib (Current Events; Game show) 
• Stuff you Missed in History Class (History) 
• The Past and the Curious (History)  
• Short and Curly (Answering Big Questions, Ethics) 
• Youth Radio (For teens, published by teens on issues of public concern) 
• The Allusionist (Language Arts) 
• Or, instead of listening, further develop your public speaking skills by creating your own podcast using this free tool