For Teachers and Parents:
The Purpose of this Project

Newsletters

*** August 2002 **

Animal Diaries - A Website for Student Authors

Hosted by:
Rene de Vries, teacher at De Wadden School in Haarlem, The Netherlands
and Joan Goble, teacher at Cannelton Elementary School in Cannelton, Indiana USA

Homepage: http://www.tesan.vuurwerk.nl/diaries/

Volume 24- August 2002

Hello to all of our participants. Welcome to our fourth year! We feel that this will be our best year ever and we are glad that you will be a part of it!

We are updating the site, and will have announcements coming soon for the next author chats. We are setting up dates to chat with Barry Louis Polisar, author of several whimsical books such as Insect Soup: Bug Poems, The Trouble With Ben, Peculiar Zoo, The Snake Who Was Afraid of People, and many more! Barry that he is the star of the Emmy winning TV series "Field Trip" and has won many People's Choice awards and has even performed at the White House!

We are also excited to announce we will be lining up chats with two authors who are biologists! This fall we will host a chat with Myrna Watanabe and Peter Brazaitis, authors of Fight for Survival and Snakes of the World. So, as you can see, our author chats are going to be great and we hope you are able to join us. We will announce the dates of these chats very soon. Keep an eye on our website!

NEW ADDITIONS

We are excited to announce these new additions to Animal Diaries:

**New chapter is written for "The Setting Sun" progressive story. It was completed by students in Lone Nielson's class in Hoernbaek, Denmark. 
**New chapter for the Bunny The Elephant book 2. Be sure to read how Bunny is doing at the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. Also, be sure to read all about Bunny's elephant friends. We wish to recommend a book about Bunny's friend Tarra written by Carol Buckley, her trainer and friend. It is called Travels With Tarra, and can be purchased from the site: http://www.elephants.com  

GREAT NEWS!

Animal Diaries will be mentioned in a couple of articles very soon. It will be mentioned in the upcoming Classroom Connect Newsletter, in the "Wired Success Stories". It will also be mentioned in an article for The International Reading Association's online journal, Reading Online ( http://www.readingonline.org  ) We will tell you when that is published as soon as we know. We want to thank you for your support! We know that without your interest Animal Diaries would not exist!

TAKE THE ANIMAL DIARIES CHALLENGE! Yes, we have a new challenge! 
Did you hear about the young killer whale (named Springer) who was lost from her pod but was rescued by caring people, nursed back to health, then re-released into the ocean? She was accepted by a new pod and is living freely and safely again. We challenge your students to write about this beautiful creature, or about her rescue. To get inspiration, go to these websites: 

*The Killer Whale Website: http://whaleorca.tripod.com/  --This is a wonderful resource for information about killer whales.
*Ocean Futures: http://www.oceanfutures.org/  has news of what is going on with the world oceans - one feature is an update on Keiko (Free Willy) whale!
*The Orca Conservancy: http://www.orcaconservancy.org/  --advancing the welfare of Orcinus orca, or killer whale, and protecting the wild places on which it depends. ***This site has news on Springer, the orphaned Orca, and her adoption into a new pod!