Good morning on this Spring day! This is a message for you if you are a parent or distance-learning teacher looking for new online educational resources for your middle-school-aged student.

Editors at On Spec (Robin Carson and Barb Galler-Smith) developed a Teacher Toolkit that is freely available on our website. It’s designed to enhance the Language Arts program for advanced readers in Grades 4-6, as well as “reluctant” readers in Grades 7-9.  What you get is a downloadable pdf of a story, “Space Monkeys”, by author Ryan M. Williams, plus a package of games, exercises and learning tools to enable you to teach the story to your student. There’s even a link to a podcast of the  dramatized version of the story. The story centres around a father attempting to make contact with his autistic son, through the purchase of a new toy.

Ryan has graciously given us permission to allow people to use the story for educational purposes, without paying royalties.

We’d love for you to give this a try, and do send any feedback from teacher and students!

Good health to you all.

Diane