HOT SPOT Week 4

Summer Readers: Keep Sizzlin'

This week people around the nation will take time from their busy schedules to celebrate Independence Day. This week’s HOT SPOT will take time to honor the important values and rights our forefathers and mothers fought for, including one that is near and dear to every newspaper’s heart, freedom of speech. This week’s HOT SPOT celebrates the United States and its freedoms. Speaking of celebrating, you can celebrate your freedom from school with our HOT SPOT sponsor, Celebration Station.

This week’s HOT SPOT activity

French writer and Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus once wrote, “A free press can of course be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom it will never be anything but bad. . . . Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better, whereas enslavement is a certainty of the worse.”  Camus believed that it is your duty as a citizen to stay informed!

As you read the St. Petersburg Times this week, look for articles that cover issues you need to be informed about. Create a chart listing these issues. Which issues do you want to see elected officials address, and how? Make a list of local issues and state issues. Look for news about political candidates in the Times this week. How do the candidates plan to address the issues you care about? Share your ideas with other students across Tampa Bay. Just click on the comment button below and start blogging!

If you want to participate in the Summer Reader program, go to tampabay.com/nie/summer for details on how to get started.

HOT SPOT Week 3

Summer Readers: Keep Sizzlin'

It’s not the heat; it’s the humidity. Florida is known as the Sunshine State, if you’ve ever spent a summer in Florida, you know it also could qualify as the “Hot State.” Surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, our state is influenced by warm, tropical moisture, especially in the summer. Florida summer is in full swing, despite the calendar saying it has only been here officially for a few days. Is this making you hot under the collar? If you need to escape the sizzling summer weather, then cool down with this week’s HOT SPOT, Circle K.

This Week's HOT SPOT Activity

Have you noticed summer’s afternoon rainstorms appearing with more regularity? Meteorologists use many tools to forecast and keep close watch on thunderstorms. Your local National Weather Service office has meteorologists and technicians working around the clock to keep an eye on the weather. The weather page on the back of the Sports section in the St. Petersburg Times is a great place to keep an eye on future storms. Go to tampabay.com for immediate updates.

Have you ever wondered how different weather conditions affect your moods? Find out by creating a data chart. You can use the Times weather page to collect data for this activity each day. At the end of the week, use your data to create a line or bar graph. You also can keep a chart of your results. Keep a mood chart, too. Does the weather affect your mood? Share your thoughts with other students across Tampa Bay here at our Summer Times Reader Blog. Just click on the comment button below and start blogging!

If you want to participate in the Summer Reader program, go to tampabay.com/nie/summer for details on how to get started!

Summer Reading the Times

Whether you are attending a summer reading camp, wandering the world with Hillsborough County's summer library program, reading with the Rays or keeping a reader log for the Times Sizzlin' Summer Reader program, you are spending time reading the St. Petersburg Times. How do you feel about reading the Times? What parts do you like? What would you change if you were in charge? Click on the COMMENTS bar below to share your newspaper views.

For more topics of discussion, explore the 2008 categories at the top of the left sidebar like:

READING WITH THE RAYS
WANDER THE WORLD
ZOO STORY

SHORTCUT: To go straight to the topics above, just click on the titles!

Reading with the Rays: Take me out to the Trop

Take me out to the Trop!

It’s baseball season, so what better time to get to know your Tampa Bay Rays than now? Research the team’s players and find out their hometowns. On a map, mark where each player is from. How many states are represented by the team? How many countries? Diversity brings strength to a community. Click on the comments button below to discuss the ways that diversity brings strength to our Rays team.

Reading with the Rays: Rhyme time

Rhyme time

Rays pitcher Dan Wheeler’s son’s favorite book Eight Silly Monkeys by Steve Haskamp has a lot of rhyming words in it. Rhyming words have similar sounds such as chair, stair and cat, hat. Songs are often composed of rhyming words. Often songs are based on everyday observations. The daily newspaper is a great resource for writing found poetry or songs. Choose one interesting story from the St. Petersburg Times and write a song using words you took from the article. Illustrate your song and share it with your family and friends. Click on the comments button below to share your poem with other summer bloggers.

Reading with the Rays: Poetry in motion

Poetry in motion

The poem Casey at the Bat by Ernest Lawrence Thayer is a classic. You can read the poem on the Baseball Almanac’s Web site. The poem, printed in the San Francisco Examiner in 1885, is considered one of the best baseball poems ever written. Now it is your turn to write a poem about baseball in Tampa Bay. For inspiration, log onto tampabay.com or tampabay.rays.mlb.com, or you can look for baseball articles on the pages of the St. Petersburg Times. Click on the comments button below to share your poem with other summer bloggers.

Reading with the Rays: The picture of sports

The picture of sports

Baseball is one of many professional sports. Remember, sports is not just about the conventional baseball, basketball, hockey or football. Recreational activities and sports go hand-in-hand. Hiking, swimming, playing golf, bowling, walking, tennis, badminton and bicycling are great ways to have fun and build character. Look in pages of the St. Petersburg Times to find photos of people playing sports and participating in other recreational activities. What type of recreational activities do you enjoy? What are your favorite sports? Click on the comments button below to share your thoughts with Rays fans and students across Tampa Bay.

Reading with the Rays: Catching Rays

Catching Rays

You can catch Rays every day on the pages of the St. Petersburg Times. Keep track of the Rays’ travels by reading the Sports section of the St. Petersburg Times every day during the summer. What city were the Rays in yesterday? Where are they today? How was the game yesterday? Who made the best plays? Who is your favorite player? How many games have you seen this season? Do you watch the Rays on television? How has your experience been at Tropicana Field? Let’s talk about Raysball! Click on the comment button below to share your thoughts with Rays fans and students across Tampa Bay.

Reading with the Rays: Connecting the past and present

Connecting the past and the present

Author George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” What does this phrase mean? How does this phrase apply to the articles you read in the St. Petersburg Times? Do the articles reflect a changing world? How so? Have the people in the present world learned from the lessons of history? Is history repeating itself? Click on the comments button below to share your thoughts with Rays fans and students across Tampa Bay.

Reading with the Rays: Learning of the times

Learning of the times

The history of the Negro Leagues of baseball is important and extensive. As you learned in Reading with the Rays, more that 2,500 men and women participated as players, coaches, managers and officials in the official Negro Leagues. Which player did you choose to research at the Negro League Baseball Museum’s Web site? What information did you learn about that player and about the time period in which the player lived? Click on the comment button below to share your thoughts with Rays fans and students across Tampa Bay.

Reading with the Rays: Creating teamwork

Creating teamwork

In the book Challenge at Second Base, Stan Martin learns the meaning of determination and teamwork. Now that you have created your teamwork collage (find the directions in the Reading with the Rays St. Petersburg Times Newspaper in Education publication), discuss the information you learned about the importance of teamwork in a variety of settings. Click on the comment button below to share your thoughts with Rays fans and students across Tampa Bay.

Wander the World: Traveling Treasure Chests

Traveling Treasure Chests

Your journey around the world this summer begins at your local library.  Your local library has many great programs that will be traveling from library to library all summer. You can journey around the world, from continent to continent, by listening to stories, songs, poetry and more! Visit hcplc.org to find out when these Traveling Treasure Chests will be visiting your library. After you have visited a program, come back here to the NIE Blogging Zone to share your experiences with others. Just click on the comment button below and start blogging!

Wander the World: Source of conflict

Source Of Conlict

Many of the summer reading books focus on young people encountering conflicts in their lives and communities. How do these conflicts compare to everyday conflicts you face in your life? What conflicts can you find in articles in the St. Petersburg Times or on tampabay.com?  Look for an article in the St. Petersburg Times or a blog on tampabay.com that focuses on an issue or concern that affects children or teens in the community. Read the article or posting carefully. Think about the purpose of the author and the main idea of the writing. What is the main focus of the article? What is the conflict? Do you agree with the perspective being shown in the article? Share your thoughts with other students across Tampa Bay here at our Summer Times Reader Blog. Just click on the comment button below and start blogging!

Wander the World: Celebrating diversity

Celebrating diversity

A Pride of African Tales by Donna L. Washington takes you on a journey to the continent of Africa. Each tale reflects a different culture and lesson to be learned. It is not just the stories in the book that will catch your attention. Award-winning artist James Ransome’s watercolor paintings show the diversity of the African people through clothing, architecture, landscape and wildlife. What is diversity? Look up the word “diversity” in the dictionary. There is a lot of diversity in Hillsborough County. Look in the St. Petersburg Times for photos, cartoons, pictures or words that show diversity. Do your neighborhood and school have a lot of diversity? How does this diversity make life and learning more interesting? Just click on the comment button below to discuss these ideas!

Wander the World: Extra! Extra!

Extra, extra read all about it!

As a journalist for your school newspaper, you are assigned the job of writing a newspaper article about one of the summer reading books. This isn’t just any article. You are going to interview your favorite character. A good journalist must begin with six key questions: who, what, where, when, why and how. Before you plan your character interview, find an article in the St. Petersburg Times and answer each of those six questions. Now that you see the pattern for a newspaper article, write an article about your favorite character. Share your article with other students across Tampa Bay here at our Summer Times Reader Blog. Just click on the comment button below and start blogging!

Wander the World: Creating a travel brochure

Creating a travel brochure

Imagine you are a travel writer for the St. Petersburg Times, and you have been tasked with putting together a special travel section focusing on a luxury tour to visit some of the places represented in your summer reading books. Have you visited all seven continents yet? If you could visit one of the continents, which one would it be: North America, South America, Asia, Australia, Africa, Europe or Antarctica? Click on the comment button below to discuss your travels.

Wander the World: First stop ... Florida

First stop ... Florida

The United States is part of North America. Your travels in North America can begin right here in Florida. Florida has many different ecosystems. An ecosystem is a living community of plants and animals that need each other to exist. Think about all of the different ecosystems in your life: your state, your town, your city, your school, your home. Now think about all of the important things in your ecosystem. All animals, including humans, need water, oxygen and food to exist. What do you need to exist? Look through the St. Petersburg Times to find examples of things that you and your family need to exist in your community. Click on the comment button below to discuss the items that are most important in your ecosystem?

HOT SPOT Week 2

Summer Readers: Keep Sizzlin'

Museums are full of things that make you think. In fact the word museum is derived from the Latin term “muses,” meaning “a source of inspiration,” or “to be absorbed in one’s thoughts.” The Florida Holocaust Museum is a source of inspiration. One of the largest Holocaust museums in the country, this museum is dedicated to teaching members of all races and cultures to appreciate the essential value of human life.

This Week's HOT SPOT Activity

Anne Frank is one of the best-known diary writers in history. The young Jewish girl detailed her life in hiding in an attic in Amsterdam during World War II, protected by a Dutch family as Nazis rounded up Jews during the Holocaust. Even in the face of evil around her, she clung to her ideals, “because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”

The St. Petersburg Times is a good source for stories about people of all ages helping others. Each day this week, look in your edition’s regional section for local profiles of people who are “truly good at heart.” Make a list of positive characteristics for the people in the articles you find. Do you know  someone who makes a difference for others? Share your stories with other students across Tampa Bay here at our Summer Times Reader Blog. Just click on the comment button below and start blogging!

If you want to participate in the Summer Reader program, go to tampabay.com/nie/summer for details on how to get started!

HOT SPOT Week 1

Summer Readers: Start Sizzlin'!

We are lucky to live in Florida where so much sea life is easily accessible. A walk on a beach, a paddle down a local river or even a peek into a nearby retention pond will expose you to all types of creatures that live in or near the water. You can read in the St. Petersburg Times about the creatures that live in the waters and woods around us and what is being done to protect their habitats.

This week’s Hot Spot activity
If you read this week's Hot Spot activity on Monday, June 9th, you learned about the Coral Reef Gallery at the Florida Aquarium, an artificial reef modeled after the coral formations of the Dry Tortugas off the Florida Keys. Housed in a 500,000-gallon tank, the reef provides the base for a community of more than 1,600 coral reef residents. Artificial reefs provide habitat for all kinds of marine plant and animal life. On land, structures also provide habitat for wildlife. Insects live in and around our homes; birds often nest around buildings or under bridges; mice take shelter in our cities.

Look in the St. Petersburg Times for photos of manmade structures that could make good habitats for animals, birds or plants. Cut out the pictures and write down why these structures make good habitats. If you read something interesting about Florida wildlife this week, be sure to share it with other students across Tampa Bay here at our Summer Times Reader Blog. Just click on the comment button below and start blogging!

If you want to participate in the Summer Reader program, go to tampabay.com/nie/summer for details on how to get started!