Invitations to Literacy is a K-8 reading and language arts program offering a range of instructional materials for the classroom teacher. The philosophy behind the program is that literacy learning begins in the home and the community. It continues in school where literacy instruction should stimulate, teach, and extend the communication and thinking skills that will allow students to develop positive attitudes and to become effective readers, writers, communicators, and lifelong learners.

The resources in Houghton Mifflin Education Place are designed with these goals in mind. We provide an entire section of materials that integrate with the Invitations to Literacy program. These integrated resources provide many unique opportunities. For the first time, teachers with our reading program will be able to easily talk to other teachers working with the same materials. This arrangement will allow teachers the opportunity to share ideas and brainstorm activities. We'll also provide three types of activities:

Extensions.

These are simply additional hands-on activities that support your work in a theme.

Interactive Experiences.

These are activities that allow your students to collaborate or share information on a theme-related project with other classrooms around the world (e.g., sharing the results of an electronic survey or participating in a collaborative poem-writing exercise).

Links.

These are theme-related virtual field trips to Web sites around the world, or links to other Web servers that contain activities and projects related to the theme.

If you have recently purchased our reading program, please join us as we explore new ways to communicate with each other and provide resources through the Internet. If you'd like more information about Invitations to Literacy, call 1-800-733-2828.