Strategies For Engaging Students. Mics in the classroom: news and resources round up | Teacher Network Blog | Guardian Professional. The GTN team struggled (and failed) to suppress our inner geeks earlier this week when news surfaced that superheroes Superman and Wonder Woman are to become a "powers couple" in the DC Comics series. Our main source of excitement, however, wasn't the super-powered love match, but knowing this new fictional romance gave us a reasonable excuse to dedicate our topical resources column to the fascinating topic of teaching with comics. So, we've scoured the Guardian and the rest of the web for some ideas for bringing comics into the classroom. If you've already got comic-themed resources, activities or ideas for lessons, please do share it with the community here. From the Guardian How to draw...How to draw... is one of our favourite regular features to come out of the Guardian's children's books section. Recent installments include a draw-a-bunny tutorial from Simone Lia, creator of a comic book, Fluffy.
Resources from Guardian Teacher Network Best of the web Buzz! Choice Literacy - Articles & Videos - Full Article. I have become more committed to finding good books for boys over the last few years. So much has been written about the crisis in boys and literacy that I want to make sure that I have books that will hook them as readers. I have found great resources such as Jon Scieszka's website www.guysread.com. But with the focus on boys and literacy, I do not want to forget the girls in my classroom. Not only do I want to have good books for them to read, I want to make sure they have lots of girls to read about who are strong female characters. Blogger Vivian Lee Mahoney, of HipWriter Mama ( got me thinking. In early 2007, Vivian decided to post a weekly Sunday's List of strong girl characters in children's literature. Here is what she said about her own family: "So here we are with three girls -- 8, 6 and 3.
So right now, while I have the clarity of mind and forethought, I want to create a resource of great friends (with books of course!) Ivy and Bean Clementine. Fiction’s Feisty Girls | areadinglife.com. After seeing the luminous new musical “Anne of Green Gables” based on the Lucy Maude Montgomery novels and being impressed by its accurate portrayal of Anne, I started to think of other girls and young women in literature that are feisty and/or sassy. Jo, in Little Women, immediately comes to mind; then there’s the irresistible Pippi Longstocking created by Astrid Lindgren. Feisty as well as humorous girls in series books include: Beverly Cleary’s Ramona, Megan McDonald’s Judy Moody, Meg Cabot’s Allie Finkle, Sara Pennypacker’s Clementine and Barbara Park’s Junie B.
Jones. Another mischievous girl in literature is quirky Blossom Culp, the time-traveling, psychic heroine of the Richard Peck series. The better titles in this series are Ghosts I Have Been and The Ghost Belonged to Me. In a similar vein, 13 year old Miyax, in Julie of the Wolves, is lost on the Alaskan tundra after running away from home. Interesting that these three brave young women are based on actual people. Suzanne Related. GUYS READ.
Boys « Search Results « Lit For Kids. Posted by Meghan There are some obsessions that we only seem to have in childhood. Dinosaurs, knights/princesses, trucks, cowboys – all seem to be things that we could not be passionate about as kids, but all but forget about as adults. (Ok, except the princess thing, which almost every woman I know secretly wants to turn into, and maybe the love of trucks turns to cars, specifically BMW’s and yes, I’m talking to you, honey.)
I guess because there aren’t all that many job listings for paleontologists or cowboys. But as kids… ah, the fantasies abound. Giddy Up, Cowgirl by Jarret Krosoczka Krosoczka is a huge favorite of ours, and this simple book is no exception. Little Britches and the Rattlers by Eric A. Little Britches is headed to the rodeo in fine new duds. Gingerbread Cowboy by Janet Squires, illustrated by Holly Berry Gingerbread Cowboy is made by the rancher’s wife, who is a little tired of biscuits every day. Pecos Bill told by Robin Williams, original music by Ry Cooder. Nonfiction Text Features & Common Core. There is a lot of discussion going on about aligning our teaching and curriculum with the Common Core. I have been doing a lot of research on the subject and pouring over the information on their website. So here is my position on the Common Core: It's just good teaching practices. I decided to take a look at what I am currently doing in the classroom and how it stacks up to the Common Core.
For future blog posts, I will make a connection and reference to the Common Core to help teachers realize what we are already doing that matches with the Common Core and some ways to meet the standards. My class is working with nonfiction text features as we enter the first phase of our next inquiry project - Ocean Life/Habitats - after spring break. Update 11/20/12: I have created a unit along with 2 multimedia files, 2 Power Points, 2 songs, and a 124 page unit to help teach nonfiction text features to our students.
Key Ideas and Details RI. Integration of Knowledge and Ideas RI. Ralph Fletcher on boy writers and his new book. August 7th, 2012 As the father of four sons and the author of countless nonfiction and fiction books, Ralph Fletcher has a natural interest in boys and writing. He has spent the last several years working with boy writers and their teachers, as well as interviewing other male authors about writing for boys. Ralph shared his insights on the subject in Boy Writers: Reclaiming Their Voices and in his video, Dude, Listen to This. Now he has written a book for students (fourth grade and up) called Guy-Write: What Every Guy Writer Needs to Know, published by Henry Holt and Co.
Ralph talked about the new book and about engaging boy writers in a recent conversation with Stenhouse General Manager Dan Tobin. Let’s start with the new book. Teachers are the audience for Boy Writers: Reclaiming Their Voices. In both books, you talk about edgy topics that boys might like to write about, including violence and bathroom humor. I write for myself. There are some developmental issues at play here. Ha! 12 Ways to Use The Learning Network This School Year. Slide Show Ways to Use The Learning Network Happy 2011-12 school year! Here’s what we’ve got and how you can use it.
Visit the slide show above to see screenshots of each of the 12 features we describe below — including some new ones we added this summer. Please pass this page along, and don’t forget that The Learning Network is accessible without a digital subscription. That means that this blog and all its posts, as well as all Times articles linked from them and from our Twitter and Facebook accounts, are free to readers. Finally, thank you. 12 Ways to Use The Learning Network This School Year 1. This year, our lessons resume Monday, Sept. 12. . * Monday – Multimedia Interdisciplinary Lesson of the Week * Tuesday – History and Social Studies * Wednesday – Science and Health * Thursday – Language and Fine Arts * Friday – Ideas From Our Audience: Guest Posts, Student Contests, Reader Ideas and occasional surprises 2. 3.
We publish a new question based on Times content every weekday. 4. 5. 6. How to Teach Summarizing. Close reading (in the Common Core) requires students to consider text (in it's different forms) through three lenses: what does it say, how does it say it, and what does it mean to me? Summarizing is an essential skill for learning, but too often in school we simply ask students to "guess" what the teacher (or author) thinks is important. An essential part of a summary is that it needs to be expressed to an audience. In life, we purposefully craft summaries for a specific audience (directions for the out-of-towner, computer how-to for the technophobe). In school, the tacit audience for most summaries is the teacher. If students are going to learn to summarize they need to be given a chance to genuinely share what they think is important for an audience other than the teacher.
Step 1: Start with the concrete "right there" observations. I projected a digital image on the screen and asked student to talk about the people, things and activities they could identify.