Your Students Should Be Writing to Authors You work hard to make sure your students are passionate readers. You make sure high-quality books line the shelves of your classroom library, even when they cost more than your monthly paycheck. So when you see a student who seems to have fallen in love with an author, it kind of takes your breath away, right? Writers can change a person’s worldview. Social media is such a constant presence that it can be easier and quicker to just send a tweet to your favorite author or Instagram a photo of you with their book in hand. Recently I read a book put out by Candlewick Press called Journeys: Young Readers’ Letters to Authors Who Changed Their Lives. Here’s an excerpt from one letter sprung from The Lions of Little Rock: “Dear Kristin Levine, … I am black. Help your students connect to the writers that open up new spaces for them. Tell them their voice matters. Readers make up half the story. Explain that they might not get a reply. Don’t let this stop your students from writing.
The Journey from Library to Learning Commons The library, at one time, was the center of the school building. It's where knowledge was held, books were shared, and ideas were generated. It was quiet, to the point that mini-lessens were taught about the edict required while in the confines of this environment. Before I begin it is important to note that everything we have done, all that was created, was due to Christie’s amazing teachers and supportive parents. One of the things I love most about education is our willingness, and even love, of sharing information. A colleague of mine, @matthew_arend, recently wrote a great blog post about his creation of a makerspace. I wish I could take credit for the beginning idea of changing the way we use our library, but I can’t, it all started with @LorraineShimizu. As a new principal I was ready to move forward with our LC. So here is what I knew: I wanted to create a Learning Commons for ALL kids. Fundraising. Step One: Paint. Step Two: Order furniture and find temporary furniture.
A Busy Two Days « reflectionsonedtech August 14, 2012 by birdsallb We’ve completed two of three days of our “Becoming a Connected Educator” course at school.Working with these fascinating and smart friends, colleagues, and amazing teachers is so fun. I’m able to learn alongside them and marvel at the reflection and dialogue amongst the group. After two days the teachers are now on Twitter, using Hootsuite, have Diigo accounts and have joined and are sharing bookmarks to our Diigo group for the class. Today we used a Google Hangout to have a conversation with Peter Skillen (@peterskillen) and Brenda Sherry (@brendasherry). Our group checked out the #edchat at noon today. Later in the day we talked about blogging and especially blogging with students. Tomorrow we ponder the beginning of the school year and what being connected, to whatever extent we are at that point, looks like for us as educators and with our students. It’s going well. Image: Creative Commons/flickr by Frank2216 Like this:
Essay Writing Guide made by academic writers | EssayPro Table Of Contents What Is The Aim Of This Guide? Our goal is to orient you as quickly and appropriately as possible on how to write an essay. What Is The Purpose? This guide was created by our writers to teach people how to write various types of essays, regardless of the requirements. Generally, an essay can have many purposes, but despite all of these, the structure will remain the same no matter what. Follow these steps to write an essay, or visit EssayPro for additional help: Decide On Topic Choosing a good topic is important because your entire body of work will be based around it. Conduct A Research Gather and analyze information from external sources (documents, web articles, encyclopedias, etc.) for your essay. Develop a Thesis A thesis statement is a short statement, commonly one sentence, that defines the main idea or claim of an essay, research paper, etc. Create An Outline An outline is a way to organize and structure your essay in a proper way. Introduction Body Paragraph(s) Conclusion
5 Blogging Tips to Maximize Pageviews Per Visit Darren Rowse is at it again this month with 31 Days to Building a Better Blog. I have decided to participate with a post on a few tips to maximize your total pageviews per visit. Install the Related Posts Plugin. This plugin will allow you to display a list of related posts below each individual posts. For example, if you look below this post you will find the “related posts” showing up which gives readers another way to click through to more of your content.Utilize Deep Interlinking. Every post I make I try and somewhere within it link to another post, page, or article within my blog. These tips can be used with any blog regardless of your content.
Dig Deeper Into Poetry With Close Reads Over the past few weeks my students have been studying the poetry genre. My third graders have truly loved reading and writing poems. They quickly anointed authors like Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky, who entertained them with hilarious prose, as their favorite poets of all time. I was thrilled that a few days into this unit students began arriving at school each morning with poetry books, pages bookmarked, asking if they could share a few poems with the class. Of course they could! While they were loving poetry and reading it voraciously, I realized my students were only just scratching the surface — looking for funny content without truly understanding a poem’s meaning or the poet’s message. Getting Started — Not Quite as Easy as I Thought My students are familiar with close-reading strategies. Trying to apply the close-reading strategies I use with fiction and nonfiction text to poetry was a lot like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Modeling On Their Own Success! Genia
Developing Blogging Skills: Simple Rubric Posted by Mrs Kathleen Morris on Wednesday, November 28th 2012 I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a blogging scope and sequence for a while. However, something about that idea makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like the thought of limiting blogging skills to certain age levels. For example, a number of my grade two students were sourcing and attributing Creative Commons materials for blog posts, and using HTML in comments. I find blogging to be a fantastic avenue for students to work at their own pace, while developing their skills as far as their capabilities and interests allow. A number of teachers who are introducing blogging into their classrooms have asked me what they should teach their students next. I have borrowed a couple of ideas from Kim Cofino’s Blogging Scope and Sequence (with permission), while incorporating many of the ideas I have developed through blogging with my students. Educational Blogging Rubric What would you add to the rubric? How could you use this document?
Scaffolds Critical Thinking and Enables Flipped Learning 1 reading tool for the whole school, customized by level and subject. College Readiness Self-directed Research Content-Area Literacy Social Studies, ELA, Foreign Language: Spanish, French, Gaelic, Arabic... Teacher Prof. Development Apply classroom learning to the real world. Build case studies together. Flip your class with 1 tool for both video and text. While great for reading, you can also Ponder any video you browse to on YouTube, Vimeo or Dropbox! Engage in sophisticated dialogue without the bottleneck of writing. edmodo Step 2 – Set Up Your Blogging Rules and Guidelines We’ve designed a series of nine steps, with how-to info, to help you with your class blogging. This second step is to set up blogging rules and guidelines on your class blog. Why Have Blogging Rules and Guidelines? An important part of using an online tool with your students is educating them on appropriate online behavior. Just because your students grew up with technology doesn’t mean they appreciate or understand what is/isn’t appropriate to post online. Your class blog provides an excellent opportunity to educate students, parents and other readers on proper online behavior such as: Types of identifying information that is appropriate in posts and/or comments e.g., What are your rules about use of last names, IM, images and personal information? Deciding On Your Blogging Rules and Guidelines This is the type of task where you could decide on the rules and guidelines yourself or do as a whole of class activity (where you actively involve your students in the entire process). Related
Awesome Flowchart to Help You Select A Blogging Platform for Your Class January 18, 2015 In an earlier post I shared here today I talked about some useful resources to help teachers set up and run a classroom blog. As a follow up, I am sharing with you this awesome flowchart created by GCF Learn Free which maps out and the popular blogging platforms you can select to host your classroom blog. This flowchart comes within a series of posts entitled “Blog Basics” that cover everything teachers need to know before embarking on an educational blogging experience. The flowchart below will help you understand the affordances and technicalities of the different blogging platforms out there. You can check the original full size flowchart from this link.