How would you create opportunities for students to practice dialogue? Perhaps it’s talk between two people or two characters in a book or a conversation between you and yourself? MMhh…now that would be interesting. A bit of reflective action produced in video format. And practicing a host of literacy elements to boot. The tool you…
Tag: writing
App #8 of “10 Apps to Countdown Season”
App #8: Image editors are the tools that help your ordinary images dance off pages. IrfanView is a free program (on your school computers) that does a variety of basics like compression. I love the “batch conversion” feature when I need a ton of images resized for the web. (click here for instructions) When I need to…
App #7 of “10 Apps to Countdown Season”
App #7: How do you present information from research projects? Usually we default to PowerPoint. Another option is Haiku Deck for all platforms. I wrote about this app for the iPad before (click here). The presentation software offers a beautiful, yet simplistic way to to share information. Each slide offers options for layout, format (bullet points), images (including…
App #5 of “10 Apps to Countdown Season”
App #5: Many of us have our students write stories and then illustrate the text. While the artists in the bunch do flips and cartwheels (and I’ve had those students), what happens to those who struggle with drawing the simplest shapes. You know what I mean… somehow my tree just doesn’t quite look like a…
App #3 of “10 Apps to Countdown Season”
App #3: What happens when you bring together an ipad, an app, words, thoughts, and sound? Why Book Creator of course. This app for the ipad is a thing of beauty when it comes to creating ebooks. Images can be drawn or photographed and inserted along with text. As well, audio can enhance both the background environment…
How Do You Communicate?
More than any other initiative we’ve been a part, none have reached the level of activity as our wordpress blogging platform. This pilot grew from humble beginnings with the simple goal of “tell your story”. Our question – what would happen if we gave our people an opportunity to open a window into classrooms or…
To Blog Or Not To Blog
Why blog? Your current process of emailing parents or sending written notices home works just fine! Why change you ask. What makes blogging so unique? Blogging accomplishes many goals that cannot be accomplished as well as email, paper notices or student planner comments. Yes, blogging is an easy way to share homework and expectations for projects…
Informed Choices for Writing Workshop
Even though you may love Writers Workshop, the challenge comes in keeping track of all the confer/revision comments for planning purposes. We know that immediate feedback, specific and targeted will support our students’ approximation of great writing. How do you keep your ongoing comments on students? (I used to use post-it notes – hundreds of post-its.)…
Why Write?
Sometimes a picture says it all… While using ComicLife is a powerful tool to create comics, sometimes what’s required is a tool that has its own built in media library. There are many out on the web to choose. The one above is from LearnEnglishKids by the British Council. A range of panels, backgrounds, characters…
December – The Gift of Time
It’s December and most every hour is in high gear, trying to get those last minute projects merged in with winter festivities. And just this weekend, we got our first whiff of snow. Magic is in the air among the smell of gingerbread houses, mandarin oranges and other treats popping up in all locations. Not…
Power of the Many – Writers Writing
Thinking extends to greater possibilities when we’re together supporting and learning from each other. Our second session of dynamic writers took us through a series of activities to explore ideas of “writing, what it means to write in the digital age, identified the principles of writing workshop, … We had a bit of time to…
The Writing Workshop Series – (Session #1)
Here we go – another exciting ride through the intricacies of Writers Workshop. And you knew this was coming – with a twist. As we navigate the environment of web2, we come to understand just how complex the writing process has become. I like to think of this as opportunities to offer more “choice…
Welcome back September
Welcome back September. And what a spectacular summer it has been – Olympics energy, warm sunny weather, family and friends laughter. Though it’s always great to get away and get recharged, I look forward to the start of each new year. A new year to test out some crazy ideas (yes I’ve read and reread…
Blogging – Empowering Students Through Voice
I’ve been talking a lot about creating “communities of practice” where students see themselves as writers and that their voice matters. It is not by accident that this happens. Rather, conscientious design create the conditions for freedom of ideas to flow in a risk-taking environment. Support and scaffolding occurs at each step merging both online…
Research and the Power of Google Docs
If you dropped by recently, you’ll notice that we’ve been using Google Docs (Google Apps for Education) to enhance the writing process. (For more, select the category – Literacy – Writing Process.) And we’ve had amazing results. Now Google Docs has “upped the bar” and added an integrated research feature. HOW IT WORKS In Docs, let’s say you wrote your beginning…
Celebrating Writers and Learners
Our final learning session of Writers Workshop using Google Docs turned out better than I could have ever imagined. We have such a wonderful group of imaginative and fearless educators! Here’s how the session unfolded. We started with a video from Ted that I discovered on spoken word poetry by Sarah Kay. This spoke to me about how important it is to offer…
“Nudging” Writers with Google Docs
There are times when I have to pinch myself to make sure it’s really happening. Two instances brought the power of writing using Google Docs “front and center”. Watching it unfold was thrilling to say the least. One instance was with a teacher in our workshop series – we’ve been working on using commenting as a way…
Writers Workshop – Each Step in the Process
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” I was reminded of this quote as we worked through our recent session on ‘Writers Workshop‘. Not only the global concepts of ‘writers workshop’ (lots of time to write and explore, choice and voice, conferring during and not after the fact…) but what this…
Writing Territories to Launch Choice in Writing – Session 2
“I don’t have anything to write about…” How many times have we all heard that? Using a structure like “Writing Territories” provides a powerful way to start scribbling their ideas. These ideas can be listed or supported through collaborative conversation. This mini lesson (* are specific and allow time for students to share their samples to…
Webspiration in the Classroom
If you’ve used Inspiration, you may want to venture to use the web version which will allow your students to access this Visual Thinking, Concept Mapping & Writing tool from home. Webspiration is an ONLINE tool with features that assist students in capturing ideas, organizing information, diagramming processes, and developing writing. Files can move from Inspiration to Webspiration seemlessly…