I wasn’t quite sure how to title this, swinging back and forth from “Passionate Conversations” and “Growing Readers”, both of which I believe Lit Circles to be. I’ve been working with a fabulous teacher on engaging her class with Literature Circles. Oh not the process with all the jobs/roles (which I’ve done many times before), but the approach…
Tag: strategies
Little Tools that Do Big Things
Do you ever want to do something with your class and the whole technology thing is just too much? I get that a lot so I’m always on the hunt for tools that “take the mystery out of things” and just work. Remember that we are also in a world of constant change so…
Choice Words
Things happen when you’ve return from a conference. New ideas attach with old ones and a host of “how does this all connect” is sifted through a lens of “what if…”. At FETC, keynote speaker Michael Wesch (watch TED talk) talked about the fast rise of the new technologies (Youtube 2005; Twitter 2006) resulting in a new culture…
Digging Deeper – How to Introduce Blog Commenting
How to Develop Blog Writing: Brainstorm Session Sometimes our questions may be “how do we start our classes blogging past the basics?”. Here is one way that may help to introduce the students to the idea of commenting. (We did this at our recent SCIT gathering.) This starts in the classroom with good questions. Record…
Cultivating Conversation – Spoken Ink
Moving from the last post on Reimagining Conversation, I wanted to dig deeper into the importance of oral language as foundational to literacy development. We are creatures of connection and we use language to communicate our needs, ideas, feelings and discoveries. The abilities to express ourselves grow over time and practice…lots of practice. Yes, I know…
Reimagine the Conversations
Many of you have dipped your toes into cyberspace by launching your blogs, whether they are class blogs, specialty group blogs or professional blogs. They all have something in common – a place to gather, connect and have conversation. The key factor being the conversation or communication. The flexibility of the tool is that it allows for…
Purposeful Play
“To play on purpose is to take risks. To challenge what you know. To ride the edge between what is and what might be, what never was and what should’ve been..” — Bud Hunt Over a week ago we launched this year’s SCIT (Skills and Curriculum Integration of Technology), a district program to support teachers on their journey of integrating technologies in their classrooms. All…
Digital Writing – Digital Teaching – Session 1
Digital Writing is… Session One (February 9, 2011): “If we engage students in real writing tasks and we use technology in such a way that it complements their innate need to find purposes and audiences for their work, we can have them engaged in a digital writing process that focuses first on the writer, then…
Words Their Way – Shedding Light on Process
Words Their Way is a program that offers a developmental curriculum for phonics/spelling instruction, reading fluency and vocabulary development. The hands-on activities engage students as they actively categorize their ‘word sorts’ and the assessment inventory provides a clear indicator of where each student is in the process of word development. We’ve been working with a…
How Readable is the Information?
Readability may be defined as ‘reading ease’ or how content can be successfully understood. Teachers know that comprehension is dependent on many variables, one of which is the readability level of information whether online or in print. It matters little if you have the best list of websites for research but the students have difficulties…
Words Their Way – Making Connections…Session1
Today we started our first of 4 learning sessions on Words Their Way, by Invernizzi, Bear, Templeton and Johnston. In a nutshell, the program provides a developmental curriculum for phonics/spelling instruction, while also promoting reading fluency and vocabulary development. Its hands-on approach marries well with what we know about how the brain uses categories to…
Writers Workshop Learning Series #3 – Mini Lessons
Once again we gathered as a group to explore the writing process. Some things we tackled this time: how to create colour coded folders and move our google documents into those folders (AAAhh, you can just feel the sigh of relief with this organizational structure) how to use the revision history as a way to…
Kurzweil #2: Annotating – Making Thinking Visible
When you read anything, many things happen in your head that nobody notices. But good readers know and can identify these things. Sometimes we call them “movies in our head, thinking abouts, connections, questions or just plain wonders…”. The Study Skills toolbar in Kurzweil 3000 allows great flexibility in making this thinking visible so we…
Writers Workshop Learning Series – Session 1
This first session reviewed some of the basic tenets of Writers Workshop process. Much of the details came from Nancy Atwell’s work. We looked at the importance of setting purpose and identifying what is important to write about. We all have stories to tell. Consider the following: What I write about (topic) Who I write…