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Figurative language, six traits, word walls, building vocab, graphic organizers. Great site!

Figurative language, six traits, word walls, building vocab, graphic organizers. Great site!

Here's a run-down of more than 60 great how-to sites and guides covering everything from building a mashup to being more productive, creating a website and more.

Vocabulary Building for K-12 & ESL Students

The aim of this site is to help you gain the skills to build your own personal learning network (PLN)!

Building Vocabulary Skills The more words kids know, the more background knowledge they can bring to reading and writing tasks. How can we help our students learn new words?

Participating in an online discussion on events and issues in the news not only gives students a forum, but it also helps them build critical thinking, writing and news literacy skills and provides an opportunity to write for an authentic audience.

With Digication, students can easily publish their work online. A Digication e-Portfolio can be created in less than 5 minutes. Instead of spending time building and managing complex websites, students (and their teachers!) can focus on learning and reflection.

Chronology of Events in the History of English pre-600 A.D. THE PRE-ENGLISH PERIOD ca. 3000 B.C. (or 6000 B.C?) Proto-Indo-European spoken in Baltic area. (or Anatolia?) ca. 1000 B.C. After many migrations, the various branches of Indo-European have become distinct. Celtic becomes most widespread branch of I.E. in Europe; Celtic peoples inhabit what is now Spain, France, Germany, Austria, eastern Europe, and the British Isles. 55 B.C. Beginning of Roman raids on British Isles. 43 A.D. Roman occupation of Britain. Roman colony of "Britannia" established. Eventually, many Celtic Britons become Romanized. (Others continually rebel). 200 B.C.-200 A.D. Germanic peoples move down from Scandinavia and spread over Central Europe in successive waves. Supplant Celts. Come into contact (at times antagonistic, at times commercial) with northward-expanding empire of Romans. Early 5th century. Roman Empire collapses. Romans pull out of Britain and other colonies, attempting to shore up defense on the home front; but it's useless. Rome sacked by Goths. Germanic tribes on the continent continue migrations west and south; consolidate into ever larger units. Those taking over in Rome call themselves "Roman emperors" even though the imperial administration had relocated to Byzantium in the 300s. The new Germanic rulers adopted the Christianity of the late Roman state, and began what later evolved into the not-very-Roman "Holy Roman Empire". ca. 410 A.D. First Germanic tribes arrive in England. 410-600 Settlement of most of Britain by Germanic peoples (Angles, Saxons, Jutes, some Frisians) speaking West Germanic dialects descended from Proto-Germanic. These dialects are distantly related to Latin, but also have a sprinkling of Latin borrowings due to earlier cultural contact with the Romans on the continent. Celtic peoples, most of whom are Christianized, are pushed increasingly (despite occasional violent uprisings) into the marginal areas of Britain: Ireland, Scotland, Wales.

The problem with 40 students is that there is no way to read (much less comment upon) every post if every student is posting every week. I am toying then with a rotation model (inspired by Randy Bass), in which students are divided into five groups of eight students, cycling through these five roles: * Role 1 - Students are "first readers," posting initial questions and insights about the reading to the class blog by Monday morning * Role 2 - Students are "respondents," building upon, disagreeing with, or clarifying the first readers' posts by class time on Tuesday * Role 3 - Students are "synthesizers," mediating and synthesizing the dialogue between first readers and respondents by Thursday * Role 4 - Students are responsible for the week's class notes (see next section on Wikis) * Role 5 - Students have this week "off" in terms of blogging and the wiki I like the rotation model because each group of students is reading for and reacting to something different. The shifting positionality affords them greater traction, offers greater variety, and guarantees a dialogue without comments from myself.

[DOC] Instructions for Classroom Dynamic Criteria Mapping Instructions for Classroom Dynamic Criteria Mapping © 2005 Bob Broad Dynamic Criteria Mapping (DCM) is a process by which you and your students can discover what you, the instructor, value in student work. DCM yields a more empirically grounded, more detailed, and more useful account of your values than traditional rubrics can. The process is a streamlined form of grounded theory (as summarized by Strauss and Corbin in Basics of Qualitative Research, Sage 1998). Here is a brief set of instructions by which you can try classroom DCM. Read What We Really Value: Beyond Rubrics in Teaching and Assessing Writing by Bob Broad (Utah State University Press, 2003). The book offers historical and theoretical background on DCM, a detailed example of DCM in action, and more specific instructions on how to undertake the process at both the classroom and programmatic levels. Collect data. Once you have handed back to your students two or three substantial sets of responses to their work, ask your students to gather together those responses and bring them to class on the appointed day. Ask students to prepare by noting specific comments you made, in response to specific aspects of their work, that show something(s) you value. Note: you show what you value both in those qualities whose presence you praise and in those qualities whose absence you lament. On the appointed day, ask students to work together to generate a long list of qualities, features, or elements of their work that you have shown you value. Ask for illustrations or quotations that demonstrate each value they identify. Ask for passages or excerpts from their work that demonstrate those values. Analyze the data. After you and your students have created a large "pile" of evaluative statements and indicators, it is time to analyze the data to create a representation ("map") of your values. The key is not to rush this

Build your objectives using Revised Bloom's Taxonomy.

Moulton makes some great points here about "any-century skills." I see his point in that balance needs to be achieved b/w so-called "new" skills and the traditional elements of literacy.

Great link for an activity on new literacies

How to Introduce Yourself in a Personal Interview. Basic facts to remember. Training conducted by BM English Speaking Mumbai, Maharashtra, India