Discourse communitySwales (1990) found that a discourse communityhas a broadly agreed set of common public goalshas mechanisms of intercommunication among its membersuses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedbackutilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative utterance of its aimshas acquired some specific lexis (specialized terminology, acronyms)has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.  

Rating Characteristics 4 Exceptional. The blog post is focused and coherently integrates examples with explanations or analysis. The post demonstrates awareness of its own limitations or implications, and it considers multiple perspectives when appropriate. The entry reflects in-depth engagement with the topic. 3 Satisfactory. The blog post is reasonably focused, and explanations or analysis are mostly based on examples or other evidence. Fewer connections are made between ideas, and though new insights are offered, they are not fully developed. The post reflects moderate engagement with the topic. 2 Underdeveloped. The blog post is mostly description or summary, without consideration of alternative perspectives, and few connections are made between ideas. The post reflects passing engagement with the topic. 1 Limited. The blog post is unfocused, or simply rehashes previous comments, and displays no evidence of student engagement with the topic. 0 No Credit. The blog post is missing or consists of one or two disconnected sentences.

Can be used as pre-post assessment in punctuation

SIOP-Based Strategy Posters

The best texters are the best spellers, according to David Crystal.

Challenging vocabulary. Correct answers help feed the hungry.

A remarkable collection of quality literature, available in multiple formats. 

A Brief List of Genres - Useful for MGRPs

The Phi Delta Kappan by Alfie Kohn is old (2001). However, the author's argument against standardized testing continues to inspire.

Online test creator + scoring and analysis.

"# Supporting Diigo-based fine-grained discussions connected to a specific part of a webpage - which opens up the possibility for more meaningful exchanges where teachers can embed all kinds of scaffolding into web-based materials with Diigo: * sharing questions for discussion (either online, or to prepare students for an in-class discussion); * highlighting critical features; asking students to define words, terms, or concepts in their own words/language; providing definitions of difficult/new terms (in various media, such as embedding an image in the sticky note); * providing models of interpreting materials. * using the highlighting/sticky note feature to "mark up" our "textbook" (blog) with comments, observations and corrections to specific words, phrases or paragraphs of each post. * Aggregating bookmarks the students make of websites valuable to their learning, and use the highlighting feature and sticky notes as if they were like the Track Changes feature in MS Word which lends itself more towards collaboration and the iterative process. "

"It's almost a New Year, and once again it's your one-day-only opportunity to rummage through Comicraft's remainder bin and snap up Comicrazy for a mere twenty dollars and ten cents rather than $395! And, yes, yes, yes, and thrice YES, ALL of our fonts will be on sale for $20.10, even the ones that usually cost $19! We're THAT crazy! Those of you who have enjoyed our sale in previous years know that it begins at midnight December 31st and ends midnight January 1st wherever you are in the world, so technically New Year's at Comicraft is a 36 hour day! Maybe longer, I didn't look it up or anything."

Great deal on custom comic fonts (some costing hundreds of dollars) on January 1st, only. All fonts are $20. Discerning Powerpoint presenters use these.

Dan Roam's Visual Thinking Workbook