Diigo provides a great way to model and practice reading informational text and to engage students in collaborative virtual discussions. Many know Delicious and Diigo as social bookmarking sites. Diigo is so much more! Find a website that you want your students to read. Then use Diigo to model the active reading process and make notations right on the web site by using the Diigo tools of Sticky Notes and Highlighting. Paste a sticky note at the beginning of the text to remind students to ask themselves, “What do you already know about this topic?” Also, add a sticky note reminding students to note their purpose for reading. Diigo’s highlighting tools include four different colors. Use the various colors and model how to find the main ideas and highlight only the essential words in yellow. Supporting details, key vocabulary words, and confusing parts can each be highlighted with different colors. Consistency in highlighting color will provide another cue for students about text structure. Diigo serves as an excellent tool for modeling the pre-reading process, for pointing out text features and structure, and to practice active reading by making connections and asking questions. Once students are ready for independent practice, Diigo can be taken to another level. Educator accounts allow teachers to create classes. Each student in the class can annotate and highlight the assigned web site article independently. Connections, questions, and comments are then shared with the teacher and the class. “Sticky note” or “Read and Say Something” conversations can then be conducted through Diigo.
Tony Richards on 04 Feb 10"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo
