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Contents contributed and discussions participated by Katie Upah

Katie Upah

Life in a 21st-Century English Class - 3 views

  • To begin with, I don’t lecture. My students don’t take notes, at least not in the traditional sense, and we don’t read a novel and simply answer the questions.
  • It also means my students don’t acquire knowledge just for the sake of acquiring it. They need to do something with it — that’s where “project-based” comes into play.
  • Finally, technology is embedded into the structure of all we do. It’s part of how we research, how we capture information, and how we display our learning. It’s never an accessory tacked on at the end.
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  • One of the most important things we can do is teach our students how to use social media wisely, and how social media can be used for social good.
  • Instead, inquiry and technology are a natural part of our English classes. It’s what my students have come to expect and have started to design themselves.  Instead, of saying, “hand in your assignments,” I say, “publish your assignments and send me the link.” They think about connecting and sharing their learning in the larger world.
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    This teacher describes how she transformed her classroom into a 21st century learning environment for her students.
Katie Upah

A Guidebook for Social Media in the Classroom | Edutopia - 4 views

  • Surely students will post thousands of status updates, pictures, and blogs in their lifetime.
  • If you're going to ignore social media in the classroom, then throw out the ISTE Standards for Students and stop pretending that you're 21st century. Stop pretending that you're helping low-income children overcome the digital divide if you aren't going to teach them how to communicate online.
  • Don't mistake social media for socializing. They're different -- just as kids talking as they work in groups or talking while hanging out are different.
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    This article asserts why it is important for teachers to address social media in the classroom and 12 ways teachers are using it.
Katie Upah

Twitter in the English Classroom - 0 views

  • high school students use Twitter to respond, in character, to issues and events in Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible. Students tweeted in real-time while reading the play as a class. They needed to consider tone, language and personality of their assigned character in order to respond appropriately.
  • Their results demonstrated that students had significant motivation to participate creatively in communicating their learning processes.
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    This article discusses a research study performed on high school students in which they utilized Twitter to respond to characters, issues, and events while reading a play as a class.
Katie Upah

How Do You Define 21st-Century Learning? - Education Week - 1 views

  • The term "21st-century skills" is generally used to refer to certain core competencies such as collaboration, digital literacy, critical thinking, and problem-solving that advocates believe schools need to teach to help students thrive in today's world.
  • The research, to date, has provided no evidence that having either computers or whiteboards in schools has any positive effect on students’ reading and writing proficiencies.
  • Twenty-first-century learning means that students master content while producing, synthesizing, and evaluating information from a wide variety of subjects and sources with an understanding of and respect for diverse cultures. Students demonstrate the three Rs, but also the three Cs: creativity, communication, and collaboration.
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  • Embracing a 21st-century learning model requires consideration of those elements that could comprise such a shift: creating learners who take intellectual risks, fostering learning dispositions, and nurturing school communities where everyone is a learner.
  • Twenty-first-century technology should be seen as an opportunity to acquire more knowledge, not an excuse to know less.
  • We need classroom leaders setting an ambitious vision, rallying others to work hard to achieve it, planning and executing to ensure student learning, and defining the very notion of teaching as changing the life paths of students.
  • Twenty-first-century learning will ultimately be “learner-driven.”
  • But being able to Google is no substitute for true understanding. Students still need to know and deeply understand the history that brought them and our nation to where we are today.
  • Technology allows for 24/7 access to information, constant social interaction, and easily created and shared digital content. In this setting, educators can leverage technology to create an engaging and personalized environment to meet the emerging educational needs of this generation.
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    This article showcases 11 different education experts and their definitions of 21st-century learning.
Katie Upah

Nine Strategies for Reaching All Learners in English - 0 views

  • Readers and Writers Workshop is an instructional model that focuses on students as learners, as well as readers and writers in practice. As readers and writers, students are mentored, working in a supportive and collaborative environment with their mentor on touchstone texts.
  • As a middle school ELA teacher, I continue to collaborate with my peers in the building and across the school district. I participate in planning and designing instruction, inquiry-based studies, and collaborative coaching and learning. These activities have provided me with a repertoire of research-based best practices to engage the readers and writers in my ELA classroom.
  • From the first day of school, we encourage students to choose the books they read. We model how to choose and review a book for reading. We also encourage students to choose books at their independent reading level rather than at their frustration or difficult level. Students read for 30 minutes daily and complete an entry on the reading.
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  • Provide instruction in basic reading strategies using reciprocal teaching practice that includes predicting, visualizing, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing.
  • Teach students to mark or highlight text for main ideas and also for answers to specific questions. Text annotation is an excellent method to make meaning and provide evidence to support answers.
  • Use t-chart graphic organizers to have them identify specific lines from a text and explain their thoughts about the lines.
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    This article lists 9 general strategies to appeal to all students in the English classroom, both in the middle school and the high school.
Katie Upah

50 Useful Links For Learning & Teaching The English Language - 4 views

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    This article provides 50 links to websites, articles, organizations, learning resources, teaching resources, references, and communities and blogs.
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