Group items tagged

WritingFix is a teacher resource website that contains lessons and ideas for any educator to freely use in their K-12 classrooms. * Writing Prompts: WritingFix features a variety of writing prompts, all designed to quickly get a student or a whole classroom writing in their journals or writers notebooks. Hover over "Writing Prompts" in the blue menu bar (upper left corner) to see the categories of writing prompts that we feature. * Writing Lessons inspired by Mentor Texts: WritingFix features a variety of lessons, all inspired by different mentor texts. Hover over "Mentor Text Lessons " in the blue menu bar (upper left corner) to see the categories of writing prompts that we feature. * Writing Traits: WritingFix features a variety of resources that are inspired by the six writing traits. These include posters, post-its, one-page resources, and thorough lessons. Hover over "6 Trait Materials" in the blue menu bar (upper left corner) to see the specific pages dedicated to 6-trait topics. * Writing Across the Curriculum: WritingFix challenges educators to teach writing not just during language arts and reading time, but also during science, history, math, and other blocks of classroom time. When a student can write about a topic, he/she can be pushed to show deeper thinking about the topic. Hover over "Across the Curriculum" in the blue menu bar (upper left corner) to see the variety of resources we offer for writing outside of language arts. * WritingFix Inservice Classes: At present, we only offer our classes in Northern Nevada; all of the resources we post, however, come with enough explanation so that any teacher could make sense of the tool without having to attend our face-to-face version of the class. Our Northern Nevada classes are very popular and well-reviewed by participants. Hover over "WritingFix Inservices" in the blue menu bar (upper left corner) to jump directly to any of our webpages dedicated to specific inservice workshops.

"Figment is an online community where young adults and teens come together to create, discover, and share new reading and writing. Figment is also an innovative, exciting teaching tool, already being used in classrooms, libraries, and other educational settings around the country to inspire and engage young readers and writers. And what are Figment Groups? Figment offers two types of groups-public open groups for our general users to connect over anything from poetry writing to Bieber-mania; and private closed groups for our educator community. Private groups look very similar to the public groups, but with added benefits. You can limit membership to your class, library, or organizational community, and other Figment users can't see inside your group. Through these user-friendly, intuitive virtual writers' workshops: Students can create and revise writings in the safe space of a private group, sharing their works-in-progress, as well as commenting and reviewing, only with other members and their teacher. Teachers can post and update assignments, share links to relevant materials around the web, and monitor student writing. Using the group discussion tool, students and teachers can have class discussions, ask questions, and share outside resources. Once complete, students can publish their writings to the entire Figment community, therein taking advantage of one of the largest authentic audiences for student writing on the web."

he Swedish fairy tale "The King's Choice", published on the Web site Whootie Owl's Stories to Grow By, is an excellent tool for teaching students to make predictions. Print out a copy of the story to read aloud to students. Before reading the story, you might mark the following places in the story where you will want to pause to ask What do you think will happen next? You might have students share their predictions orally, or you might have them record their predictions in writing on a sheet of paper or in their writing/reading journals. Pause after the opening paragraph, which ends Any of the councilors could rise to become a fine leader, thought the King, but which one had the necessary inner strength? to ask students which of the King's councilors they think might be best suited to take the King's place. Pause after paragraph 7, which ends The wind whirled about, wrapping his woodcutter's garments tightly around him. Meanwhile, the boat nearly tipped over and the voices on board shrieked. to ask students to predict what will happen next in the story. Pause after paragraph 18, which ends The King continued, "I will announce my decision at a royal banquet to be held the day after tomorrow." to ask students to predict what will happen the next day? Who will show up for the King's royal banquet, since all of the councilors have already committed to being at the woodcutter's feast? Who might be chosen at the royal banquet to take over the King's role? Have students record the next -- final -- prediction in writing; they should record the reasons behind their predictions, including information from the parts of the story already read that lead them to think that way. Pause after paragraph 27, which reads An hour later, a frazzled Lukas was led before the King's throne. to ask students to predict what might happen next in the story. After sharing the fairy tale "The King's Choice" with students and giving them several opportunities to predict what will happen

"1.Charlotte's Web by E. B. White My son's school year started off with the wonderful classic Charlotte's Web. In an era where school's budgets are being slashed and creative arts are first to land on the chopping block, it's nice to see that many of the books on this list have themes of a creative talent saving the day. In this case, it's Charlotte's artistry with web making as well as her knowledge of words! My son said, "Charlotte's Web is about how Fern's pig Wilbur was going to be killed but then Charlotte (the spider) met Wilbur the day before he was going to be killed and made a plan to save Wilbur. I liked the book and my favorite character was the Gander goose." (My son seems to love the minor characters as you'll notice in his reviews!) 2.Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo If you ask me what my favorite childrens' book in the entire world is, I'll always say this one. It's a perfect chapter book in my mind where whole adds up to much more than the sum of the parts. Every character is memorable with a story to tell and somehow all these stories meld together into a satisfying ending with an uplifting message. My son says, "Because of Winn Dixie was a extremely good book and when we read it, had everybody in the class wrapped inside the book. (not literally). When we watched the movie, I liked the book a lot better because I got to see my own vision of the story and my favorite character was Otis from Gertrude's Pets." 3.The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate My oldest's third grade teacher flagged me down two years ago to tell me how much she loved this chapter book. It then went on to win the Newbery. She said that what stood out for her was voice. She's right. Ivan the Gorilla's voice draws you right in. He's like an old soul that you can't help but befriend. In some ways this book reminds me of Charlotte's Web so I like the pairing so kids can compare and contrast. Both books revolve

PaperRater.com is a free resource, developed and maintained by linguistics professionals and graduate students. PaperRater.com is used by schools and universities in over 46 countries to help students improve their writing.

Here is a list of Before, During, and After Reading / Writing strategies with explanations from PDE's website.

"By Guy Gilchrist, Syndicated Cartoonist and Children's Book Author and Joyce Melton Pagés, Ed.D. Editor's Note: Guy Gilchrist is the author (or co-author with his brother) of the Nancy comic strip, the Muppets comic strip, and several other popular comic strips. In addition, he has written over forty children's books. In honor of National Cartoonist's Day, Guy Gilchrist has written an article to help children learn how writers get their ideas. Teachers and parents may want to share parts of Mr. Gilchrist's article with children. I have written the introduction to Mr. Gilchrist's article. I also wrote the section which follows his article about helping children find ideas to write about. -JMP"

"Story Me is a free iPad app for turning your pictures into comic strips. Story Me provides more than a dozen layout options to which you can add pictures from your iPad's camera roll and or from your Facebook account. After importing pictures into a template you can apply cartoon effects to the pictures. To complete the creation process just tap on your imported pictures to add speech bubbles and captions. Your completed Story Me comics can be saved to your iPad's camera roll, emailed, printed, or shared on Twitter and Facebook. You do not need to create an account on Story Me in order to use it. Story Me is easy to use and because it doesn't require users to create an account it is a good choice for elementary school use. Pictures that students have taken with their iPads or found online can be good writing prompts. Importing those pictures into Story Me to create a comic strip could be a good way to get students interested in a creative writing assignment."

Play around with ideas. Get inspiration. Capture fresh new writing possibilities. All ideas can be saved and developed off-line as well as printed!

"Progressive Phonics is an all-in-one reading program that is easy, fun, and totally FREE---that's right, totally and completely free! And with Progressive Phonics, ANYONE can teach a child to read and write in just a few minutes a day, which makes it ideal for parents, teachers, tutors, volunteers and home-schoolers."

Formerly Teen Space on the Internet Public Library

Shmoop's approach is an online version of Cliff's Notes with links to other resources. Their mission is to "make learning and writing more fun and relevant for students in the digital age." "Shmoop wants to help you become a better lover (of literature an