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From Karen Powers' blog. She is a teacher librarian, reader and part-time writer. These rules are "everything you need to know about turning your child into a reader".

Shmoop wants to make you a better lover (of literature, history, poetry and writing). See many sides to the argument. Find your writing groove. Understand how lit and history are relevant today. We want to show your brain a good time.Our mission: To make learning and writing more fun and relevant for students in the digital age. Shmoop content is written primarily by Ph.D. and Masters students from top universities, like Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, and Yale. Many of our writers have taught at the high school and college levels. We hold ourselves to the highest academic standards. We source our work (see the "Citations" tab in each history section, or in-line citation links throughout our literature and poetry content). Teachers and students should feel confident to cite Shmoop as a source in essays and papers.

Writing with Writers units are appropriate for students in grades 9-12. Follow the following links for specific guides for each unit: Biography Writing; Descriptive Writing; Myths; Poetrywith Karla Kuskin; News; Speech; Book Review

The Critical Theory Website is a WWW research resource for those interested in the Critical Theory project. Firmly based in Frankfurt School thought, this site maintains a collection of articles, excerpts, and chapters from many contemporary writers of and about Critical Theory.

Formative Assessment, assessing student performance routinely as instruction unfolds can transform teaching and learning. Writer actively experimented with giving more feedback to my students, using rubrics, models of student work, and having students assess their own work as well as that of their peers. Problem is Baltimore County school administrators have ordered all teachers to begin using a grading system next month that will require them to judge whether each of their students has mastered more than 100 specific skills. Elementary school teachers have classes of 25 kids while highschool teachers can have more than 100 students. Over the course of a year, many teachers would have to make as many as 10,000 marks indicating whether a child had learned a task.

Digital strategist and writer Sara Rosso had an opportunity to do a one-on-one interview with Cory Doctorow. Here is and excerpt of that interview - E-books, DRM and Universal Formats.

Inform is a design system for interactive fiction based on natural language. It is a radical reinvention of the way interactive fiction is designed, guided by contemporary work in semantics and by the practical experience of some of the world's best-known writers of IF.

Confusing Words is a collection of 3210 words that are troublesome to readers and writers. Words are grouped according to the way they are most often confused or misused.

"This blog is maintained by the editors of Children's Book Insider, the Newsletter for Children's Writers, and was created to help demystify the process of becoming a published children's author. They provide tips, full-length articles, links to writing resources and industry news and more."

Helping students to cultivate the skills needed for writing is often about cultivating a love of writing. Every student needs to be able to express themselves clearly, concisely and intelligently, whatever they are going to end up doing in later life. "The best way to help them develop those skills is to make writing personal and give them a vested interest in communication. Blogs have become one of the most popular website formats in recent years. Blogging websites have become the essential ways for many people to broadcast their personal stories, challenges and insights. This has created both a new generation of budding writers as well as a generation with a keen interest in the stories of others. Blogging offers an immersive experience. Students are simply encouraged to begin a blog chronicling their life story or a subject that ignites their interest. That's when the skills are picked up and developed as a matter of course. The initial blogging assignment should be simple, but at the same time offer a bit of a challenge." Post offers some useful advice about blogging.

Learning to write is one of the fundamental skills we gain from our time at school. Writing is one of the cornerstones of learning and we devote significant time and energy towards its mastery. Skilled writing is a mark of an educated individual and a skill required for academic success. But in the modern world what makes a skilled writer? What has changed about writing and what literary skills should we focus our attention on. 

This week I joined with teachers, students, researchers and policy writers at Melbourne University to discuss student voice. This conference was hosted by Social Education Victoria and made possible by the conference partners, The University of Melbourne, Education and Training Victoria, Foundation for Young Australians and Connect. Over three days, participants engaged in rigorous dialogue about the significance of student voice and what is required to ensure its benefits are maximised for all.

"While some education conferences are genuinely inspiring, others serve mostly to demonstrate how even intelligent educators can be remarkably credulous, nodding agreeably at descriptions of programs that ought to elicit fury or laughter, avidly copying down hollow phrases from a consultant's PowerPoint presentation, awed by anything that's borrowed from the business world or involves digital technology. Many companies and consultants thrive on this credulity, and also on teachers' isolation, fatalism, and fear (of demands by clueless officials to raise test scores at any cost). With a good dose of critical thinking and courage, a willingness to say "This is bad for kids and we won't have any part of it," we could drive these outfits out of business -- and begin to take back our schools."

Article summarizing recent finding that shows students using technology especially for writing have better core literacy skills. "Children who blog, text or use social networking websites are more confident about their writing skills: - The National Literacy Trust.