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As I found this article on reflective journaling, I thought what a great idea for an English middle or high school classroom. The point is to have students sit and reflect about their learning for that day, week, month, and even the entire school year. By thinking back on their learning process students and even adults can begin to understand how their knowledge has grown over a specific period of time. The article quotes the following, "you don't know what you know till you've written it down." What is a reflective journal? A reflective journal - often called a learning journal - is a steadily growing document that you (the learner) write, to record the progress of your learning. You can keep a learning journal for any course that you undertake, or even for your daily work.

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For my first journal, I read this article about multi-sensory language arts instruction.  It claims that if you can provide students with visual, auditory, and tactile-kinesthetic methods for learning, they are more likely to be successful.  One of the things that I agreed with most strongly that it seems many educators today shy away from is the idea that students should "practice to the point of automatization."  Automatic reading is not the key to comprehension but it is surely a necessary foundation for meaningful reading.  When I was a student, we practiced grammar and spelling until it was second-nature and generally my current abilities testify to that.  However, we have steered away from correctness in favor of sparing student egos.  I do not think that it has done them any good.  I wholeheartedly agree with this article that we MUST train our students to be good readers and writers. 

More emphasis is being placed on fluency. You can't understand what a text means if you can't figure out what it says. We don't want students to simple "bark at print" but there has to be a balance between fluency and comprehension.Was there anything in the article you would apply to your own teaching?

Fascinating!

Knight Cite is a website that creates citations for reference page of papers. You select the style and type and fill in the fields it asks for. After that all you have to do is copy the citation into your document.

OK- so maybe this is a stretch for extra credit, but even if it isn't worth any extra points - still cool to share - hopefully all you "real" teachers unlike myself know about this!  Any k-12 student that reads 5 books gets 2 for 1 pricing on tickets plus no ticketmaster fees - yay for sports and reading!

Not a stretch at all, Gina! The whole idea is to share what you find. If its new to you, it's likely new to someone else. In my case, it was a good reminder! :)

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"Teachers succeed as teachers only when their students succeed as learners" This website is intended to assist middle to high school students with nonfiction writing. This website has resources and strategies for teaching nonfiction to teens and adults. 'You Can Teach Writing' consists of blogs, writing topics, teacher services, student services, books, and events. If you teach older students this is great for some ideas :)

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Especially if you are a Master's student, I highly recommend getting your own copy of the APA guide. When you do your capstone, you will deal with a wider variety of citation issues. I also recommend spending a few dollars more for the spiral edition. I'll bring mine to class and it might convince you. :)

"Reading Rockets has gathered some of the most important research and reports here in one place....Whenever possible, we've provided a link to a free, online version of the research article, study, or book. In other cases, you'll find a link to a publisher, journal, or online bookstore where you can purchase the resource. You may also want to check with your university or public library, which often have access to online databases and journals where research articles and reports can be found."

A starting point for locating reading research.