TEMS520

Warren Woods Middle School - March 22, 23, 2012

Thank you for sharing! I will pass this along to my collegues too :)

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A nice printable teacher guide to plagiarism.

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I found this article while looking up info for my research paper. A high school in Alabama created a school wide literacy program to improve the literacy level of every student. Content teachers realized the impact and important role they have in teaching reading to their students. The principal and literacy committee made it their job to see each student as a face with needs, not a statistic. A great article for school improvement committees or just reading to show what committed high schools are capable of.

+2 Monica, Please list the citation info. Since you tagged it from within the secure library site, it does not go to the article. Thanks! :) (Note to self: learn more about DOI links.)

http://www.nassp.org/portals/0/content/48744.pdf This link should get to the article.

This website was build collaboratively by many Michigan ISD and RESA centers. The mission is to get all adolescents literate and learning. The resources and links on the pages are a collection of websites that have been either created or identified as useful in supporting adolescent literacy.

Found this website during our TEMS314 class. It is a great site that students can use to help them create persuasive websites. They log in using a specific teacher code, and their work is saved on the site, allowing the teacher to check it as the students work. It seems pretty neat, and I'd love to try it someday in my own classroom.

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Teaching spelling and vocabulary is easy with VocabularySpellingCity! Students can study and learn their word lists using vocabulary and spelling learning activities and games. Students can take final or practice spelling and vocabulary tests right on this engaging site. Premium games and automated student record keeping are available to Premium Members. I really like this because my 3rd grade daughter will write out words and help my first grade son with his spelling words. A great site to help kids spell

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This is a 25 minute video about how helping tutor students helps the community. Please take a few minutes and see what people are doing to help school age children read and write, hopefully you'll be as inspired as I was about spreading this message. 18 March 2008 Accepting his 2008 TED Prize, author Dave Eggers asks the TED community to engage with their local school. With spellbinding eagerness, he talks about how his 826 Valencia tutoring center inspired others around the world to open their own volunteer-driven, wildly creative writing labs.

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Jabberwocky is a poem written by Lewis Carroll. It is from his novel: Through the Looking Glass. It is written in nonsense language and has potential to be a fun poetry lesson for high school. The website offers ideas for using as well as background information on the poem. My kids knew about it from Johnny Depp in the current Alice in Wonderland movie. It might also work as a short piece of text for teaching some of the strategies we have talked about in class.

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In the last two months, I've had to go to one IEP meeting and one 504 plan meeting for two of my students. In these meetings, we discussed reading strategies to help these students be successful in my class. Even though I teach math, reading the questions for quizzes and tests is challenging for some of my students. I've been looking online for tips on how to write my tests so my students with learning disabilities will do better. I came across this website that gives tips on helping students with disabilities become better readers. Once I find a website or article that talks about accommodating tests for low level readers I will post that as well.

You might want to add tags for "assessment" "intervention" "LD" :) +2

Diversity Lesson Plans and Activities Elementary School Middle School High School Multicultural Education Research Guide For background information on multicultural education of all types and for all levels. This website provides countless lesson links on a wide variety of diversity issues. It has links to the excerpts it recommends you use as well as objectives and essential questions. If you are looking for a lesson for teaching diversity, this is the website for you!

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I found this really cool website from the University of Michigan that provides apps that help students who struggle with reading and writing. Apps like this are great because they are interactive and fun. Some of the apps are free on this website and some of them cost money. I think these apps would be a great way to supplement a lesson. With the majority of students having smart phones now, having your students work on this in class once in a while would be a fun lesson too.

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By: Richard Allington (2002) This article by Richard Allington provides a clear-eyed view of what he believes matters most in teaching kids to read - effective and expert teachers. It seems that, finally, those who make educational policy - at the local, state, and federal levels - have begun to recognize just how much good teachers matter. I found this article interesting. A few things were new to me, but never am against being reminded of "best practices" and things we know make good teachers, but tend to forget in our busy lives.

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Recalling the people along the way who suggested he couldn't change the world, Barack Obama told a group of young people gathered in 2007 at Cornell College in Iowa: "I have no doubt that in the face of impossible odds people who love their country can change it." This website shares a number of inspiring books that promote the idea of young people helping our communities. I think it is important to plant the seed in children of all ages that they CAN make a difference in our world!

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This site has interactive lessons to promote oral language in kindergarteners. It has slide shows and activities with pauses for discussion with a partner. I have used it with some of my kindergarten students I have in my oral language group. The categories covered are: families, friends, transportation, food, animals, neighborhood, weather, plants, amazing creatures, and I Know a Lot! It also incorporates some classification and matching games in some of the lessons.

We know oral language development is critical for early literacy. However, it is important for teachers of all grades to remember the importance of talk in learning--even for adults! +2

Excellent list of professional reference and resources on teaching reading. Thoughtful reviews written on each.

Although different opinions grumbled both sides in this article, I think it had a large nugget of truth attached to it.  For the last three years, a pilot program in NYC were taught to read using this Core Knowledge program.  Although a bit more complicated than this explanation, the Core Knowledge Program means that students primarily read non fiction books of their choosing in schools while teachers would conference from desk to desk with the students.  The study said it was most pronounced in kindergarten, where students that were apart of the study scored five times higher than those peers who were not apart of the study.  Note: it did not say what was on this brief reading test given to both parties.

This New York Times article focuses on students reading non-fiction, especially in content areas other than English. The studies show that students gain reading achievements higher than students who did not have this program in place. I think that nonfiction reading has taken a back seat, and students should learn how to read informational text. Newspapers, lab preps, and the like need to be expanded upon and used more in the classroom. Nonfiction reading is another great way to get boys interested in becoming active and engaged readers. Not to pigeon hold boys as total nonfiction readers, but I feel that many boys become tired of just reading fiction book in the English classroom, and content area reading is a great way to strengthen male students reading skills and attitudes.

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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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This teacher's blog is all about Shakespeare and since this is one of my very favorite areas to study, I thought this to be the perfect link to share. This teacher to get his/her students more involved with the plays they were reading decided to type a line or a few lines of speech from a certain character from that play. Students then competed against one another to see who could correctly answer the questions on the online blog.

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