Group items tagged

Glenda teaches us how to teach students to mimic one of the masters of prose-Jane Austen. Mimicry is often a great writing exercise for students who need to examine style.

With Digication, students can easily publish their work online. A Digication e-Portfolio can be created in less than 5 minutes. Instead of spending time building and managing complex websites, students (and their teachers!) can focus on learning and reflection.

Sent to me just now via a my blog. Would be a great piece to pair with "A Modest Proposal."

This blog post would be fun to turn into a writing assignment: Have minor characters in a novel your students are studying discuss the other minor characters in the manner of Mr. Palmer.

Jeff Utecht describes how you can use Goodreads to track students' independent reading.

Fun for students learning about Anglo-Saxons, Old English, or the history of English.

Our definition of literacy is changing. Are we ready? Are our students?

Held annually during the last week of September, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of intellectual freedom and draws attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted banning of books across the United States, including books commonly taught in secondary schools. Here are ideas for celebrating Banned Books Week -- with your students, your children and anyone who believes in having "the freedom to read."

"Studio 360 explores F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and finds out how this compact novel became the great American story of our age. Novelist Jonathan Franzen tells Kurt Andersen why he still reads it every year or two, and writer Patricia Hampl explains why its lightness is deceptive. We'll drive around the tony Long Island suburbs where Gatsby was set, and we'll hear from Andrew Lauren about his film G, which sets Gatsby among the hip-hop moguls. And Azar Nafisi describes the power of teaching the book to university students in Tehran. Readings come courtesy of Scott Shepherd, an actor who sometimes performs the entire book from memory."

Utecht provides great guidelines, tools, and models for student-created presentations.

"Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet on Facebook? With social networking the hot topic of the day, a computer science grad student, his advisor and a literature professor teamed up to analyze social interactions in 19th century British novels."

My students told me about this site where they make study guides and flash cards for themselves. It's free, and it would be particularly good for studying information that you have to memorize.

Glenda Funk shares some performance pedagogy techniques designed to get students out of their desk and on their feet.