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Sep 16

11 Comments

Support Diversity and Encourage Young Writers by Using Window and Mirror Books in Your Writing Workshop (Guest Post)

by Stacey Shubitz, September’s Guest Blogger

A powerful way for teachers to embrace diversity is through the careful selection of mentor texts. All students deserve to read mirror books, in which they can see themselves, and window books, in which they can learn about others.  This means teachers must have books that represent a variety of religions, races, and sexual orientations on classroom bookshelves during all months of the year, not just the ones with special designations (e.g., Black History Month, Women’s History Month).

Children need exposure to books that mirror their life experiences.  Classrooms with minority students need books with minority protagonists.  Children with same-sex parents need opportunities to access books with other children who are navigating the world with a family that looks different than the “mom, dad, 2.2 kids, dog, and white picket fence” scenario most books often show.  When children see their lives mirrored in books, it allows them to feel safe, thereby giving them permission to write freely about their own lives in the texts they compose.  Read more

Sep 9

6 Comments

Tools of the Trade: Quick Response (QR) Codes

By Rita Sorrentino

Screenshot 2015-09-08 at 5.21.50 AMWe see them everywhere: magazines and newspaper advertisements, billboards and business cards, cereal boxes, web pages, and even on items of clothing. Do these popular pixilated marketing images have educational value? Certainly! 

First, what is a QR code? Quick Response (QR) codes are two-dimensional barcodes that are created with a QR Generator and then scanned with a QR Reader. QR Readers transform print and physical worlds into digital realities. By downloading a free app on a digital device, you are able to scan the matrix-designed QR code, which will then lead you to a website, video, document file, contact information, or some other data.

What do you and your students need? You and your students need a device with Wi-Fi access to scan and read the QR code. A variety of mobile devices such as Smartphones, iPads, Tablets, and Laptops can scan and interpret the code. With regular access and use, QR Readers can be implemented into many aspects of the curriculum. Without doubt, teachers and students will find creative uses for QR codes in and out of the classroom.  Read more

Sep 2

6 Comments

Teacher to Teacher: Writing a Plan for a Focus Lesson Using Found Poetry

By Lynne R. Dorfman

How can you tempt your students to take the writing plunge in the beginning of the year? I have always found that poetry is the great equalizer for student writers. Especially, the found poem helps writers gain confidence in creating something quite wonderful. Mentor texts for found poems are everywhere: newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, novels, picture books, or even other poems. Like a collage art form, the writer simply takes existing texts and refashions them as a poem. In its purest form, a found poem retains the exact words of the original text with a few omissions or additions. The writer creates a poem, making conscious decisions about line breaks and the order of the ideas.

Found poetry accomplishes several goals for readers and writers. First of all, it clearly gives students a chance to read like a writer – to find the best in prose (what often sounds like poetry). It asks readers to reread many times in order to write an effective poem; thus, deepening comprehension of text. Found poetry helps all children to be successful. It will help you get what all teachers want – 100% engagement. Found poetry is easily differentiated by text choices. In addition, it is easy to build in opportunities for collaboration.  Read more

Aug 27

3 Comments

Welcome Students on the First Day, Every Day (Guest Post)

By Diane Dougherty

Welcome Students!

How often have we seen this greeting posted on billboards in front of schools?  How often have we ourselves posted such a greeting in our very own classrooms?  And a fine greeting it is too!  We want our students to feel “welcome,” to know that each one is a part of the larger community of learners, to experience the warmth that comes from a sense of belonging; in short to feel gladly received into our classrooms, our “home away from home.”

When we invite guests into our homes, what do we do to ensure that they know they are welcome?  Can we apply some of the rules of being a good host/hostess to our beginning of the year (and, really, throughout the year) relationships with our students.  As one can find everything online, I googled “How to be a Good Host” and was hardly surprised by the multiple sites available on that topic.  Here are ten of these rules from various sites (listed in bold and in italics) that I believe transfer particularly well to the classroom:  Read more

Aug 19

8 Comments

From the Classroom: Three Things to do in the First 48 Hours

By Tricia Ebarvia

Glance at almost any education focused website, blog, or Twitter feed in mid-August and you’ll find no shortage of first-day-of-school activities. In one of my education-related Facebook groups, someone recently asked for suggestions on how to spend the first day in class. Others asked about how much time to spend on community building activities versus how soon to jump into the curriculum. Not surprisingly, opinions varied, as they should.

As for me, I’ve spent less time reviewing the syllabus each year and more time on doing things that will get us reading, writing, and talking more quickly. My goals for the first two few days of school, then, include the following:

  1. Give students a general overview of the course
  2. Set up the classroom environment
  3. Learn about student preferences and interests

Read more

Aug 12

2 Comments

Teacher to Teacher: The Art of Questioning

By Lynne R. Dorfman

As teachers, we often feel like we should know the answer to every question. Often, we make sure that the questions we ask in our classrooms are questions we can answer. But is it necessary or even effective to ask these kinds of questions most of the time?  What does a teacher asking questions of a class expect the class to learn from the questioning process? Can we learn from our students who just might have possible answers to questions that we have not imagined?  Read more

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