tengrrl’s thoughts & news on teaching writing, literacy, and literature
October 22, 2005
Edited and posted another elementary lesson plan. This one is K-2 and was written by one of NCTE’s book authors. It’s tied to Chapter One of Joy Moss’s Literature, Literacy, and Comprehension Strategies in the Elementary School. The lesson, Comparing Fiction and Nonfiction with Little Red Riding Hood Text Sets, has students explore different versions of tale and facts and fiction about wolves.
Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction |
lesson plans |
ReadWriteThink
October 21, 2005
Friday is apparently odds and ends day this week:
Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction |
lesson plans |
NCTE Inbox |
ReadWriteThink
October 20, 2005
This morning at work, I finished editing a 3-5 lesson plan that uses an Avi book, Alter Egos and More with Avi’s “Who Was That Masked Man, Anyway?”. The abstract explains, “Today’s elementary students bring many experiences with a variety of texts to the classroom: print, music, online literacies, technical reading and writing, and so on. This lesson plan uses students’ knowledge of these new literacies to introduce them to similar literacies of the past.” Basically, the Avi book is told in radio scripts; so students explore the scripts in the book and authentic scripts online. Then they write scripts of their own, similar to thoses written by the protagonist in the novel.
After the excitement of physical therapy, I spent the evening editing another 3-5 lesson. Lisa took the leftovers from my 9-12 lesson, and wrote Engaging Students in a Collaborative Exploration of the Gettysburg Address. Her abstract explains, “Working collaboratively, students learn more about the Civil War through the Gettysburg Address. Teams of students explore multiple resources and actively engage in learning more about this historical document, using words from the Gettysburg Address as their inspiration.”
Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction |
lesson plans |
ReadWriteThink
October 20, 2005
Today has been totally mixed up. It was pouring rain this morning, so no dumpster in the driveway and no work on a new roof that I can’t afford in the first place. Will it be tomorrow? Saturday? Monday? Who knows when the work will begin.
The physical therapy was a complete waste of time. Turns out that I should have canceled the appointment. So hours, days, of worrying and crying, and when I tell him I have no pain, he says, “oh, I’m sorry. Did you have to take off work to be here? That’s too bad.”
Now because I was there, and he needed something to do, I suffered through an “educational session.” He went in search of the fake spine so that he could show me what bones and disks look like and tell me how they work. Then we discussed sitting up straight, having a good chair at work, walking a lot, and other back care tips. And when I was released I did my grocery shopping for the week. I didn’t need to go back to work, so I figured I might as well accomplish something. I found however that lots of kids and parents are wondering about the grocery store in the after-school, before-dinner hours. Another educational moment.
October 20, 2005
Several of the ideas on Micro Persuasion: Ten RSS Hacks, which I found via in someone else’s blog (and I can’t remember whose), seemed interesting. gada.be sounds useful, if I can ever figure out what I need to search for in the first place.
October 19, 2005
Okay, it’s late, and I’m completely agitated. The process of replacing my roof is supposed to begin too early in the morning. After 9 AM, there should be a dumpster in the driveway, which means that I’ve had to park my car on the street. It’s making me crazy to have it out there. I can’t see it without flashlighting it, and I’m overly worried about it. Logically this makes no sense. I parked my car in a parking lot the entire time I lived in Austin, but I could always see the car from the apartment. Maybe it’s not being able to see it. But the thing is I’ve parked every car in front of my parents’ house, and it never bothered me. If I went to the trouble of trying to look at the window, I might be able to see it at home. But I never bothered. I guess I always feel safe at home, and I never feel completely safe anywhere else. I wish I could. I wish I could relax and be unworried.
If the car thing isn’t enough, I have my stupid physical therapy appointment tomorrow afternoon. My stupid back. It doesn’t even hurt, and I have to go do this stuff. I want to cancel the appointment. We all know what’s wrong with me. I’m fat. Having some person I don’t know touch me and force me into mechanical torture devices isn’t going to solve the problem. I wish I could disappear and avoid this.
October 19, 2005
The Ideas column for this week’s Inbox focuses on pieces that tie to speakers who will be at NCTE’s Annual Convention in Pittsburgh.
Spent today setting up the new ReadWriteThink calendar entries for FY06. In the past, we’ve gone month by month, adding new entries each month as seemed appropriate. Now that we have gone through that process twice, we have a solid number of entries for each month. For this fiscal year’s grant, we looked over the entire calendar. Some weeks ago, I added all of the entries to a wall calendar so that we could see any overall gaps in the greater scheme of things (e.g., weeks without enough entries).
We also looked for gaps in coverage on the whole site. For instance, what authors or kinds of writing did people expect a language arts site to include that were not yet covered adequately in the lessons and/or calendar. We have 30 entries to add over the course of three phases. The new pieces will include authors such as Alice Walker, Amy Tan, and Walt Whitman (as well as some picture book authors and important events).
To set up these entries, I added them all to the calendar, but not marked live of course. I had to hack some ASP to create running lists of the three phases, which took most of the afternoon. Odd how something that takes 5 seconds to say takes 5 hours to do. I ended up having to do a supremely silly nested if-then that handcoded the dates. There’s no field in the database that I can use to indicate they’re in one of these phases, and I’m too much of a scaredy pants to add a field to the table. One day, I really need to figure out how to play around with SQL, but I’m so afraid to do anything when the only working database I have access to is the site’s database. But back the to point, the new entries are under development and should be 1/3 published by the end of the year, and the rest over the course of several months next year.
I guess that I left out that I took numerous breaks to put up those new Halloween decorations. I should get a picture. It’s intriguing because we never managed to get the ladder to take down the snowflakes from last Christmas. That means we have ghosts, pumpkins, bats, spiders… and snowflakes hanging from the ceiling now. I need to dig under the desk and figure out what other pumpkinish things I have to pull out.
Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction |
lesson plans |
NCTE Inbox |
ReadWriteThink
October 19, 2005
From the article:
At some schools, the rules are clear: Kids can chill out to downloaded music on portable players, but once they’re inside, iPods and other learning distractions must be stowed in backpacks or lockers and kept there. At Jamestown Elementary School in Arlington, Camilla Gagliolo took another approach. Rather than fighting the fad, she’s capitalizing on it by giving students iPods and re-imagining them as a learning tool.
THIS is what I was hoping to get from that Saturday IATE session. I was hoping for some stories on using iPods and mp3 players with students. Cool multimodal things. The students in Gagliolo’s class are highly involved, integrating their own podcast productions with what is going on in class and at the school. In ways, the story reminds me of Hilve Firek’s story on Saturday morning of her students asking to play on the computer, and for them play was creating their own class newspaper. Sigh… Maybe next year.
October 18, 2005
I joined my niece online last night to chat and talk during the new Daily Show and the premiere of The Colbert Report. I had even set a reminder in Outlook to make sure that I didn’t miss it.
Overall, I was really disappointed. We both were. Our comments ranged from “This is not funny” to “WTF?” We’ve decided to give him another shot tonight and see whether it was just first show problems.
This afternoon, I read The Colbert Report: Oui, Oui – Wonkette, which has actually clarified things a bit. It’s hard to notice satire of a particular show when you don’t watch that show. I’ve never seen the O’Reilly Factor in my life. It’s no wonder I was lost. Maybe knowing that will help tonight.
October 18, 2005
It’s been an exciting day of odds and ends. We’ve updated the ReadWriteThink Advisory Board, which meant related changes to the Web page. One name is forthcoming, and we will eventually have bio pages for each member.
In preparation for revision and editing of the January calendar, I brought the entries all forward from 2005 to 2006. The goal is to have them live before December 1, so that the “Next Month” link works. Timing my be difficult on this one, given the fact that 4 of the 7 days allowed for editing are Thanksgiving holiday/weekend. I haven’t exactly figured out my Thanksgiving plans, but they don’t really include the January calendar.
I did a little working ahead on the Ideas section for Inbox. This week’s edition hasn’t gone out yet. It’s being held for stories on the NAEP scores. But I finished my writing yesterday. I decided to look at the resources for next week, and it turned out to be easy to assemble. So next week’s Halloween-inspired column is ready and waiting.
On a silly whim, I visited the Factory Card and Party Outlet and bought up more Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations for the office on my way home. Sorry. I didn’t buy any costumes so there will be no pictures of me as Cleopatra or a Bar Wench. And no, you’re not getting a bee either.
Tags: English language arts |
K12 instruction |
lesson plans |
NCTE Inbox |
ReadWriteThink