Monday, October 26, 2009

Using Glogster with Students

Today, I experimented with my Glogster Edu account and I've made a sample candy commercial with student work. I've decided that I need to have the teacher I'm working with set up her own Glogster Account... but the good news is it looks like the Mp3 files in Garageband and the photos in iPhoto are all going to come together nicely! At this point... I still only have 10 students' commercials recorded... so we have a ways to go.
As of today... I've got a wiki titled ICTechProjects so that I can upload samples of things I'm working on in the Crozet Cluster! Not sharing yet... as I have to check student permissions. But soon... very soon.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

20 Great Websites for Teachers | Blogging & Technology | So You Want To Teach?

20 Great Websites for Teachers | Blogging & Technology | So You Want To Teach?

I hope to explore in more detail later. But in the meantime... I'm documenting the link here! I want to learn more than I have hours in the day! But... need some sleep and balance in my life as well. Carry on...

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Pam writes...

This has been such a sad week for my friends and my Woodbrook School Community. Pam says it so well in her post. Death of a young one is so hard to understand. But... as we've seen this past week...We all make such a difference in each other's lives... not just during bad times, but all of the time. My conversations with sad students on Monday morning when I was at Woodbrook, really affected me. These children were so sad, yet we were able to help each other by walking and talking together... and with hugs. Remembering Carson and gathering together to share memories and move forward in ways that will make our community even better is what we take from this loss. Friends can help us mend our broken hearts, but we may never truly understand why things of this nature happen. They just happen. We must continue to give of ourselves to make the world a better place each and everyday... but we do not have to do it alone.

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

About the teaching of Reading...

I've learned today and many days leading up to today...that there's so much confusion on what reading instruction really is. Thanks to Hollins for sharing this video with me today. SO... Do we KNOW how to teach reading? It is so abstract... but yet needs to be done so explicitly. We know that many students learn to read by reading. (I think of Carole's famous quote... "some just learn in spite of us!") We know there are some students that don't learn to read without intensive interventions and lots of phonemic work. Decoding, fluency, prosody, comprehension... There's so much talk about reading instruction and so much jargon. Instructional levels vs Independent levels? Running records... PALS! And ultimately let's not forget the Balanced Literacy Diet. The cohesive collections of daily work that we must do with children... the writing for a purpose and connecting our work with authors' text. Learning and sharing with others around us and from literature that we are reading. Building meaning... building schema. Being a Writer, yet another program in ACPS, offers a fabulous structure for writing instruction for even the most reluctant and struggling teachers of writing. My GOODNESS what a strong writing teacher can do with the scaffolding and texts offered by Being a Writer! Then we have the Daily Five... which is a structure that can support reading instruction... but it is NOT a reading program. Do we all understand this? As I said... there is so many misunderstandings about how to teach reading. How long should our literacy block be and how can we dedicate an hour to Being a Writer... and OH! I hate this word study stuff!! Sit UP! This video will give you something to think about!! Enjoy. pssst... it will require 10 minutes of reading... and some schema!