Hello Literacy

Kindergarten Rubric for T-S Connections

2012-03-06T21:47:00.007-05:00

I created this rubric last year together with the Kindergarten team when they were trying to figure out a concrete way to help their students understand Text to Self Connections. Most kids like spaghetti so we used this food analogy to explains four levels of Connections use. Feel free to download it by clicking on the arrow embedded black square above.

Happy Reading!

There's A Frog in My Blog!

2012-03-05T23:31:00.001-05:00

Not really! But don't ya just love silly rhymes...especially ones inspired by Dr. Seuss? Today {in my spare time...ha, ha} I created a class book cover and page template for Dr. Seuss' silly rhyming book, There's A Wocket in My Pocket. The idea for this class book was actually a lesson suggestion in the Open Court Reading Program I used a way long time ago, but the idea is definitely a phonemic awareness and phonics best practice.

Free - Click here to download as a pdf or pptx.

Dr. Seuss Meets Alaska

2012-03-04T23:41:00.002-05:00

http://www.idita-read.org/

This week our school will be celebrating Dr. Seuss' {why do I always have to stop and check the spelling of his name EVERY TIME I WRITE IT???} birthday with a festive variety of activities and celebrations thanks to our enthusiastic media teacher. This year we are participating in the Idita-Read...and we are so excited. If you haven't signed up yet, get on over there and register. In addition, each day is a dress-up day, guest readers are scheduled and Thursday night is the Book Fair. Here is the line-up for the dress-up days:

Monday - Sports Biography Day

Tuesday - Pajama Day

Wednesday - Fashion Disaster Day

Thursday - School Spirit Day

Friday - Book Character Day

Tomorrow I will be Apolo Ohno and Friday, I will be Pinkalicious...and I am so excited!!!

In the meantime, until pics are posted, here is a FREEBIE, a Poem of the Week. {We have document cameras at our school, so we'll project it on there for all little eyes to see.}

{or grab the pdf here in Google Docs}

I realized that I had a typo in the first one, I fixed it on the link.

Happy Reading! - Jen

Heads-Up for Cute!

2012-02-21T08:54:00.000-05:00

Just a short post to share this {free} & super cute "Try Me Now" alphabet over at Lettering Delights.

Exportable to any document....try it now! {and no, I don't work for Lettering Delights} just sharing.

Informational Literacy Unit

2012-02-19T14:09:00.002-05:00

If information literacy is central to success, survival, schooling, workplace and the community, then the teaching of information literacy and all the skills that it entails is critical, too. As many of you are quite aware, the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS) is building instructional practices and "shifts" into the roll-out...where teaching the standards alone is simply not enough to prepare our students for the 21st century.

Shift #1 for the CCSS in English/Language Arts (ELA) is this:

For my 3rd grade reading group, now up to 28 (high-achieving) students, we have been able to put some systems and structures into place to give students an opportunity to excercise their critical thinking skills....which of course, must be taught and relentlessly practiced, with informational content text. You will notice the wording in the CCSS Shift statement, does not use the term, a balance of "fiction and non-fiction" text...it states, "a true balance of narrative and informational text. In the elementary grades K-5, the percentage balance is truly pure, 50% narrative and 50% informational....but in the middle school and high school, the percentage for informational text reading rises while narrative text reading decreases, to the content based classes in middle and high school. As a class, we began brainstorming different types of non-fiction genres, then different types of informational text. Here is the final anchor chart we created:

From this chart, we created a few more. One about informational text features and their purpose and one about informational text structures using Charts found on Beth Newingham's Scholastic blog. The informational text features chart was created from my own original creations which can be found on my www.hellofirstgrade.com website under Literacy and Language.

After generating and exhausting the list of informational text types with the students, the students decided they would like to create an informational text museum using informational text from their home and world.

During guided reading groups, we used informational text to determine main idea, cause event, sequence of events, etc. We also used our Guide to Critical Thinking to guide our conversations, our justifications and interactions with each other. Here is the anchor chart we created.

During guided reading, students take turns facilitating the group conversation asking questions of each other and justifying their opinions to one other...and I get to sit back and file my nails [just kidding]...seriously, we have talked like this for so long, they know how to play devil's advocate now and "play" me with each other. It is not uncommon to hear students say, "I disagree with xyz, because on page 10, the author says abc...so from that I infer 123." Students also hold each other accountable to this language by calling on students that rarely share by saying...."xyz, you haven't contributed to the conversation yet, what would you like to add?" To get students to justify their thinking and opinions, I made a big huge BECAUSE that hangs right above us on the wall...it's about 2' x 3'.

During Independent Reading & Responding, students opted to use this form in their informational responding.

Download the document here.

Students also added their reading thinking to our class blog here.

The last group is a cooperative learning literacy activity. We do so much modeling of how to speak and interact with each other about our literacy ideas, reading thinking and ideas, students are able to carry on without my assistance. Here was their task last week. {P.S. The green serving platter that the two book sets are resting in is from the Dollar Tree and serves as the tracing circles when the groups create their Venns.}

Here the product of two groups....

And this is the Cooperative Learning Anchor Chart that guided how students interact here:

Here are few more ideas for you from this week:

Anecdotal Record Sheet...I use one for my 2nd grade group and one for my 3rd grade group.

Download pdf version HERE or the docx version HERE.

Download {free} Book Review & Recommendation sheet HERE.

Happy Reading! -Jen Jones

New Blog Post....Coming Soon...

2012-02-08T15:09:00.000-05:00

I promise!

My New Student Blog: Our Class Reads!

2011-12-06T13:01:00.000-05:00

My New Student Blog......blogs@wcpss.net/ourclassreads

I finally got my act together and with the help of our wonderful media & technology teacher (who had to help me with the student email accounts, etc) my reading groups are now blogging...yeah!!! Although, it's only been this week since we started, I am super impressed with the quality and quantity of their responses so far. I also decided to add video responses, read-aloud responses and audio responses in addition to reading responses.

To model the response expectations, I composed an example response in front of them for the Ruby's Wish post. I first began by typing....

"The way they treated Ruby was unfair."

I then asked the students if this was a level 4 response...did I give my opinions and justify them. A unanimous NO. So we added on to it.....

"The way they treated Ruby was unfair because it's not right to treat boys better than girls."

The students still agreed that this reading response still was not meaty enough because although I have shared one opinion I still have not told any reasons (from the book or my own life) to convince the reader why Ruby's treatment is not right...I have given no justifications yet. So, I kept composing....

"The way they treated Ruby was unfair because it's not right to treat boys better than girls. Ruby felt the boys were treated better than girls because they got the decorative, colorful lanterns in the parade and girls got the plain and simple ones and this made Ruby sad because it made her feel that boys were liked better than girls."

I continued to add more to the post in front of them, giving several more opinions and used evidence from the book and my own life to justify my opinions. You can read it the post and comments here. So today, the kids that did have time to finish did a much better job than the first day, when I gave no direction for the comment and response expectation. You can also read in the post that students have an opportunity to compare and contrast if they think boys and girls are treated differently in the United States just because they're a boy or a girl. This assignment satisfies North Carolina Teacher Evaluation Standard 2: Teachers Embrace Diversity in the School Community and in the World.

Happy Reading!

Pinterest....Need An Invite??

2011-12-03T21:58:00.000-05:00

I'm still a huge Pinterest fan, and if you aren't, you should be?! ;-) Seriously, I don't get the "Request An Invite" thing, I've heard that takes weeks or months....don't bother with that, just send me your email and I'll send you an invite...email me...jjones2@ymail.com.....see you on Pinterest.

Jennifer

Class Books {Cover Templates}....from the Archives

2011-12-01T15:55:00.001-05:00

Class Books Templates can be downloaded here

December Stocking Stuffers {for teachers}

2011-12-01T15:43:00.000-05:00

All letters found here

December Homework Calendar found here

Mrs. Meacham, My Inspiration....You Rock!

2011-11-28T12:55:00.000-05:00

As I was awarded The Sunshine Award this month for sharing inspiring ideas....I couldn't let the award go by without giving a shout-out to my friend (now) and virtual colleague, Jessica Meacham, web author of her own AMAZING website, www.jmeacham.com

Before I had a web presence, it was Jessica Meacham that encouraged me to start a website and thus, www.hellofirstgrade.com was born. Since then, Mrs. Meacham, has become a good friend of mine and a teacher with whom I admire and respect. Not to mention she gives EVERYTHING away that she creates for FREE!!! And, she creates a TON. Her most impressive resources are her SMARTboard files, which can be found {HERE}.

And these are just a FEW! Thanks Jessica, for all you do, and all you snap, upload and share!!! But, most of all, thanks for your inspiration and dedication to helping other teachers!

Happy Reading!

Apparently, I'm Spreading Sunshine!

2011-11-28T12:42:00.000-05:00

I've been honored once again by Katie & Steve over at twocandoit.blogspot.com and Keri over at teachplaysmile.blogspot.com...for sharing inspiring ideas! That means a ton to me. Although some may feel that blogging about best practices is "above and beyond" I consider it part of my job. I quite enjoy it and wish I had time to blog more.

So, here are the rules for this award:

Thank the person(s) who gave this award and if you would like to, write a post about it.
Answer the following questions below.
Pass the award to 7-10 fabulous bloggers, link their blogs, and let them know you awarded them.

Jen's Answers:

Favorite Color: Pink
Favorite Animal: My Doxie's, Stanley & Lucy
Favorite Number: 3
Favorite Drink: Orange Juice
Favorite Gadget: My iPhone
Facebook or Twitter: Neither...Pinterest is my new Facebook
Your Passion: All Things Reading & Creating
Getting or Giving Presents: Giving

I follow so many incredible blogs and here are some who bring "sunshine" into my life when I see their posts. If you're on the list and don't feel like posting about the award, it's totally fine! :-)

Amanda at Third Grade Meanderings
Ali at Mrs. Scott's Scoop
Kristen at For the Love of Art
Keri at Teach.Play.Smile
Mary at Pitner's Potpourri
Sarah at First Grader At Last
Jessica at Meacham's Classroom Snapshots

Happy Reading!

Scholastic Warehouse Sales

2011-11-28T11:41:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again where Scholastic has their big warehouse sale....what a great deal on books, AND cheap! Click here to find a location near you! The warehouse sale runs from December 7-17th.

Start a Home Reading Program

2011-11-19T10:24:00.007-05:00

There is no doubt that reading at home is one of the best ways children can stay on track and even get ahead in on their learning path. The "reading at home" research is well-documented, and where books are abundant in the home, this is not a problem. Creating a Home Reading Program in your class, grade level, K-2 classes or even schoolwide, really levels the playing field and eliminates disparities about the number of books in the home.

When I taught first grade at Swift Creek Elementary, I had been teaching about 15 years and I had acquired a lot of books over years....both children's book and little leveled readers. Using websites like Scholastic Book Wizard, I was able to level most of the little readers and many of my children's book to create a Home Reading Book Cart. I would then solicit parent volunteers to come in daily, usually I had a Monday parent, a Tuesday parent, etc. that would come in on a weekly basis, or bi-weekly basis, listen to kids read and trade out home reading books each day.

You can do Home Reading INSIDE your classroom, with Moms....

with Dads.....

or right outside the classroom, in the hallway, where it's a little quieter.

Uponing opening Lake Myra, getting a Home Reading program started in every K-2 classroom was one of our first priorities. For the books, we purchased several classroom licenses to www.readinga-z.com. We printed and copied 15-20 single titles from the leveled books available on this site.

I purchased plastic totes/baskets from the Dollar Store..( 9 per cart/classroom), available in the store or online from www.dollartree.com.

I purchased 15 storage racks from www.amazon.com to be the Home Reading Cart.

Sturdy plastic envelopes were purchased from www.reallygoodstuff.com which last all year long.

The Kindergarten team opted not to use the plastic envelopes but used gallon size ziploc bags instead, and taped these labels to the inside of the bags.

Inside the folder is a letter explaining Home Reading to parents.

HOME READING PARENT LETTER

Here is letter soliciting parent volunteers to help with Home Reading.

Download this letter here.

You can also include a Reading Strategy card or bookmark for students.

Download Strategy Card here.

In our second year, we added another feature to the Home Reading program, and this is Parent Read-Alouds. In Kindergarten and 1st grade, in addition to a leveled book for students to read each night, students also take a Parent Read-Aloud book for parents to read to their child. This book is typically one to two years above their reading level....at the child's listening comprehension level. Each year in Wake County, our library has Friends of the Library Sale, however, the day before the sale opens to the public, they offer the books to Wake County teachers for free...as many as you want, or in my case, as many that could fit in my van.

Parent Read-Aloud labels were attached to each book in the Parent Read-Aloud bucket.

Now, when students take turns reading to parents in the hall, they choose a new leveled book each night and a new book for their parents to read to them.

And on most Monday - Thursday mornings, this is what the first grade hallway looks like. :-)

Happy Reading! - Jennifer

Kathi Goes to the Coaching Institute at Teacher's College

2011-10-31T12:06:00.008-04:00

Lucy Calkins & Kathi.TC Manning Chapel. NYC.TCRWP Coaching Institute.10.24.11

I'm so thrilled and excited for my best teacher friend in the world, Kathi Zotovich, who just got back from a whirlwind 12-hour days & 2-hour (homework) nights Coaching Institute with Lucy Calkins at The Teacher's College in NYC. Back in 1993, I began my first year teaching at Del Mar Elementary in Morro Bay, CA, and Kathi was my mentor and teaching partner. Over the last eighteen years, through school, state and position moves, we have remained the closest of friends and teaching colleagues. I'm so proud of her and even more excited that San Luis Coastal Unified School District finally recognized her as a integral force for changing the way they literacy instruction is delivered and assessed in her county...Kathi, you rock! It has taken you many years to prove it, but you have single handedly brought SLCUSD into the research base and best (literacy) practices of the 21st century! Finally, it is you, driving the literacy ship of your distict, congratulations! What an awesome position to be in...you are still my mentor! Thank you for sharing your TCRWP pictures with me....here are just a few from her week, taken at PS 199 in Queens.

Thanks Kathi, and PS 199Q for sharing!

Bee Opinionated! Higher Order Thinking Question Sets

2011-10-28T12:15:00.000-04:00

Here at Lake Myra, we've movin' and shakin' the higher order thinking skills! So here's what we've done! We've got quite an extensive leveled book room, including 12 magazine titles (6 copies of each per month), author study sets, listening center sets, and KITS (Kids Into Thinking) for enrichment groups. Needless to say we have quite a stocked leveled book room. Book sets are bar-coded, scanned in and out and categorized by levels A-Z (Fountas & Pinnell), fiction and non-fiction, comprehension strategy, and subject....I'll admit, we are very fortunate! Part of the reason for having so many book sets in there is that we opted out of ordering the Hougton Mifflin reading series/textbooks/anthologies/basals/workbooks in order to spend that money on real authentic children's literature for the leveled book room. Our LBR (1/4 of it):

This year, our staff began working on the Bee Opinionated project. It involves creating higher order question sets for all the guided reading book sets in the Leveled Book Room. As the literacy coach and I presented this idea to the staff, we did some capacity building with a powerpoint, a reading and discussions from the Burkins and Croft book, Preventing Misguided Reading. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. The gist of the book is that since Fountas & Pinnell introduced guided reading in the 90's, it has morphed into something very different than what was intended and taken on new (sometimes district determined meaning) that was never intended. The authors present a "new" understanding of guided reading and what students should actually be able to do during this time. The book is divided up into two parts....the rationale behind preventing misguided reading and then a section of about 32 strategies to prevent misguided reading.

In addition to the strategy of asking higher order questions of students during guided reading, even with text levels 1-2, the new Common Core standards is all about higher order thinking, including an entire strand per grade level about Speaking and Listening. In my experience, students either don't know they have an opinion, are afraid to give a wrong answer and in general, don't have a lot of experience with open-ended discussions. The Bee Opinionated project is about giving students the opportunity to talk about books and have higher order conversations by teaching them how to agree and disagree, justify their answers and realize that when a teacher asks a question that she herself already knows the answer, it's not a higher order question. Although part of the new standards IS about teaching students how to ask their own questions of the author, text and one another, this project gets at the heart of asking students questions about their opinion, where the answers are unknown, open and critical...and there's not right or wrong answer only reasons and evidence based on ideas from the text and the reader's life. Here is a sheet I created and presented to the staff that compares and contrasts lower order thinking with higher order thinking.

Another common understanding that needs to be clear when we expect students to share and discuss deep ideas and opinions about text and informational content is this: if we expect students to be critical readers than they must be critical thinkers. In order for student to agree and disagree with each other, they must first be in touch with their own ideas, beliefs, values and interests so they can have a basis for agreeing and/or disagreeing. The second common understanding that needs to be clear when we expect students to share and discuss ideas with their peers, is trust. Students needs to feel that the environment is safe where taking conversational risks are encouraged and praised and students are made to feel like their contributions are of value to the entire group. This also means that students understand their teacher's role is that of facilitator, not the all-knowing adult in the room, and that teachers may NOT know the right answer to the question, nor IS there a right answer to the question except the justified one that comes from the students' own opinion.

As a staff, teachers worked in table groups to develop higher order questions for specific books. This is not the same as having a set of generic question stems in front of you. As I'm in and out of classrooms all day, I know that some teachers are just naturally good questioners....I, however, am not. I need to script out higher order questions beforehand, and I can't think of good ones spontaneously like some teachers can. So, to eliminate this from the equation, if we have Bee Opinionated questions for every book set, all teachers can be prepared to have their students use higher order thinking conversations. Here are a few examples of some of the question sets created by the teachers.

The Royal Bee: Reading Level-4th Grade

After the Flood: Reading Level 13/14

On this particular morning, the staff worked for 90 minutes and created 16 question sets. This will continue to be a focus of professional development this year. Teachers and teams may also work for an additional 10 hours on their own to create more question sets for 1 CEU reading credit. Now when teachers, go to the leveled book room, sets that include questions are denoted with a bee sticker on the spine of the white sleeve as shown:

And teachers have also developed anecdotal checkbrics to document students who are doing well at speaking and discussing as critical thinkers. The 4th grade team developed the following:

Higher Order Thinking Response Rubric & Checkbric

and the 4th grade teachers are also keeping track of the kind of questions they ask of their students as well to measure their SMART goal.

RTI: Digging Deeper Assessments

2011-10-21T20:28:00.039-04:00

Since posting our school's RTI plan and links to the RTI documents we created at Lake Myra, several of you have asked about the Digging Deeper Assessments we use to drill down a child's most foundational literacy level....identified on the Otter Talk Form below (more on this form and the other RTI documents we created in my earlier Response to Intervention post).

So, here are the all Digging Deeper Assessments we use in our school & district. Although none of them were originally created by our school/district, they are public assessments for anyone to use:

Phonological Awareness Skills Test (PAST) from Sounds in Action by Zgonc.

PAST Guidelines

PAST Scoring Sheet

PAST Task Cards & Oral Directions

Print Concepts based on Clay's Concept About Print from the Observational Survey

Print Concepts Checklist

use Busy Beavers or Detective Dog from the Story Basket Collection from the Wright Group

Letter/Sound Identification, also a part of the Observations Survey

Letter ID Directions

Letter ID Score Sheet

Letter ID Student Sheet

Names Test from Patricia Cunningham

Names Test Directions

Names List

Names Test Scoring Guide

Names Test Scoring Matrix

Names Test Task Card

Early Names Test

Early Names Test Directions

Early Names List

Early Names Test Scoring Sheet

Early Names Test Task Cards

High Frequency Word List

Oral Reading Recording Sheet

Oral Retelling Sheet - Fiction

Oral Retelling Sheet - Nonfiction

Hearing and Recording Sounds in Words (M. Clay)

Words Their Way Word Study Assessments

Primary Spelling Inventory

Elementary Spelling Inventory

Primary Spelling Inventory Student Sheet

San Diego Quick Assessment

Here is the binder cover I created for the RtI Digging Deeper Assessment binder...{click to download}

Also, if you missed the video {from an earlier post} regarding how all these assessments fit into the Lake Myra RtI process, here it is...for the RtI documents we created, see my previous post about RtI at Lake Myra Elementary.

Interventions Resource

2011-09-28T16:00:00.000-04:00

This is a fairly new site online. They are rolling out new reading interventions and progress monitoring resources daily. Membership is currently free, and I hear they'll be starting to charge a subscription fee soon. I have nothing to do with this site, but thought I'd pass it along as another tool for our RTI toolkit.

Measuring Individual Reading Growth: Aligned to Common Core

2011-09-27T14:35:00.002-04:00

Download Individual Reading Growth Document (.docx)

Here at Lake Myra Elementary, we are all about measuring individual student growth, especially in reading. In addition to the universal screenings and Digging Deeper Assessments to begin RTI interventions with students who are struggling to grow with Tier 1 interventions, we began to ask other questions. When we set out to answer the questions, "How can we make sure students are growing in reading?" And "How will we know when a student has made one year's worth of growth in reading? ...these growth lines were the result. This is our third year of using the growth lines document.

The main purpose of the document is to spark

conversations when students aren't growing.

They are not evaluative, they are designed

to be used in a formative manner.

This year we have updated and revised the document to include the lexile correlations in order to use the same leveling system as the Common Core Standards. (Read more about text complexity in the first several pages of the Common Core Standards: Appendix A) In our district, students are also assigned a lexile level on the EOG reporting sheets based on a student's EOG reading proficiency.

Download here.

This letter explains to our teachers the changes made to the Growth Line sheet for the 2011-2012 school year. In addition, and I will reiterate, if you choose to use the growth line template, you will need to print one for each student in your class. THESE SHEETS ARE CUSTOMIZE-ABLE for each student. Do not print one and run a class set. You will need to "move" the ARROW LINES (that are grouped together and correctly spaced four quarters and six quarters apart) to the child's BOY running record level cell, then print. Students that enter the grade level on or above the BOY benchmark for that grade level, are placed on the one year (four quarter) growth line. Students that enter the grade level below the BOY benchmark for that grade level, are placed on the one and half year (six quarter) growth line. Research shows that if students enter below grade level, they must make one and half year's worth of growth in order to leave elementary school ON grade level. We believe in rigorous growth for all students so even if students enter above grade level in reading, we believe they are held to the highest expectation of also making one year's worth of growth, no matter how far above grade level in reading they enter.

Please note, that level 7-8 and 13-14 are intentionally omitted. In order to make one quarter's worth of reading growth around those levels, a student must go from 5-6 in one quarter, read past 7-8 and be able to read a 9-10 in order to have made a quarter's worth of growth. You'll notice there are four rows per grade level, one row per quarter. The arrow lines are perfectly spaced four quarters and six quarters apart, so do not add any more rows to the chart.

At our school, we record a child's instructional level on these growth lines. Whatever your school decides, everyone should record the same, either instructional or independent, but not some teachers recording instructional and some teachers recording independent...it will skew your data.

Our school also uses the Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark Assessment Kits 1 & 2, K-5, where teachers administer running records during Q1, Q2, (Q3 for students reading below their growth line) and Q4.

If you have further questions, feel free to contact me at helloliteracy@gmail.com

Happy Reading!

Revised Post: Reading Interventions...No More Than a Strategy

2011-09-27T12:15:00.000-04:00

Found lots of reading instruction and intervention resources today at this literacy site for Hall County Schools in Georgia. Some of the forms look tedious and cumbersome, but the intervention resources under the RTI Literacy Notebook look great AND useful.

Although this list, found at the Reading Rockets website, is not a "complete" list of reading strategies/reading interventions, it is, however, a somewhat comprehensive list of research based strategies/interventions for each of the five BIG AREAS of reading... phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Not only are the strategies sorted by reading area, there is a distinction if the strategy is best suited for "before reading," "during reading" and/or "after reading" AND if best completed whole group, small group and/or individually. Each strategy is hot linked to a full page description of the strategy purpose and procedure...some have videos and others include pdf's of downloadable materials. For new teachers, this list is comprehensive enough to target areas of need for both enrichment and remediation. In fact, these reading strategies are perfectly appropriate reading interventions necessary to help students in the RTI process where targeting a specific skill and foundational literacy deficit is found to be needed. Regular classroom reading strategies such as the ones above ARE reading interventions we use regularly in RTI at Lake Myra.

The biggest RTI pill to swallow is understanding that the I in RTI is not a person, place or program....it's a strategy....a specific, targeted reading deficit that we are trying to fill, in foundational order, where the intervention lasts between 5-10 minutes 3-5 times a week. If it's not the most foundation deficit, then it's like trying fill a higher hole in a bucket that still has lower holes to fill....for more information about how we do RTI at Lake Myra, see my RTI blog post.

Reading Rockets Reading Strategies

Oral Retelling: The Big Secret

2011-09-11T11:13:00.065-04:00

Oral Retelling Header

Sometimes I feel like a broken record when it comes to the disconnect between comprehension strategy instruction and comprehension strategy assessment...why is it that we continue to model and teach before AND during reading strategies when teaching reading, yet continually assess children's comprehension AFTER only? I just don't get it! The EOG is a reading test where we ask students to read a passage and answer multiple choice questions after reading and a running record is an assessment where we ask students to read out loud and then tell us what happened in the story after reading. With the exception of Ellin Keene's Major Points Interview that I do during reading conferences, my school and district uses the benchmark assessment, Alphakids by Sundance and the Benchmarks Assessment Toolkits by Fountas & Pinnell.

Since I'm all about giving kids the tools to succeed, I filled them in today on a little teacher secret and created this anchor chart to demonstrate. I crouched down and spoke in a low voice...I said, "When you do a running record and finish reading the story, the teacher will then say...Talk about what happened in the story. However, what they really mean is...Talk about the plot, problem, characters, their feelings and how they changed, the setting, the resolution, your connections, your reactions, all of it."

I created an independent collaborative center that I introduced to students last week called Partner Reading (and Retelling). The reading groups board is set up with reading partners within the reading group so students know who they're working with before they get there. We created a "Partner Reading" anchor chart complete with expectations. Included and most important about partner reading and talking about the book and having a conversation about what's happening in the book. In this way, students are more authentically "retelling" elements and lessons from the book than a formal retelling, but prepares them by using the same oral language skills they will asked to use when they complete a running record. Here is a picture of our Partner Reading anchor chart and a picture of the "Books Ideal for Partner Reading" (because they're "good books for thinking" as one of my students said).

download Anchor Chart Title

download all signs here

We also created an Independent Reading rubric anchor chart...and since I only care for them to perform at the level 4 level, that is the only section of this chart we are filling in....basically, if you are doing anything less than level 4, than you're not a level independent reader and you need to check yourself.

Last, here is the "Story Map on Steroids" that I created for students to use as talking points during Partner Reading. I do not intend for students to take a lot of time filling this in as most of the front is lower level thinking with some elements of the back as higher level thinking.

download Story Map here

Tracking My Fluency Growth

2011-09-06T09:49:00.002-04:00

Download Passages for Fluency Center here

{and feel free to right click on the center sign image to snag it}

So, I told you last week that I am fortunate to teach 19 3rd graders for a 90 minute literacy block daily....it's a really sweet deal and I love all of them dearly. They are top notch readers who are working on going deeper with their comprehension, listening to the inner conversations in their head while reading and decreasing their reading fluency speed. Yes, that's right, decreasing their speed! We are working on increasing their fluency (and thus their comprehension) by decreasing their speed. These kids read so fast they get to the end of the page and have little ideas or understanding about what they've just read. So my solution, and those of you that know me, know I'm not a busy center fan or a worksheet fan....only higher level independent activities here. Since we are all about tracking our progress and setting SMART goals with kids, I developed a fluency center where they could work on their expression, tone, prosidy, volume and enunciation collaboratively with a partner.

Download Fluency Tracking Sheet here

In addition, Rasinki's Fluency Rubric will be copied to the back. The elements of this rubric are the most important aspects of reading fluency growth that these students are working on.

Rasinski Fluency Rubric here

There are plenty of fluency passages out there, but it's easy enough to create your own using the free Reading Passage Generator at www.interventioncentral.org. Since it's more important to me to find content related to the 3rd grade science and social studies objectives, than say, a Level M passage or a leveled passage in general, I find articles online at Scholastic News and other sites linked in my blog post from earlier this year about places to find online sources of student text. {Here is the link to that post}.

For example, if you go to National Geographic Kids, and select the News tab, there are online stories related to Animals & Nature, People & Places, Science & Space and History. I clicked on History and several stories popped up...so I clicked the first one about Stonehenge Village.

Scroll down and highlight the entire body of text to be pasted into the Reading Passage Generator over at www.interventioncentral.org. You could really use any online text you find, but by inserting it into the RPG, it keeps track of the number of words for the kids so they don't have to waste time counting up words. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to shoot me a comment!

***Resource Link:***

Activities, Strategies & Interventions for Increasing Fluency

Happy Reading!

My Blog Bucket is FULL

2011-09-05T19:51:00.001-04:00

A warm bucket-filling thank you to Mrs. Durbin over at 3rd Grade's A Hoot and Mrs. Pitner over at Pitner's Potpourri for awarding me the Top 10 Blogs Award.

My bucket is brimming with gratitude!

On an adult note, the bucket filling philosophy is not just for kids. The following book is a great read for grown-ups who also want to be bucket fillers not just at school but in their daily lives. I highly recommend it and it takes only about 45 minutes to read the whole book! Well worth it! Truuuuuuust me!

Thank you! I love it!

A Packed Week of Learning

2011-09-03T22:24:00.000-04:00

The Lake Myra Benchmarking Team checking out Pinterest!

As I struggled with 'blogger's block' this week, I decided to just create a post that included highlights of everything I taught and saw in action at Lake Myra. First of all, I must say this week came fast after coming of off benchmarking the entire school last week in two days. It's a move we made last year in an effort to take *something* off the plate of teachers since we do ask teachers to maintain quarterly running record growth lines for each of the students in their class, they get to listen to them read once every nine weeks at a minimum, if not, daily in guided reading. So, I know you're all wondering what's going on in the picture above. Well, let me tell you....with the help of @Jane Ferguson, we have Pinfluenced at least five teacher friends to check out Pinterest and I must say, as you can see, they were very Pintrigued!

Ms. Staib's 1st Grade Class in my 21st Century Special

Part of being a 21st century learner is being able to work and learn with EVERYONE. So, in addition to the content lesson of learning how to create partner Wordles, students are also practicing their 21st century "super skills" of communicating and collaborating, and being critical thinkers when laptop problems arise.

3rd Grade Reading Group

This week my 3rd grade reading group (9:30-11:00) worked on creating SMART reading goals based on one of the 1st quarter reading objectives in addition to getting good at identifying fiction story elements.

The SMART clipart downloaded from Pinterest

Monday began with an Elements of Fiction (formative) pre-assessment. I read a fiction story to them all whole group, and then gave them each a blank white piece of paper and asked them to create a story map. I got 19 different story maps with most students needing work on Setting and Plot. Thus, we began a Setting study.

By the end of the week, students were able to make interesting, specific predictions based on book jackets.

Download Book Jacket Prediction sheet here.

Our Word Learning Anchor Charts (in progress)

I also push-in to a 2nd grade class in the afternoon...this week, we focused on Predicting. Here is some of the anchor charts we created this week.

In the middle of the week, I spotted this 'Synonym Garden' made with paint chips when I was attending my daughters' middle school Open House.

Synonym Garden @ North Garner Middle School 7th Grade Hallway

As the IRT at Lake Myra, I'm in and out of classrooms all day long...lucky me! Most days, I carry my iPhone on me because I always suspect I'm going to see or witness greatness while I'm in and out of Lake Myra classrooms. Here's a sampling of some of the greatness I found this week on the first grade hall.

Classroom Spaces

2011-08-28T18:08:00.009-04:00

Aside from the content knowledge and student learning objectives, classroom design ranks pretty high up there when it comes to planning and designing your year. Not only are classroom spaces important but they set the mood and tone of your classroom. Benches, rugs, unique chairs, stools and crates, can turn simple into a center. I was inspired by Jessica Meacham's writing center so I created one similar to hers {picture below}...the great thing about a fun writing center is that it's very motivating for reluctant writers....and a "stocked" writing center makes it so easy to "fix it and fancy it up"!

I was inspired by all the lamps in Debbie Miller's classroom that I searched one summer for as many cute lamps as I could find and even made a candy lamp myself.

Well designed classroom spaces make students feel important, and teaching students how to care for and clean up those areas teaches them pride in their workspace, giving them a sense of accomplishment, safety and a warm classroom culture.

Keeping your classroom neat and organized sends a message to children that everything is special and important. If we value keeping the books in the classroom library straight and orderly, then students will see the value in books...if we don't care what the classroom library looks like, with books backwards, upside down, out of place and disorderly bins, then students won't care either, sort of like this one below.

Even adding a simple rug creates another cozy classroom space. In the spirit of Montessori, have a basket full of rolled up rugs/mats that students unroll to create their own classroom space or "just right spot" and put away when finished.

PNG Doodle Borders

2011-08-16T19:04:00.001-04:00

Download here.

I found these cute doodle borders online a while back...they make a cute border for booklets, signs, nametags, labels...the possibilities are endless! Download them here, resize and use to make everything cute!

Reader's Workshop

2011-08-11T13:11:00.000-04:00

Although this post could be a novel, as Reader's Workshop encompasses a lot of different aspect of reading (student and teacher), teaching and learning, and classroom environments and materials....I am going to use the KISS method today....(Keep It Super Simple). If you know me at all, you know I am a huge fan of Reader's Workshop. Like the Daily Five, it's just a structure...a way to teach reading. It doesn't do the teaching for you and it doesn't write the lesson plans for you. In many ways, Reader's Workshop and the Daily Five are the same, but in one small but very important way, they are different. Reader's Workshop, embedded in the workshop model philosophy, the genuine reading & thinking struggles of the teacher, the teacher's metacognition shared out with the students, and the willingness to model this vulnerability in front of the students is critical to the success of the students in a Reader's Workshop format.

In my humble opinion, the previous three books are all you need to teach reading comprehension in a Reader's Workshop format. Mosaic of Thought is a not a step by step how to book, instead it's the book that gets your brain wrapped around your role and expectations as a Reader's Workshop teacher. I created a glog book review on this book.

View interactive glog here.

Debbie Miller's book, Reading with Meaning: Teaching Comprehension in the Primary Grades, is an easy to read, easy to follow book that is written in sequential order. The first few chapters are about setting for a Reader's Workshop. Then, each chapter is a strategy, in this order, Making Connections/ Schema, Visualizing, Predicting and Inferring, Questioning, Determining Importance in Non-Fiction and Synthesizing. If you do a 6-8 week strategy study with mini-lessons, this book's content will cover the entire school year. When I first began teaching in the Reader's Workshop format, I created daily mini-lessons for each strategy based on the book and linked them on my original website, hellofirstgrade.com. Here are the mini-lessons.

In addition to the mini-lessons written for each strategy, I created a Reader's Workshop newsletter for parents explaining each strategy. I would send each one home at the beginning of each new strategy unit. Parents were grateful to have the background knowledge behind their child's new language. Here are the newsletters, a series I named, Parent School.

Download them all here.

This year in my current position as the Curriculum and Instructional Resource Teacher and reading interventionist, I am fortunate to have a high group a sixteen 3rd graders for 90 minutes...I plan to teach in a Reader's Workshop and look forward to experimenting with the mini-lessons in Harvey and Goudvis, The Comprehension Tookit, grades 3-6.

Teaching Web 2.0 Tools for Higher Level Thinking

2011-08-09T16:23:00.005-04:00

This year, in addition to my reading intervention groups and my IRT duties, I teach one special a day...all first grade classes rotate through by the end of the week and the name of this special is 21st Century Learning. In addition to Technology projects and covering the NC Essential Technology Standards, we incorporate the 4C's...the Super Skills of the 21st Century, with grade level content and cross-curricular projects. Since Wordle is one of many useful and easy to use Web 2.0 tools on the internet, it's one I want to learn and use a lot by the end of first grade. Today, I found a wordle in the public Wordle gallery...the one shown above ( did not create it nor do I claim to have created it) Mrs. Butler's class is also working on learning what the vocabulary word, "attribute" means...below is a picture of the anchor from that vocabulary lesson...so it was a word they were familiar with:

After displaying the red, white and blue wordle, I asked them to describe everything about it and it's attributes like word color, word size, word shape, word direction, background, word meanings...as they brainstormed, I recorded students (in front of the class in real time) on Audacity, a free download, exported the audio file and a screenshot of the wordle into Windows Movie Maker. It's 50 seconds long, but you can watch it here.

Identifying Characteristics of Wordles

Here is our finished product.

Because this special isn't just about playing fun games on the iPads or typing words into wordle to make a pretty display of words, we work hard to incorporate the other initiatives we already use at Lake Myra like Marzano's Classroom Instruction That Works, Building Thinking Skills, Daily Analogies and Bloom's Taxonomy. Below are some posters and books we use schoolwide at Lake Myra Elementary.

The five thinking skills outlined in this program are:

Download poster here.

Download free sample here

These revised Bloom's posters are provided by the district and come in 12x18 laminated. They are displayed in all Lake Myra classrooms with particular attention to Evaluate and Create. I think the way Mrs. Spivey displayed them in her classroom is GENIUS!!! Using cell phone bar strength to demonstrate the highest level of thinking strength!

Download here.

Marzano's Six Steps for Vocabulary Instruction

2011-08-08T21:35:00.000-04:00

Click here to download poster

Click here to download Descriptors of all Six Steps
Last year we had Mark Fosseid of Marzano Research Associates, in for some high quality professional development on Academic Vocabulary Instruction. After two days, we had developed essential vocabulary words in science, K-5. See below:

Click here to download Lake Myra Essential Vocabulary

Vertical PLT's are also in the process of developing essential lists for Math, Language Arts and Social Studies. The way words end up on the list is based on a set of criteria recommend my Marzano & Associates. Vocabulary Notebooks are also in practice in all K-5 classrooms and is an academic accountability component of our School Improvement Plan (SIP).

Using "tights and looses" language, vocabulary notebooks are a tight, the physical way they look and kept are classroom looses...teachers and grade levels decide this piece. Teachers at our school mostly use two options for the notebook itself...a composition book or xerox templates.
Here is an example of pre-made templates from the Fresno Unified School District.

Here is a first grade example from Lake Myra last year, most teachers use composition books as we are "going green" schoolwide and reducing the amount of paper and xeroxes we use.

Other vocabulary resources:

Vocabulary Games for the Classroom

Marzano Research & Associates

Tennessee Vocabulary Project

Research Article on e-Voc Strategies

Vocabulary Lists

Online Vocabulary Games

Vocabulary Mastery

Vocabulary Feeds the World

Lake Myra Behavior Flow Chart

2011-08-05T13:50:00.000-04:00

Click here to download

At Lake Myra, we believe all children can learn and we also believe all children need routines and structures in place schoolwide so all children know and understand the expectations. This year our PBiS team created a Behavior Flow Chart. This is posted in all learning areas of the school and this language of consequences is spoken by everyone. As we all know, consistency is the key.

Bounce & Stretch Sound Posters

2011-08-03T17:10:00.000-04:00

Download Bounce It Poster here

Download Stretch It Poster here

Often when students are learning sounds associated with each letters, it's helpful for them to classify the type of sounds they are...these posters help students listen for if the letter sound is a stretching sound or a bouncing sound.

"Super Skills" of the 21st Century

2011-08-02T10:39:00.001-04:00

Download 4Cs poster here.

In addition to technology, teaching students how to be 21st century citizens involves teaching them the 4 C's...what the Partnership for 21st century education is calling, the Super Skills....Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking and Creativity. Read more about the Above and Beyond initiative here.

I'm also a teacher contributor for our district's Parent Matters newsletter...and this spring I wrote an article outlining 21st century learning to parents....what it is, what it isn't and how it's different from the way it was when we were in school. Free free to use it when explaining 21st century learning to parents or school stakeholders. Here is a public link to the article.

Happy New (School) Year!

2011-07-26T14:26:00.001-04:00

Many of you have seen the above picture in my picasa web album for years and have emailed me for the document....here is a public link.

Here are few more freebies and other posters to get your room off to a positive start.

Download it here.

Morning Meeting Poster

Download it here.

Here is a list of books to launch Reader's Workshop...all reading related:

Download it here.

For those of you with CD players in your classroom and a listening center for students to listen to reading, here is a sign so students can manage the center more independently.

Download it here.

Our school also has a Meet the Teacher event a couple of days before school starts...really just a time for parent, students and teachers to meet and greet each other and for students to peek into their classroom. Here are some documents that you may find helpful during this event including a Smartboard slide with a Classroom Giving Tree....add sticky notes to it with words like Kleenex, hand sanitizer, cardstock, labels, ziploc bags, a wagon, etc., and see what parents are willing to donate...you'd be surpised!

Meet The Teacher Documents

Guided Reading Videos: I have two 30-minute guided reading videos on my helloliteracy website.

One lesson is a first grade guided reading lesson with a level 4 book, that was recorded on the first day of first grade. The second video was recorded in February of first grade, using a level 14 text.

Watch both guided reading lessons here.

Also, don't forget to download the free Pinterest app on iTunes.

There have several updates to this app since last week, and it works much better. If you need an invite, just email me at helloliteracy@gmail.com

Oh, How Pinteresting!

2011-07-15T08:48:00.001-04:00

Anyone Pinterested? Thanks to my good friend, @jessicameacham, for sending me an invitation to Pinterest. Visual bookmarks....pins. I'm hooked. Here's my Pinterest page: http://pinterest.com/hellojenjones/

And it looks something like this:

Of course, this is just a screenshot of my boards and pins, but if you don't immediately love it, stick with it...it's totally addicting! You can join two ways...one by putting your name on a waiting list (I really don't know what that's all about...) or you can be invited by someone that already has a Pinterest account. Leave a comment to this post with your email address, and I'll "invite" you. It's sooooooooo cool! You're gonna love it!

I Spy Cut-Apart Cards

2011-07-14T23:11:00.000-04:00

Just found these cute letter cards at http://www.popheartpress.blogspot.com/. Download the set yourself here.
What I really like about these cut-apart cards is that students can create their own letter dictionaries and create their own graphic representations or find pictures in a magazine. Would also be need to create a class A Book, B Book, etc....lots of open-ended possibilities...and tons of cool ideas at this blog, too!

Response to Intervention at Our School

2011-07-10T07:45:00.005-04:00

Here at Lake Myra Elementary School, we have been implementing RTI for two years. We were a brand new school when we opened our doors two years ago for the first time, so we feel we had a unique opportunity to get RTI off the ground by designing and weaving RTI into the other systems and structures already in place within our school district like PLT's, Digging Deeper Assessments & AIMSweb. The RTI forms and structures we have put in place may not work with you and your district, but they may help you in some way. Although we use AIMSweb for universal screening and progress monitoring (AIMSweb was born out of Dibels - for the most part, same CBM's and PM probes) we also use some of the reading comprehension passages from http://www.easycbm.com/. The one document that we created last year really helped everyone understand the process of taking a child through RTI--it is a "training wheels" document called the Otter Talk form--once a teacher mastered using this form, they were ready to begin progress monitoring online using the Caseload Manager wizard in Aimsweb. Below is a screenshot of an Otter Talk Form for 2nd Grade in Reading.

Below is a short video I narrated to explain some of the recording keeping and data notebooks kept by teachers in the RTI process. Some teachers prefer to keep their progress monitoring data in hard copy form and never switch to progress monitoring online. This video may help you see one teacher's record keeping.

The digging deeper assessments we use to find foundational areas of need are:

Letter/Sound ID

P.A.S.T. (Phonological Awareness Skills Test)

Early Names Test

Names Test

High Frequency Word List

Running Record - Oral Reading & Oral Retelling

If you email me your name, email address, school name and school district, I'll share with you a Dropbox link to all the RTI documents we've created at Lake Myra. These documents are licensed under Creative Commons, so if you re-use or re-mix them, please give proper attribution.

Identifying Similarities & Differences PPT

2011-07-01T17:03:00.001-04:00

Identifying Similarities & Differences

View more presentations from Jennifer Jones

Last year, we started a schoolwide book study of Classroom Instruction That Works by Marzano & Pickering. Instead of doing a chapter a month, we are moving along at a much slower, deeper pace...a chapter a year. Since we opened two years ago, we have covered two chapters very deeply. The Effort & Recognition chapter and the Identifying Similarities and Differences chapter. The benefits of going quality vs. quantity have definitely paid off and the students are seeing the value of their effort pay off in their increased achievement this year. Level 4 effort has a whole new meaning, and every student knows what a "rubric" is. Second graders can identify nine different types of analogies and venn diagrams are all over the place. Enjoy this presentation as you dive into Marzano's high yield strategies.

Common Core Standards App - Free

2011-07-01T10:42:00.000-04:00

Free common core standards app from iTunes...while it won't do the work for you, it will certainly make it convenient for you to find the standards in a few seconds. Get it for the Android here.

Who Likes Free Stuff?

2011-06-25T20:03:00.000-04:00

Kevin & Amanda's Free Fonts

If you're like me, you love free stuff! Not free with strings, just plain free. At Kevin & Amanda's Free Fonts site, you can download one font at a time, or download all 123 free scrapbook fonts in just one click...(you have to scroll down the right sidebar to find the "Download All in One Click" button).

There is no email address or sign up required...you gotta love that! Thanks Kevin & Amanda!

Digital Media in Schools Now

2011-06-20T20:27:00.003-04:00

Watch the full episode. See more Digital Media - New Learners Of The 21st Century.

Do you ever wonder what 21st century education actually looks like and sounds like? Wonder what the teacher is doing & saying? Wonder what the students are doing and saying? This video begins to answer these questions and it's quite impressive, bold and here now. Five stars in my opinion....a must see if you're a teacher not retiring anytime soon.

Online PD Module #1: Google, Google, Google

2011-06-16T15:00:00.011-04:00

If you know me as a teacher, you know I absolutely LOVE Google....and no, I'm not just talking about the search box, although there are wonderful hidden search features of the Google search box, too. I love Google because it has a plethera of resources for teachers and students. So for my first online module of my new e-pd series, I'd like to take you on an exploratory journey of some of educational uses that Google has to offer. This module is designed into mini "field trips" that may be taken one right after another in one sitting or broken apart as your time permits. Like anything, you will only get out of it what you put into it....so "p-develop away!" This module should take approximately 2 hours to complete.

Objective: The learner will increase their digital awareness of Google applications and its digital literacy benefits.

Please complete this now:
GOOGLE ONLINE MODULE: PRE-ASSESSEMENT

Field Trip #1 - The Wonder Wheel

Click on the link above to read all about a NEW way to use Google's search tool.

How To Access Google Wonder Wheel

View more presentations from Greg Collette

Try It!: Enter "dogs" as the search word. What pops up in the Wonder Wheel?

Be Thinking!: Evaluate how the Wonder Wheel helps student's conduct research on the Internet.

Extra Credit: Read how a Google search helps with different reading levels. and

Classroom Uses for Google Advanced Search

Field Trip #2 - Google Earth

Click above to navigate your way to a becoming a Google Earth expert. You must first download Google Earth and then take the quiz at the above link to learn how to get the most out of Google Earth.

Travel the World in Your Classroom with Google Earth

View more presentations from jtebbets

Try It!: Like the kids like to do, enter your home or school address into the Find box.

Be Thinking!: Design a NC SCOS social studies lesson using Google Earth.

Extra Credit: Check out Google's full Geo Suite!

Field Trip #3 - Google Lit Trips

Once you've learned how to navigate around in Google Earth, you'll LOVE taking your students on a Google Literature Trip, that combines geography, history and literature.

Explore your grade level link. Then, select the K-2 link and find the title Abuela. Download the Abuela file (it will automatically import into Google Earth if you have already downloaded it) and go from place to place.

Try It!: Go on a Google Lit Trip with your class for the book, Abuela, and.....

Be Thinking! Ask your students to do a lit trip review of the Abuela's lit trip.

Extra Credit: What is the significance of this image....a sailboat in NY harbor?

Field Trip #4 - Google ImageSwirl

Type the 'food' into the Image Swirl search box....and see what happens.

Try It!: What does the "food" image swirl search reveal?

Be Thinking! Show your students this new cool tool, ask them to compare & contrast how a traditional image search is alike/different than a Google Imageswirl.

Field Trip #5- Google Forms

Forms is Google's answer to Zoomerang...but free and super simple. Think of it as a non-technical survey. You have small or large group of people and you need to get a response from everyone but you don't want 30 or 90 new email messages in your inbox. Google Forms is your answer, especially for teachers, students and school committees. Here are a few screenshots of Forms I have created this year for learning and assessment.

Here are a few examples of Forms I have created this year for use with teachers.

Now it's time for you to make a Google Form. If you're a visual learner, watch this video below first, it really helps to "see" someone else make one.

Or, if your learning style is more receptive, you can follow step by step written directions here to:

Create Forms

Edit Forms

View Responses

Try It! Now, create your own Google Form. Think of some information you want to know from your students or fellow teachers...student interests, brainstorming summer reading lists, hospitality committee information, phone tree information, assessments....be creative, and it doesn't have to be long and complicated. Here's a Magazine Survey I made last spring to get teacher input on titles to purchase for the guided reading leveled book room....and then a screenshot of the response summary.

After you create your Google Form,

SUBMIT IT HERE

END OF MODULE: POST ASSESSMENT

(see how much you learned from this module!)

Bloomin' Google

100 Ways Google Can Make You a Better Educator

Guess-the-Google

Montage-A-Google

Google's URL Shortener

Cool Tools for Schools

Everything Google

Google Tools For Schools

View more presentations from Jennifer Dorman

New e-Professional Development Series: Coming Soon

2011-06-13T16:32:00.001-04:00

Coming soon.....I'm in the process of developing some electronic professional development modules. The first one will be released this Friday. The first module will be on exploring the benefits of Google in the classroom. I will lead through an electronic journey of several Google applications that will have real authenic meaning for you and your professional needs. Please let me if there are any topics you would like me to explore for future Hello e-professional development modules.

Capturing Background Knowledge with 21st Century Tools

2011-06-10T13:00:00.013-04:00

Everyday I find myself moving away from teaching tools of the past....an overhead projector for example, which seems like a dinosaur now....and into technology tools of the 21st century. Some of those basic tools of the past like paper and pencil are used less and less by teachers and students each year. Great teaching and learning is still occurring daily, however, the tools we use to make this teaching and learning happen are being replaced with 21st century learning tools that are more efficient and differentiated with methods characteristic of 21st century teaching and learning (see my parent article about 21st education.) In an effort to answer this research question: "How can technology enhance the capture of students' background knowledge?" I used the I-Search research process, a method for teaching students how to conduct research and solve information problems in school. I will walk you through the I-Search components I used in a way that you, too, could use this research method with your students.

In this section students will describe what they already knew about this question when they began their search and why they cared about or were interested in this question.

Read other student example questions here.

Photo Image @ fotopedia

I researched the question: "How can technology enhance the capture of students’ background knowledge?" and brainstormed what I already knew about "background knowledge and technology" using a concept web using http://bubbl.us/ Here is my concept web:

In this section, students will describe the sequence of steps in the search. For example, students will describe what sources they began with, and how these led to further sources. Students will describe problems or breakthroughs in their search-tell when they really got interesting. Students can also tell how their questions changed or expanded as a result of the search process, and they should acknowledge the help they received from others in obtaining valuable sources.
Read student examples of the step here.

In addition to searching the internet to find answers to my question, I hit the virtual stacks of ECU's Joyner Library. The internet is full of resources for online graphic organizers, but there is very little research on collecting and capturing background knowledge using web-based tools. If you consider a KWL (at least the K part) a formative pre-assessment, then there are more web tools being used for this purpose. I also found information on my own personal professional library shelves, especially from the book called Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement by Robert Marzano.

Here students will focus on three or four major findings or conclusions and support them with examples, stories, or arguments that will help the reader understand how they arrived at those conclusions. They will try to connect their findings with their original questions. They might also suggest further questions to explore in the future. Students should include any analyses they did‹cause and effect, pro/con, compare and contrast, or sequencing. Read here for some more student examples of this step.

What I learned is that although KWL is a research based proven way to increase student achievement, many teachers are still capturing this student knowledge in traditional ways. Either through whole class charts or individual student reading response journals. With both of these methods, efficiency and time is sacraficed, and there is not 100% student participation because either some kids never raise their hand and some kids never get a turn or students are just not held accountable to KWL expections in a reading journal. The feedback I received from teachers is that although they know they should go back and read each child's reader's response journal, they don't always have the time to flip through and actually read through 25-30 journals a day. What I also found is that there is such an intense focus on improving reading comprehension and so much emphasis on standardized testing in the 21st century, that teacher's attention to considering students' background knowledge is waning..."how much a reader knows about the subject is probably the best predictor of reading comprehension" (Fisher, Frey & Leu, 2009).

Image Shared with permission by Laura Jayne Parson

What I learned is that teachers are capturing background knowledge in a variety of ways using various 21st century tools like Audicity, where students "say" what they know. Also, Glogster is a creative open-ended way for students to show through images and videos what they already know. Still yet, teachers don't always have time to open 25-30 audio files and/or glogs to review what students have recorded.

Teachers can also capture students' background knowledge using classroom clickers. The pros of this method is that all students can tell what they know (or don't know) at the same time, and one of the cons of this method is the answer choice are limited, where a student might know more about a question than any of the any choices allow.

Image from my classroom 2009

Wordle is also a 21st century tool that students use to tell what they know. With this tool, a student's background knowledge will appear in a large to small format, with ideas and words appearing larger for more predominant background knowledge. The most efficient way I found to capture background knowledge of all students is through the use of Google Forms. With this method, all students can add as much information as they want and students can complete the form on their own, asynchronously. I was amazed at the responses by students, I do not think I would have gotten the depth of background knowledge from a whole class chart. Here are screenshots of web-based ways to capture students' background knowledge using a Google Form K-W-L.

This section will give students a chance to describe how they have developed as a researcher. They will answer the question, "What do you now know about searching for information that you didn't know before?" To answer this question, students will describe those findings that meant the most to them. They might also discuss how their newly found knowledge will affect the way they act or think in the future. Finally, they might want to talk about the skills they have developed as a researcher and writer. Read student examples here.

As a teacher researcher, I synthesized my findings by using the double entry strategy of note-taking. I found that most definitely, technology can enhance the capture of students' background knowledge. Here is a screenshot from a KWL made in Google Forms about Immigration & Family Heritage.

Here a screenshot from the way the Google Form looks on the editing side after all students have entered their background information into each field. This Google Form was created by me to capture 90 students' background information about Geography & Maps. Once students SUBMIT the form, all responses are "dumped" into one spreadsheet. A teacher can read all students' background knowledge in one document at the same time...no papers, no mess, no cumbersome journals. The research question has definitely proved that technology can enhance the capture of students' background knowledge.

I was really impressed with the amount, quality and depth of background knowledge I was able to capture by using Google Forms for a KWL chart. Students responded positively to enter their background knowledge into a "survey." Students were also able complete this on their own and take as much time as they needed. It also did not take whole class time and teachers were pleased that with the print out of all student "background knowledge data" was collected into one document...that is a strong 'pro' of this format.

This section will have of their references in alphabetical order.

Dochy, F., Segers, M. & Buel, M. (1999). The relation between assessment practices and outcomes of studies: The case of research on prior knowledge. Review of Educational Research, 69(2), 145-186.

Fisher, D., Frey, N. & Leu, D. (2009). Background knowledge: The missing piece of the comprehension puzzle. Portsmouth, NW: Heinemann.

Marzano, R. (2004). Building background knowledge for academic achievement. Alexandria, VA: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.

McKeown, M., Beck, I., Sinatra, G., & Loxterman, J. (1992). The relative contribution of prior knowledge and coherent text to comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 27(1), 78-93.

Miller, D. (2002). Reading with meaning: Teaching comprehension in the primary grades. Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.

iPods in Guided Reading

2011-05-28T22:12:00.002-04:00

One of the funnest Guided Reading lessons I did this year was the day after our school received its first order of iPod. I checked out six of them, and brought them to the reading table, setting one each in front of them and above their book. As they read out loud to themselves, I picked up the iPod in front of each of them and began video recording them reading....and the rest as they say, is history. I created the following iMovie to show you what happened after I began recording.

Not only did students receive real time oral reading feeback from me, but they also had the real-time opportunity to reflect on their own oral reading and self-monitoring skills. By watching and listening to themselves on the iPod, it was like looking into a mirror and seeing what you want to fix...a hair out of place, salad in your teeth or the right earrings to match your outfit...students could see and fix their oral reading immediately. The process was quite validating, as Adric says, "I look and sound like a reader!" What better reading confidence builder is that? Because this day was the first time I had introduced iPods, their excitement and engagement was high...as they encountered problems or questions, they asked and helped each other...all on their own, which just goes to reinforce that learning is a social behavior!

BONUS: 30 Ways to Use the iPod Touch in the Classroom

Creative Commons: For Creators & Users

2011-05-27T21:48:00.005-04:00

Creative Commons was designed to reduce the gray area of digital creation, ownership and sharing issues of original content on the worldwide web. In their words, "Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation."

Sharing Creative Works by Roberts, Rojer & Phillips

Creative Commons History & Ideology (long version)

What is Creative Commons? (short version)

This blog is an example of web-based content, created by me, that is licensed under Creative Commons. The screenshot above shows how I feature my CC license the bottom of my blog page. With this license, anyone may use, copy, remix and adapt my work under these conditions.

These High Interest Word Banks

are an example of how I have adapted and remixed the original work of someone else (Jessica Meacham), given proper attribution to the original content creator and licensed the work under the same Share-Alike conditions that the original creator wished. In this case, I am both a CC user and creator.

As an educator, I'm always searching for images where the owners have licenced their images under Creative Commons. When searching for images in Google Images, Yahoo Images and Flickr, you can select Advanced Search and select the button to only search for images with a CC license. I share this method with my students to model and teach responsible digital literacy and show students how and where to give attribution for images used. I, in turn, license my Flickr photos with the same CC license for re-use.

Fountas & Pinnell App

2011-05-24T19:26:00.000-04:00

Now available in the App Store is the Fountas and Pinnell Prompting Guide available for both the iPhone and iPad. Have scripted prompts at your fingertips during guided reading or one on one reading interventions. "Fountas and Pinnell Prompting Guide, Part 1 is designed to provide you with language and actions that support the reader's construction of an efficient network of strategic activities for processing texts and writing stories. The prompts provide short, explicit support for the students to engage in successful problem-solving actions." The app is designed to support strategic thinking moves within the text.

Blogging in the Classroom

2011-05-23T20:00:00.007-04:00

CC Flickr Image @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/barnett/2836828090/

This is my professional blog. I created it using Blogspot, Google's blog hosting site, because I had completely run out of bandwidth (storage) on my Google hosted website, http://www.hellofirstgrade.com/. I had quite a few followers on that site, and was really looking for a forum through which I could continue to share ideas and best practices in literacy.There are blogs about many kinds of things: hiking, cooking, Montessori Moms and spirituality, to name a few. (If you're still asking yourself, "What is a Blog?"- click here to view many different and varied answers to that question.) Now with a blog, I don't worry anymore about not having enough space for sharing my stuff because there are plenty of free storage sites on the Internet now...two of my personal favorites are Google Docs and Dropbox. The blogs I follow are in the right sidebar...besides Twitter, that offers a vast amount of information in a short amount of space and time, I generally follow the blogs of other teachers and educationalists that have the same interests as myself. The following slideshow features many of the benefits of blogging. One of the things I love so much about blogging is that I don't have to re-invent the wheel, but I can find resources, share and link them with others that have created and shared before me using blogging tools like Slideshare and YouTube...and giving proper attribution, of course.

Blogging in the K-12 Classroom

View more presentations from Ashley Sikayun

Student blogs are trickier to accomplish in elementary school with privacy issues, parent permission issues and student email address issues. However, there is a way around it to protect student privacy. Using my iPhone4, I recorded Dawn Reynolds, a 2nd grade teacher at my school, talking about how her students use blogging instead of morning work to write, read and respond to each other's lives and activities. I uploaded the video straight to YouTube, and here is what she had to say about her classroom blog.

As the students were working in the classroom this morning before the bell rang, I captured a few images of them blogging, it's one of the stations on the Morning Menu.

Although every student in WCPSS has an assigned @wcpss.net email address, they are lengthy and difficult for students to remember. So Mrs. Reynolds assigns each student a number (user 14 below) and for the "Email (required)" field, she has taught the students to enter lm@lm.com. This blog program does not seem to care that it's not a goodaddress but that it simply has an @ sign and .com in it. It's difficult to read, but this student user is responding to Mrs. Reynold's prompt of "Tell us about your trackout" and has written the following so far..."what i did over track out was i was trying responsibility but my (brother....." so I guess you have to tune into Mrs. Reynold's class blog to read about what he did to try responsibility.

The other type of educational blogs are classroom blogs by teachers for parents, sort of an ongoing, interactive, up to date digital newsletter of events, lessons and activities happening in the classroom. It's certainly a great way to save trees and I've heard parents tell me, "I really feel like I'm there with my child and when she tells me about the activity with the clickers, or the frogs, or whatever, I know exactly what she's talking about." One of my favorite classroom blogs for parents (and for other teachers to get ideas) is Mrs. Meacham's Classroom Blog.

Screenshot image captured using Jing

The one thing I have learned in the last 24 hours about blogging it that, like writing and composing, there is a process. The blogging process has more digital and social components, and the cycle is best displayed in the graphic image below, definitely a nice "behind-the-scenes" look at what teachers must think about before diving into classroom blogging.

Image courtesy of Rachel Boyd & Tania O'Meagher

Poetry Comes Alive with Technology!....Lucy Would Be Proud

2011-05-13T16:00:00.003-04:00

The first grade classes created Poetry Slideshows for their Poetry Celebration after completing the Lucy Calkins Poetry Unit. In the unit, students learned how to see things through "poet's eyes", they compared the describing words that a scientist would use and words that a poet might use. They learned about the song and ryhthm of line breaks in poetry. Students each selected one poem from the many that they had written to publish in audio and image form. The literacy coach set up a "recording studio" in the classroom of the tracked out teacher and students could come in one at a time and read their poems out loud into Audacity. They also created an illustration to match their poem. The slideshow was created in iMovie with student voices matched up with the illustration of their poem. With fruit roll-ups and graham crackers as a snack, students watched as they listened to themselves read their poems.

Big Huge Labs for Vocabulary Instruction

2011-04-28T14:53:00.002-04:00

Using Web 2.0 tools like the one I used to create this "motivational poster", http://www.bighugelabs.com/, teachers and students can create digital photo projects to increase vocabulary. Use the "motivational poster" to explain or describe academic words, phrases and idioms that are unfamiliar to students. There are other creation options at BIGHUGELABS that are fun and engaging for students, like image mosaics, jigsaw puzzles, popart posters, trading cards, billboard signs and magazine covers. All creations are saved in a .jpeg format, so printing is not necessary, but could easily be embedded into a Prezi, Glogster or Voicethread.

Feel free to right click on the posters if you'd like to save them to your computer. In the right sidebar of my blog are a list of websites to find public domain images, like the astronaut and leaf used to make these posters.

Making Inferences about the Amazon River

2011-04-08T16:36:00.000-04:00

In my 3rd grade reading group, we are revisiting Inferencing and what that looks and sounds like with Question/Answer Relationships. As we gear up for the EOG's, I want to prepare my students for how we must make inferences when drawing conclusions about answers to multiple choice questions. I began by explaining to my group that inferencing is really about not ever really knowing what the author intended for us to get from the text, but drawing our conclusions and interpretations based on both, information from the text and information from our head.

I used this analogy to explain it to my students and contrasted inferencing with predicting.

If we dump the pieces of a puzzle out onto a table, we can predict what the puzzle will be when it's all put together even though we don't know yet...as we begin to work on it, we can revise our prediction based on more of the puzzle coming together and when we're finally done, we CAN CHECK OUR PREDICTION to see if we were right because the final product or answer will be "right there" in front of us.

When looking at a piece of art, whether contemporary or a famous piece of artwork from history, we can make a prediction about what we think the artist meant for it to mean, however, because we can never check our prediction to know for sure what the artist meant for it to mean, it is an inference. We can only interpret what we think the artist's message was, as is often the case with author's and their stories. Inferences not only use "In the Text" information, but they also use "In My Head" information, that go unchecked or unconfirmed, predictions can be checked and confirmed for certainty.

So, with the operational definition and analogy clear in our mind, we began to work on an article about the Amazon River. Read Works is a fantastic free source of lessons for 20 Comprehension Concepts, separated and graduated by grade level. Drawing Conclusions is the closest skill for inferencing that the site has.

So, using the non-fiction passage and question set for The Mighty Amazon River, we began to work our way through each question and answer and filling in the missing information on the Making Inferences Sheet.

I am also including a blank Making Inferences template to use with any passage and question set.

Birth of a Mighty River passage Birth of a Mighty River Questions

The key to guiding students through this activity is questioning and digging deeper with the questions. For example, the first question is "The source of the river was a mystery because...." the correct answer choice is "The source was hard to get to." The key piece of understanding when locating correct answers when inferencing is knowing understanding that not only will the wrong answers not be stated in the text, the correct answer will be explicitly stated in the text either. Therefore, the clues around the correct answer will have to be explained by the students. So, the line of questioning that would occur is:

"Why was the source hard to get to?"

"What are clues that indicate the source was hard to get to?"

What information in the text leads us to believe the source was hard to get to?"

At this points, students will begin to locate information "in the text" like "High on Nevado Mismo" and "18,363 feet" and "in Peru" and "a team of 22 people"....When students produce this information from the text, like "high on a mountain" our next line of questioning should be, "....and what does that mean?" When they started to answer with "that means you need hiking experience and special equipment"...you should immediately slap a label on their "inferences" that they are making. It was like light bulbs going off and it was very cool.

Summarizing with Twitter

2011-03-25T15:39:00.003-04:00

Another super 21st century way to get kids excited about Summarizing is to Twitter. Certainly, a Web 2.0 tool, Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that allows you answer the question, "What are you doing? [right now]" ....so in our case, at school, we are micro-blogging to answer the question, "What are you learning, right now?" We started our account yesterday and have used it so far in one of my four reading groups, with 3rd graders. They had all heard of Twitter, but had not tweeted themselves. When I told them what it was and what it was used for, they got very excited. They were challenged with the 140 character limit, and made the anology that it was like making GIST statements...and that choosing important powerful words to get your message across was essential. We'd love to find other students/classes that are tweeting about their learning, so follow us @mrsjonesotters on Twitter and we'll follow you.

21 Things That Will Be Obsolete in Education in 2020

2011-03-25T11:41:00.002-04:00

I was particulary fascinated with this blog post titled, 21 Things That will be Obsolete in Education by 2020. Through Twitter, I've noticed it has resurfaced on different sites. It is obviously an opinion piece, however, it is interesting and food for 21st century thought. It left me with some lingering questions.....

How old is the person in your district that continues to place furniture orders?

I work in a very large district that continues to open new schools every year....are we outfitting new schools with 21st century technology and 20th century furniture and architecture? Mmmmm.

Are the university professors who are "preparing" future teachers, modeling and integrating 21st century skills and technology (including web 2.0 tools) that will be expected of those teachers once they get hired.

The face and future of education is rapidly changing....is EVERYONE on board?

Reading Strategies: Summarizing

2011-03-21T16:00:00.001-04:00

Image Rights

I've been working with a small group of 3rd graders for about a month now...I don't know their exact reading levels and I kind of like it this way. From what our Literacy Coach is saying (who is doing a Book Study with other Literacy Coaches on the book Preventing Misguided Reading....strategy groups such as mine are the way guided reading is heading). We work on a variety of strategies at the same time, but have spent more time on summarizing due to the nature of the strategy itself. Being able to summarize really takes the prerequisite skills of determining important information and creating inferences (for others to figure out). So, when teaching the strategy of summarizing to my group, I use the analogy of a camera....because first we must zoom in and find all the details, but then we must use those important details to form a summary. Two of the activities that we've done lately are GIST statements. Here is the template for creating 10-word GIST statements, and you can download it here.

And creating bumper stickers....which is a great way to teach summarizing, because you must make your point in only a few words. Ironically, when I said we were going to create bumper stickers to capture the essence of the article...they looked at me like they'd never heard of a bumper sticker before. When I showed them a picture of the van above, they knew what a bumper sticker was, they'd seen them before on other people's cars or the had one or two on their own cars. We used this opportunity to talk about how bumper stickers get a short message across in a short amout of time....we can usually only read them when we are stopped behind someone at traffic light, so the message can't be too long, but should be packed with a meaningful message. The following (real) website to order bumper stickers does a nice job of classifying the different types of bumper stickers. Cut some cardstock into strips (or use sentence strips) and give students a chance to CREATE a bumper sticker summary of a fiction story's message or lesson OR a non-fiction article's main idea or point.

Then some bumper stickers like, Think Globally, Act Locally, have some hidden understandings that readers must determine in order to "get" the bumper sticker.

After instruction, GIST Statements and bumper stickers can also be used as formative assessment to who in your class "gets it" and who still needs help. Here is an example of a Summarizing assessment using Google Forms.

Writing Fun: An Interactive Writing Resource

2011-03-20T19:49:00.006-04:00

Using Writing Fun by jenny eather, students can use online text organizers or teachers can print out all text type templates as word documents.

bookr & other flickr toys for digital storytelling

2011-03-20T15:39:00.004-04:00

bookr :: pimpampum using only creative common images from flickr. other flickr toys like phrasr - here's mine. Would be a great activity for vocabulary instruction. Other web tools here for digital storytelling.

IRT Meeting @ McKimmon: My Awesome Table

2011-03-18T15:06:00.000-04:00

A big shout out to the awesome ladies at my table today....Alison, Amy, Julie, Ashley, Carol and Velinda! We've had some great conversations...especially the ones about technology, which I love the most!

So, ladies, this is for you....

My top preference for a web presence right now...http://www.blogger.com/

My top preference for cute clipart....http://www.pccrafter.com/

My top preference for cute lettering right now....http://www.letteringdelights.com/

My top preference for blog backgrounds right now...http://www.shabbyblogs.com/

My top preference for grabbing screenshots right now...http://www.techsmith.com/jing/

Teaching about Japan

2011-03-18T14:49:00.003-04:00

If you're interested in teaching about Japan, here's a cool link:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/japan-quake-2011/beforeafter.htm

Be sure to move the cursor from left to right to see before and after pictures.

NCRA: Presentations, Handouts & Presentation Resources

2011-03-16T14:00:00.004-04:00

Hot Tech Tools in Literacy Instruction

View more presentations from Jennifer Jones

Reciprocal Teaching

View more presentations from dawnreynolds

On Monday, March 14th, I gave a presentation with my four classmates and my professor in the MAED READ program through ECU. Here is a link to the handout from our session.

Hot Tech Tools for Literacy Instruction Handout

From left: Thea Johnson, me, Sandy Brannan, Dr. Swaggerty, Megon Ormond

On Tuesday, March 15, I gave a presentation with Dawn Reynolds, a 2nd grade teacher from my school. We only gave out one handout and a short piece of text that was used for an activity, but I wanted to share some other resources for Reciprocal Teaching. I have uploaded more handouts and resources to my professional e-portfolio which you are free download if you wish...here is the link:

Reciprocal Teaching Resources and Handouts

In our presentation, we also shared several sources for finding short text as Reciprocal Teaching works best with short pieces of text. Here is a link my one of earlier blog posts about where to find online based text.

Sources of Short Text for Reciprocal Teaching

In our presentation, we also showed a short clip of a guided reading lesson where a teacher was leading the students in the strategies of Reciprocal Teaching. Here is a link to that video:

Reciprocal Teaching Short Video

If you have any questions about our presentations, please feel free to email any one of us. Our email addresses are on the last slide of our presentations.

From left: Dawn Reynolds, me

The best part about presenting at the conference was getting to listen to the opening Key Note Speaker, Lester Laminack...one of my favorite children's authors.

Jamendo: Free Downloadable Creative Commons Music

2011-02-24T20:28:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking this music would be appropriate for students to use in their projects and presentations. Anyone else used this music yet?

Image Search: Creative Commons Filter

2011-02-24T14:04:00.006-05:00

Yahoo Image Search for "clouds" with CC filter ON

If you are like me, you are always looking for great images to use in your slideshows and images that are appropriate for students to use in their presentations. However, with copyright law, and the fact that's it's so easy to right click on virtually any image these days, this ease sends kids the message that if it's this easy it must be legal. As teachers we must be citizens and models of ethical behavior including modeling the behavior of legal use and attribution of images licensed by the creator for reuse in accordance with the Creative Commons of copyright law. Now, both Google Image Search (Usage Rights filter) and Yahoo Image Search (Creative Common License filter), through the Advanced Search button, gives the option of searching for images that allows for reuse and/or remix.

Web 2.0 Tool - Jing: Easy Free Screenshot Grabber

2011-02-23T17:47:00.001-05:00

Say hello to the "sun"....A friend and university colleague shared this cool tool with me this weekend and I LOVE IT...Jing. The free version is all you need to capture exactly what you want on the screen using the cross hairs to select and an instant SAVE button right there! (jpeg) In the free version is also the capability to capture a few minutes of narrated video of your screen shots....like Camtasia, but easier. Check it out at Jing.

Online Sources of Web Based Text/Articles for Guided Reading

2011-02-23T12:56:00.006-05:00

A big shout-out to my friend and colleague, second grade teacher here at Lake Myra Elementary, Dawn Reynolds, for snagging some great sites as sources of short web-based articles for kids. Since Dawn and I have been collaborating on a reciprocal teaching reading project in her class this quarter, we have been scouring the Internet to find short articles (mostly non-fiction) to practice the reciprocal teaching strategies. Once we find a great short article (preferrably related to the science and social studies content) we use http://www.joliprint.com/ to convert the web-based article into a pdf document. Here are some other great sources Dawn found and passed along to me:

Scholastic News

The Current Events Newspaper for Kids

Education World: News for You - Current Events

National Geographic Kids: Stories

Do Go News & Current Events for Kids

Kid's Blog at National Geographic Kids

Science Articles for Kids

Science Articles from Science Made Simple

Science News for Kids

Buddy Project: Articles for Kids

Time for Kids

World News for Children

Thanks Dawn, for sharing the awesome links you found! You rock!

Presentation Zen: How to Not Be Boring While Presenting

2011-02-21T19:47:00.006-05:00

Paisaje

Bethany Smith, in the College of Education at North Carolina State University has some excellent points on what life IS left of Powerpoint. I also found inspiration (hers too, I think) at http://www.presentationzen.com/. Bethany keeps the Creative Commons images that she finds at her delicious.com bookmark.

Kids' Games, Animals, Photos, Stories, and More -- National Geographic Kids

2011-02-21T15:40:00.000-05:00

Kids' Games, Animals, Photos, Stories, and More -- National Geographic Kids

ABCya! Word Clouds

2011-02-21T15:05:00.001-05:00

ABCya! Word Clouds

Article Source: Digging the Dirt @ Time for Kids Online

List of Creative Commons Image Directories and Sites

2011-02-21T14:07:00.004-05:00

Abstract Textures, Background Photos - free stock images via kwout

List of Creative Commons Image Directories and Sites - using photos and images linked from this directory you can give proper attribution when re-using photos and images for your own purpose. Simply give credit at the bottom right of each slide like the following:

Then, when you find images that you've searched long and hard for, save them as a delicious bookmark so you don't have to search too far to find them again.

Pics4Learning | Free photos for education

2011-02-21T12:04:00.001-05:00

Pics4Learning Free photos for education

3rd Reading Group:Guided Reading Lesson

2011-02-21T07:19:00.002-05:00

1. First I found a Soils (3rd Grade science content) article at http://www.kids.nationalgeographic.com/, here is the article specifically. Time for Kids Home Digging the Dirt

2. Then I reformatted the article using http://www.joliprint.com/ so we could mark up the article during our group.

3. Then I created a Talking and Learning multiple choice assessment.

4. I checked out 3 iPads (2 students shared one) and we talked through each questions. The idea was not to let them take this on their own, but use it as a vehicle to teach them how to navigate through multiple choice answers and refer back to the text. It worked really well!

Sterling Listen-Along Storybook

2011-02-20T12:16:00.001-05:00

Sterling Listen-Along Storybook

50 Free Games for Teaching Literacy Online | University Reviews Online

2011-02-20T12:12:00.000-05:00

50 Free Games for Teaching Literacy Online University Reviews Online

Blog to Follow: Teach With Picture Books

2011-02-18T14:19:00.001-05:00

If you're like me, you're always matching texts to readers and texts to lessons. Here's a GREAT blog to follow that helps teachers do just that. Many of the posts also include great questions to ask students that lend to book talks and discussions. Check it out at http://www.teachwithpicturebooks.blogspot.com/!

Web 2.0 Tools: Joliprint & Kwout

2011-02-12T18:29:00.000-05:00

Joliprint | Print friendly & PDF your blogs and websites via kwout

Joliprint is a great website especially if you find web-based content (like a non-fiction) article that you want to print for students without ads, banners, headers, etc. Copy and paste the web-based article into the URL box at http://www.joliprint/ and select Joliprint It! and wa-la, a pdf is clean, neat pdf is created. Awesome!

kwout | A brilliant way to quote via kwout

And Kwout.com takes a screenshot of ANYTHING on the web like I did for both of the images above and creates an html code you can embed into your blog, website, whatever.

Two great capture tools!

Google Docs - "Forms"

2011-02-10T18:16:00.003-05:00

Google Docs is my absolute most favorite new cool tool this year. Among the many applications in Google Docs (Documents) are Forms...the over-simple name for surveys. Waaaaayyyy easier than Survey Monkey and totally free. At first I started using Forms to collect quick pieces of information from the staff, but they are a very 21st way to gather pre-unit and assessment data. The above pre-unit survey is a KWL before beginning a unit on Immigration. Instead of standing in front the class to create a KWL on chart paper while students all wave their hands, you give them a link and they each log in to answer the questions...kids love it and their responses are surprisingly refreshing. Then all responses are "dumped" into one file...pretty cool, huh? Here is what the kids actually see, Immigration KWL.

This is another way I've used Forms-- as an assessment. So, in Reader's Workshop we've been working on the reading strategy of Questioning and I've explicitly taught them the methods known as QAR (Question Answer Relationships) so they've gotten very good at reading text and asking the four question types, Right There, Think & Search, Author & Me, and On My Own. As a way to see if they've got it, I created this short formative assessment that will let me know who's got it and who still needs help with the four types of questions. Here's the way the kids see it: QAR Assessment

Google Image Tools: Guess-the-Google & Montage-a-Google

2011-02-09T10:29:00.000-05:00

"Guess-the-Google is an addictive guessing game based on Google's image search. It turns the mental activity of searching into a fun, visual and engaging game where people can enjoy the challenge of being the fastest and most efficient at making that connection between search terms and their results." The computer keeps score for you...play it whole class, small group or individually. You might be wondering why I added this, besides the thinking skills required to do this, it seems like it also has vocabulary and language benefits, too.

Montage-a-Google is a fun image creation tool that lets you create large colorful montages using Google's image search. Enter a search word and 20 google images will auto-fill to create the montage. It takes 3 seconds to make one and you are given two options at the end of the three seconds--download it or make another...hours of fun, here. For the image above, I entered the word SPRING. This image was sent to Google labs as another example of how Montage-a-Google can be used--only delta, all that printer ink.

Web 2.0 Literacy Tools - Spell with Flickr

2011-02-08T06:30:00.000-05:00

Use this one-page site, Spell with Flickr, to create a variety of different fonts for titles, blogs and student projects. Our firewall prevents this site to work at school....however, it works great at home. Generate any text in 2 seconds.

Web 2.0 Literacy Tools - Wordle

2011-02-07T22:20:00.001-05:00

Wordle made by First Graders with character trait words generated from the story, portrayed by the main character, Alejandro. Alejandro's Gift by Richard E. Albert. Available at Amazon for .01 & found a Vocabulary PPT for the book online...there is really quite a lot of resources on the Internet for this title. The kids really enjoyed it, it's simple and sweet, no frills or nonsense. I highly recommend it.

I created this Wordle using only letters from the alphabet in three letter string combinations and imported it into a Smartboard Notebook file. The intention was to create a Smartboard literacy center for Kindergarten. After modeling, students would follow these directions:

1. Put a circle around an "m"

2. Put a triangle around an "a"

3. Put a square around an "s"

4. Put a rectangle around an "l"....etc.

A great activity for the first day of school or any day of the year, it's literacy and math.

Really, the Wordle possibilities are endless....leave a comment and let everyone know www.wordle.net how you use Wordle to enhance literacy instruction in your class.

Answers to Promote Higher Order Thinking

2011-02-07T01:20:00.000-05:00

It is true that Higher Order Thinking is a big buzz word in education right now, and rightly so, we need to teach kids how to think at higher levels. I found this great article and thought it was well-written and usefully understandable...I'm pretty sure I can make some quick and easy changes to the way I respond to student questions. Check it out!

How to Increase Higher Order Thinking

Improving K-3 Reading Comprehension

2011-02-06T21:31:00.000-05:00

I thought it symbolic to kick off my new Hello Literacy blog with a first post about best practices in reading comprehension. I ran across this publication while searching another of my favorite websites (www.fcrr.org)and overall, think it's awesome...87 pages of reading goodness! Don't be fooled by the "ed.gov" in the link, the disclaimer on page 3 seals the deal. Some of my favorite reading researchers, Nell Duke and David Pearson, had a big part of this document. See it for yourself!

Improving K-3 Reading Comprehension