Graphic Organizer Foldable

Literacy Network and Project ReimaginED (ISTE) highlights a 3-D graphic organizer Foldables. 

Foldables are used in classrooms to organize information in all subjects.

Creating visuals and presenting information through making 3-D paper models help students not only to retain data and practice writing skills but also to express themselves in a creative way.


Even though these visual displays are hand made, they can also enhance digital skills.
When students decorate their foldables with images taken from the Internet, teachers explain them how to choose Google Search Tools - Usage Rights: noncommercial reuse. Students also practice to provide credits to image creators.

Foldables can be organized by topics, digitized and stored for future references and student digital portfolios.

Visit a Foldable pile in Pinterest that is yet another excellent way to manage information.

A couple of sentences about Narrative Writing

I am having a great experience of working on a collaborative unit in Middle School.
Ms. Sullivan is teaching his students to write narratives and I bring an expertise as librarian.

I knew I could bring an ample of examples from classical and modern authors' works to show students how to develop real or imagined experiences or events.
I knew that students needed help with descriptive  vocabulary to illustrate characters and show their attitudes.
I knew we would review a dialog, one of the important narrative techniques  (CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.6.3). 

It wasn't new to me that students model teacher's example and start little. The class was reminded  about three basic rules of writing a narrative:

• Know your audience

• Have a story in mind- think of a character, setting, a problem and a resolution. Leave your audience with a lesson, an idea, or image.

• Describe: show rather than tell, let the reader hear, feel, smell, taste, and see your story. Provide details.

A novel Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliff was my discovery.  Students recalled the sequence of the events and could tell the story spontaneously! The novel is an anthology of descriptive vocabulary, and students use the words to characterize actions, places, objects, and emotions.

A collection of descriptive words created in Symbaloo helped students to find synonyms and compose engaging narratives.

Inquiry-based discussions based on daily news

To start a tradition of inquiry-based discussions in class teachers can use informational texts and daily news.
Newsela is one of the sites where current events are organized by topics and grade levels. Wonderopolis is another great site that teacher can use to start the class discussions on science.

Topics in focus provoke students for asking new questions, and inquiries is a key for discussions that ignite discoveries.

Discussions are used as a tool for assessment when students display how well they know the subject. Another approach to discussions is to use them as a prompt to a research practice. Students find answers while sifting through sources of information thus practicing essential skills of identifying reliable sources, evaluation of web sites, providing credits to creators of multimedia and citing sources of information.

There are various techniques of how teachers organize discussions in class. One of them is a "fishbowl" strategy when one group participates in the discussion while another is watching and taking notes. Afterwards, groups change their roles.  Facing History and Ourselves illustrates this activity in details.

TodaysMeet is an effective tool when teachers want to involve every student in the discussion.

TodaysMeet is a tool that provides every student with an opportunity to express his or her ideas and opinion while others discuss the question out loud.

The teacher divides the class into two groups. One group is sitting in the middle of the classroom and discuss a current event or another informational text while the rest of the class ask questions or post their comments through TodaysMeet projected on the board. Then, the groups switch.

After reading an informational text or an article on a current event, teacher poses a question or a problem or creates a scenario that students try to solve as a group.

The discussion is evolving around the main topic. Students add their ideas and questions to the site.

Inquiry-based discussions is a great way to develop multiple skills students need to become global citizens.

Using Laptops in one-to-one laptop environment

This week we are getting together to share our experiences in the area of classroom management and laptop use in one-to-one laptop classroom setting.

While I am getting ready for the meeting and making a list of gadgets I taught this semester and useful sites I would like to share with others, I am thinking that this High School staff meeting is a milestone that indicates our progress in using technology at school. Digital environments are not new anymore. I believe every teacher can make a presentation on a Web 2.0 tool and how it's used for teaching academic skills.

We all employ no different technologies: blogs, wikis, podcasts, voice threads, delicious, diigo, and other, so quickly developing in a technology based society. Communication, sharing, collaboration, and conversation are the new features that let us talk about a new level we reached in the development of one-to-one laptop program. Sharing our experiences and teaching techniques we use in class are what is making our meeting exciting and indicates us as a community of "a noble and humanizing meaning" "in which all members will define themselves not by their own identity but by that of others" (Elie Wiesel).

I would like to use this opportunity to review a number of posts devoted to technology and especially the documents collected for Tech team presentation made last year. Click here to see links to Irving High School Laptop initiative movies, eBook about classroom management, Florida State University suggestions on laptop use management in clas, and other sites on the topic.

Credits: Image is taken from the site moviereviews.wikispaces.com