Sunday, October 17, 2010

Solana's glogster

Solana made a glogster on her favorite topic including a funny cat video Aunt Celia showed us! For some reason, one of our pics isn't showing up below. Warning: "Cat Flushing the Toilet" ditty on video is addictive!

Friday, October 15, 2010

Glogster: What does literacy mean to you?

Going to try using this glogster with students as a writing prompt.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

More on Prezi

I love this example of using Prezi to show students responses to reading journal prompts from Kevin Hodgson's "Prezi Presentation." (A great resource!)



He also posts another favorite of mine on playing to learn by Maria Anderson, blog author of Teaching College Math.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Trade books in math and science

My challenge to myself this year both as a literacy coach and a parent is to find more interesting books in math and science: there are many out there at all levels. If they match the students' reading level or are read aloud in class, trade books can help students broaden background knowledge, make connections and most importantly, feel excited about the topic! We checked out some recommendations from Science Books and Films that I found in this Edutopia article as well as some of Kathleen Baxter's great "gross out books" recommendations.
Where in Wild-- amazing illustrations that capture the ways both predators and prey use camouflage
What's Eating You? Parasites: the Inside Story-- great use of cartoons and humour to communicate interesting facts about parasites. Solana was fixated on the "Deadly Delivery" malaria page. Another bonus page "The Two-Host Tapeworm Game." Gross but fascinating!
Ouch! How Your Body Makes it Through a Very Bad Day is another winner: up close and personal views of every day body functions, definitely relevant to middle school students.
To be continued!

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Trippo Mondo

I'm still on a quest for useful educational apps for my Droid. We had fun with Trippo Mondo-- Solana translated a phrase in Russian and then sent it to me by email. Nice tool for language learning and would be fun in a class with ELLs of different language backgrounds for community building activities, translating, etc.

Friday, October 1, 2010

My First Prezi!

Made my first prezi for "Creating Passionate Readers" talk! Obviously still a novice at Prezi, but see enormous potential for student presentations. Click on the link below to get the full view.