Teachers+&+Tutors

//[|Early Childhood Education Activity Bank]// //This website provides an abundance of activities for parents, tutors, and teachers to help children succeed with their early literacy aquisition.//

//[|ABC Match: An Interactive Language Learning Game]// //[|Picture Match: Learn Beginning Letter Sounds/ Short & Long Vowel Sounds]// //[|What's In the Bag?]// //These three interactive learning activites are designed to help children (K-2) learn about print and letter-sounds.//

//This document is simply lined primary writing paper available for you to print out.//

//Text sets, at any age, are a great way to teach a unit around a common theme, while providing your students with the leveled text that is most appropriate for where they are in terms of reading development.//

//[|UW Madison Graphic Novels Page]// //This is a great resource for both students and teachers to explore the world of graphic novels.//

[|Content Area Literacy Strategies] //This site contains great ideas for classroom teachers of all different content areas to implement literacy strategies across the curriculum.//

[|Teaching Reading to Adolescent Black Males] //This is a highly useful text to help tutors and teachers effectively teach literacy skills to African-American boys in a way that is culturally responsive and relevant.//

[|Peter Smagorinsky's Virtual Library of Conceptual Units] //Thinking of teaching a concept unit in your classroom? Smagorinsky provides an abundance of great ideas and resources to help you plan.//

[|Teach Your Students How to Write Acrostic Poems] //This is an interactive online learning tool to help teach your students about, and how to write, an acrostic poem.//

[|Printing Press: Have your Students Create Newspapers, Booklets, Flyers, and Brochures] //This printing press provides excellent support and templates for you or your students to create a newspaper, booklet, flyer, or brochure.//

[|Profile Publisher: Create a "Facebook-like" Profile] //It is no secret that many students in the 21st century are into social networking. Teach your students about characterization by having them create a profile for a character from a text that they are reading!//

[|Line Break Explorer: Have Students Learn about the Importance of Line Breaks in Poetry] //In order to understand poetry in terms of how it sounds, and even what it means, it is important that your students understand line breaks, This is a great interactive tool for them to explore line breaks in different poems.//



//In order to differentiate instruction to suit the diverse needs of your students, you need to first have quality assessment. Using a learning agenda such as this makes Universal Backwards Design easier to implement.//

//The OED (Oxford English Dictionary) is a great resource for students to learn about language. This document provides lesson plans from the online OED website that could be beneficial to your students word knowledge and vocabulary development.//

//Semantic mapping is a great way to conceptualized how certain words are paired together. This is an example of a word learning exercise that involves teaching students Latin roots.// = = =__**Web 2.0**__= //As we move further and further into the 21st century, technology integration is becoming essential within the classroom. Below are some excellent web-based tools to help aide you in your literacy instruction//**.**

[|Poetry Podcasts] //This is a great resource for your students to be able to publish their poetry online via a "poetcast" or poetry podcast.//

[|Type With Me: An online collaborative writing tool] media type="youtube" key="lOybsa4CXII" height="263" width="429"

[|Prezi: Create Multimodal Presentations Online] //Sick of having your students' give a PowerPoint presentation every time you have them present something?// Prezi is an easy, multimodal alternative! [|Get Your Free Trial of Comic Life] //Below is an example of a comic that I made using Comic Life. Download your free trial, and see that there is an abundance of things that you use to aide your instruction as well as aide your students' learning.//

[|Center for Digital Storytelling] //I am a huge fan of Digital Storytelling, and I can see endless amounts of ways to effectively implement them within the classroom. During undergrad, we went to a Digital Storytelling workshop for my methods class, and then had to produce a digital story about our student teaching candidacy experiences. Figuring out the technology needed to make them was the least of my concerns. Thinking, writing, planning, editing, editing again, are all needed when making a digital story. I learned so much during the process, including about how I actually felt about my own experiences student teaching.//

//So what is a Digital Story? I like the Definition provided by Ruth Sylvester and Wendy-lou Greenidge in their article, “Digital Storytelling: Extending the Potential for Struggling Writers.” They say that, “A digital story is a multimedia text consisting of still images complemented by a narrated soundtrack to tell a story or present a documentary; sometimes video clips are embedded between images” (Sylvester & Greenidge, pg. 284). They can be about anything and everything, but the fact of the matter is, is that all of those multimodal components come together to create a story that stimulates its audience both audibly and visually.//

//Figg & McCartney (2010) state that, “English educators seekig to bring components of invitational education and technologically enhanced learning experiences into their classrooms will find that the use of digital storytelling not only satisfies curricular expectations for writing skills, but provides educators with an opportunity to engage at-risk students in learning environments that strengthen self-esteem and school-esteem of student learners and invite families into the education of their children” (pg. 56). I think this quote is powerful, because I dare anyone try to argue that creating digital stories, when planned and scaffolded accordingly, will not hit more than one of the common core standards. As an English Educator, I see digital storytelling as powerful and even transformative within the classroom.//

[|Glogster: Create An Interactive Poster] //Glogster is a tool that will allow your student to make multimodal posters with everything from audio/video to links to other websites.//

[|Create Your Own Books Online] //This book builder is great for creating your own decodable texts, student projects, and language experience activities.//