Author, Scott Nailor
Tag Archives: english
Common Core Reading Standard #5—Analyzing Plot
Looking at CCS standard for reading #5, I am encouraged to see critical thinking required of our students. It is important to ensure that skills like problem solving, analyzing, and evaluating are at the core of our reading, writing, and speaking skills curricula. It is also essential that we keep in mind the goal of generating independent, self-directed (and self-reflective), life-long learners. 5. Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise. For standard #5, the key term is “analyze.” In Bloom’s taxonomy, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation are the top tiers we strive to reach. A lesson plan from teacher Patricia Schulze provides some excellent opportunities to use technology for this standard. The technology for the lesson comes from a site you are probably familiar with—Read, Write, … Continue reading
Posted in Common Core Standards, Lesson Plans, Reading, Writing
Tagged classroom technology, Common Core Standards, digital, engage students, english, high school english, High School Lesson Plans, interactive lesson, Language Arts Lesson Plans, technology integration, Technology lesson plans
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What if Your Textbooks Were Free and Customizable?
As the school year winds down, you might be thinking about what new or different books you hope to use in the fall. If you are, I encourage you to check out Open Educational Resources (OER) textbooks. OER or “Open Source” textbooks are digital, often customizable, textbooks published and available on the web. Many of them are quite comprehensive and are written by highly-qualified professionals with advanced degrees. These books also often include interactive elements and multimedia such as sound and video. Best of all, they’re free. In the Classroom Here are some OER sources you can explore. Since these are open and free, you’ll see that you can pick and choose from multiple sources for your students instead of having to commit to one textbook from one publisher. Many of them are also available in PDF format for download and to print either for free or for a … Continue reading
Quizlet can be a Simple Way to Get Students Collaborating Online
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills cites the ability to work collaboratively among some very important skills students will need in order to be ready for the careers of the 21st century. However, as school district budgets shrink and as our classroom rosters grow, finding opportunities to have our students collaborate can be difficult. Sometimes, when a class is quite large, setting kids to work in groups creates an exhausting job for the teacher keeping them all productive and on task. So here’s a simple way to include some collaborative studying while at the same time integrating a basic media literacy element with your next vocabulary unit: Have students create vocabulary note-cards at Quizlet.com and then share them using the “Create a Group” function. All you have to do is create an account, choose the “My Groups” tab, and “create your own” group. Once your group is complete, you can … Continue reading
Posted in Lesson Plans, Vocabulary
Tagged classroom technology, Common Core Standards, engage students, english, high school, high school english, High School Lesson Plans, language arts, Language Arts Lesson Plans, language arts websites, online english, online quizzes, online vocabulary, technology integration
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The Jack London Collection Online
Jack London died of kidney disease when he was only 40, but during his short life he was an unusually prolific writer. When he died in 1916, he left behind everything from the adventure novels for which he is most known, to journalism, essays, and letters. The Sonoma State University Library has gathered and organized much about this important American author in the Jack London Online Collection. This site includes an audio book version of The Call of the Wild, a radio drama, a searchable collection of images of him, his family, and friends, and a sizeable assortment of primary documents including letters, postcards, certificates, bookplates, and much more. The Jack London Online Collection has many useful applications for those who teach Jack London or for those doing research. The site is very well-organized, offering materials by format—audio files, documents, images, etc. as well as sections on “What’s New,” a … Continue reading
Posted in American Literature, Audio, Lesson Plans, Reading
Tagged classroom technology, digital text, engage students, english, etext, high school, high school english, High School Lesson Plans, Jack London, language arts, Language Arts Lesson Plans, language arts websites, online lesson plans, online literature activities, technology integration
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Real-World Writing Instruction
Good afternoon. I hope my colleagues in the northeast are surviving the very long winter. I know I am more than ready for spring in Maine. This weeks’ post is for teachers looking for an opportunity to teach writing in a real-world context. One of the most effective ways to teach writing is to connect it to real-world careers. This gives students real purpose and an audience beyond just writing for the teacher or simply because they have to. In an effort to move beyond the “five paragraph essay,” you might consider doing a unit on journalism. For just such a purpose, the BBC News School Report website offers a variety of excellent lessons, videos, podcasts, articles, and tutorials for teaching students about journalistic writing. In the “Teachers’ Resources” section, the site offers six in-depth lessons for teachers to take students through the processes of finding, gathering, writing, assembling, ordering, … Continue reading
Prezi.com Makes Presentations Fun
As an English teacher, I am always using metaphors or other imagery to explain the concepts I want students to grasp. For example, when telling students about building a good paragraph or essay, it can be helpful to use the analogy of a good essay being like a sandwich or a hamburger with bread slices as the introduction and conclusion and the meat and other stuff as the body of the essay. If you like using visuals when you teach (does anyone teach without visuals?!?), I have found a great online application called Prezi that you should try. Prezi.com is a fun and effective tool for creating presentations that are media rich. Sure you can use the old fashioned Power Points but Prezis are way more fun and engaging and they can be manipulated to create animation. The best part about designing with Prezi is that you don’t have to … Continue reading
Posted in Presenting
Tagged classroom technology, engage students, english, high school english, High School Lesson Plans, language arts, Language Arts Lesson Plans, language arts websites, lesson plans, online english, online lesson plans, online literature activities, technology integration
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Learn and Teach Out Loud: Add Some Audio or Video Flare to Your Lit Units
When recently looking for electronic resources to add to my short story unit, I came across LearnOutLoud.com where hundreds of recorded works are available free for download. Learn Out Loud doesn’t just have audio recordings of books and stories (though there are plenty of those); they also have podcasts and videos. Some of the resources cost money, but there are plenty of free downloads (hundreds across all content areas. And, for those ambitious teachers among us, you can even upload your own teaching content (lectures, etc.) and try to sell it through Teach Out Loud. Next time you do a particularly good job of dynamically introducing Romeo and Juliet, maybe you can turn your introduction into some cash. In the Teach Out Loud section, you can also browse content already published from other teachers. Teach Out Loud has hundreds of downloads available including readings from Shakespeare’s Sonnets for $1.99 and … Continue reading
Posted in Audio, Reading, Video, Writing
Tagged classroom technology, digital text, engage students, english, etext, high school, high school english, High School Lesson Plans, Language Arts Lesson Plans, language arts websites, lesson plans, online english, online high school, online lesson plans, poetry, technology integration
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Poetry through the Ages
From Coca-Cola ads to Beat Poetry and Haiku, the “Poetry through the Ages” website offers a remarkable depth of information as well as fun, engaging ways to explore those depths. The site is produced by a group of talented poets, researchers, curators, and web developers and it is loaded with dynamic content to introduce students to the history of poetry from the earliest writings to “visual poetry” and even the use of poetry in mass media and advertising. Like so many gems on the web, this one looks deceptively simple at a glance. However, after you spend a few minutes clicking around, you’ll see this site has more useful and accessible information about poetry than most printed textbooks. The feature that I found most noteworthy for our blog is the “Node View” feature which offers an interactive and visually engaging way to introduce poetry to your students. This section invites … Continue reading
The Shakespeare Pages
In my last post I mentioned a project I have been working on. It’s more-or-less done now so I thought I would write briefly about it here. I hope to develop it more, but as they say, it’s never done, just due. I developed this project for a Visual Literacies class I just finished at Northern Arizona University (online). The Shakespeare Pages Project is a website designed for high school or middle school English students. Its purpose is first to convince students that Shakespeare is not as boring or as hard to understand as they might think. The pages of the site are designed to not only persuade but also to engage teenagers’ curiosity. The project’s purpose is also to teach students about Shakespeare’s time, Elizabethan culture, the Globe Theater, and about the social class differences that divided citizens of 17th Century England. The site is designed to integrate technology … Continue reading
Posted in Drama, Shakespeare
Tagged classroom technology, digital, digital text, engage students, english, high school, high school english, High School Lesson Plans, interactive lesson, language arts, Language Arts Lesson Plans, language arts websites, lesson plans, online english, online high school, online lesson plans, romeo and juliet, shakespeare, technology integration
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Interactive Salem Witch Trials
If you teach Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, Elizabeth George Speare’s The Witch of Blackbird Pond, or any other Witch Trials literature, you must check out the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria interactive website at National Geographic. It is an outstanding example of the interactive learning opportunities found on the Internet. If you are a history teacher looking for a great activity that explores the Salem Witch trials, this is an invaluable bookmark for you as well. Using a “choose your own adventure” approach, the multimedia activity draws students into history by having them “virtually” face many of the impossible situations and decisions that people faced during the 17th century when witchcraft hysteria had a grip on the New England colonies, particularly Salem, Massachusetts. Click here to see a quick demonstration. A short narrative introduces the visitor to the event that served as the catalyst: a young girl mysteriously falling sick. At this … Continue reading
Posted in Drama
Tagged arthur miller, classroom technology, crucible lessons, digital, digital text, engage students, english, etext, high school, high school english, interactive crucible, interactive lesson, language arts, language arts websites, lesson plans, online english, online high school, online lesson plans, salem, salem witch trials, the crucible
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