Author, Scott Nailor
Tag Archives: high school
BBC’s ‘State of Debate’ Game Worth Playing in the Classroom
For a while I have been hesitant to write about games in education. I think it’s the old-school teacher in me. Or, maybe it’s the stigma attached to electronic games in school based on the common assumption that they present distractions from and not opportunities for meaningful learning. But recent research suggests otherwise. In fact, a 2009 MIT study suggests well-designed educational games are valuable tools for developing skills in communication, collaboration, problem-solving, and even innovation. Unfortunately, many educational games only present rote learning—repetition of addition and subtraction, for example. But some games are designed to encourage and support critical thinking. The BBC’s “State of Debate” is such a game. It is very well-designed, it is interactive, and it encourages students to think critically about persuasive arguments. Even hardened critics among us will see this one is a game worth playing in school. In the classroom In “State of Debate,” students are … Continue reading
Broaden Students’ Cultural Perspectives with Project Gutenberg
Common Core Standard six of “Reading: Craft and Structure” provides an important opportunity to expose our students to different perspectives from cultures other than their own. This standard also gives us a great reason to explore some of the thousands of free texts that Project Gutenberg has to offer including many collections of short stories which can be downloaded to just about any digital device from an e-reader, a pc or laptop to a smartphone or tablet. 6. Analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature. I found some excellent collections of short stories grouped by nationality and by topic. You must scroll to the bottom of the short stories bookshelf page, to see “Other” collections grouped by themes. With Halloween coming right up, I’m working on organizing a few … Continue reading
Posted in American Literature, Classical Literature, Common Core Standards, Lesson Plans, World Literature
Tagged classroom technology, Common Core Standards, digital text, etext, high school, high school english, High School Lesson Plans, language arts, Language Arts Lesson Plans, online lesson plans, technology integration, Technology lesson plans
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Writing about Theme with iWrite
Continuing with our exploration of the Common Core, this week I’ve discovered a useful website for the second standard under “Key Ideas and Details.” Standard 2: Determine a theme or central idea of a text and analyze in detail its development over the course of the text, including how it emerges and is shaped and refined by specific details; provide an objective summary of the text. This standard is a broad one but also a very important one as it focuses on analysis which is among those higher order thinking skills so important to students becoming independent learners. It is unlikely you could (or should) cover this standard with one lesson. Students need multiple opportunities to learn about and meet this standard. iwrite from Great Source (Haughton, Mifflin, Harcourt) offers a lot of useful material online for both teachers and students exploring not only central ideas with writing but also … Continue reading
Posted in Common Core Standards, Lesson Plans, Writing
Tagged classroom technology, Common Core Standards, digital text, 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, online writing, technology integration
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Animoto: Another Great Tool for Adding Music and Video to Your Lit Plans
Summer has finally arrived here in Maine. I hope many of you, like me, have finished up the school year and can now take some time to recuperate. Looking forward to a productive summer, I am planning a series of blog posts focusing on the Common Core State Standards Initiative. My plan is to post regular articles with a simple goal: each blog post will take one specific CCSS outcome and demonstrate a resource and/or method for utilizing technology to meet that standard. Essentially, I envision a CCSS curriculum map for Language Arts, based completely on technology integration. I’m hoping to begin this series the first or second week of July. Meanwhile, I have found a website I think will be fun to use with students in the fall…Animoto. Animoto is a basic online tool that allows you to create “video slideshows” or montages with music and text. The basic … Continue reading
Posted in Audio, Lesson Plans, Presenting, Reading, Video
Tagged classroom technology, Common Core Standards, Edgar Allan Poe, engage students, high school, High School Lesson Plans, language arts websites, middle school lesson plans, online english, online lesson plans, technology integration
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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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Mark Twain Interactive Scrapbook
For teachers introducing Mark Twain to their students, the Mark Twain Interactive Scrapbook is a website with a useful variety of multimedia resources from video and audio to images of primary documents and quotes from the author. The site is produced by PBS and has five classroom activities ready to use with your middle or high school students. It is aesthetically well designed and organized and the classroom activities come complete with a bullet list of national standards to which each one aligns. Even if you do not use the ready-made lesson plans, this site is worth exploring just for what you and your students can learn about Twain’s life and work. The audio and video components of the site are professionally produced but they require the free Real Player application so be sure the students’ computers are updated with this application before starting. The clips of Mark Twain’s writing … Continue reading
Posted in American Literature, Audio, Reading, Twain, Writing
Tagged classroom technology, digital text, engage students, high school, high school english, language arts, Language Arts Lesson Plans, Mark Twain, Mark Twain Interactive, Mark Twain Online, online high school, online lesson plans
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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