Tag Archives: Language Arts Lesson Plans

Flipping your Classroom

Posted on June 3, 2012 by Scott

I have been hearing a lot lately about the “flipped” classroom.  If you haven’t heard about it yet, Holly Epstein Ojalvo and Shannon Doyne of the New York Times provide a succinct definition: “an ‘inverted’ teaching structure in which instructional content is delivered outside class, and engagement with the content – skill development and practice, projects and the like – is done in class, under teacher guidance and in collaboration with peers.” It all started when a couple of teachers started recording their lectures and posting them as Power Points on the net for students who were absent.   And that is the essence of it really.  You provide content for the students to access outside the classroom and structured exploratory activities and lessons based on that content in the classroom.  This “flips” the teacher’s role from class lecturer (information provider) to class guide through activities based on the pre-assigned content. … Continue reading →

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Take “The Brainstormer” for a Spin

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Scott

A small group of aspiring authors from among my students just started an after-school creative writers’ club.  They meet bi-weekly to share ideas, to collaborate, and to encourage each other to write.  So the gathering of this new group got me wondering…what kind of cool resources are online for students interested in creative writing?  After a little digging around I found a fun application called “The Brainstormer” created by graphic artist and illustrator Andrew Bosley.  The Brainstormer, a simple but innovative tool, is comprised of a set of three wheels that you spin virtually by clicking the center for random ideas about things like conflict, setting, and character to spark the imagination.  You can also select ideas manually by moving each wheel to a desired topic.  This application is also available through the iTunes App Store for $1.99 so students can download it to their iPhones, iPods, and iPads.  This … Continue reading →

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Teach Students to Use the Power of Images with Worlde, Creatly, and Statworld

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Scott

The other day a student stood in the middle of my classroom holding his cellphone at arm’s length, pointing it at the white board. I was about to tell him to put it away, but then I realized what he was doing and it gave me pause to think…he was “taking notes” by snapping a digital picture of what I had written on the board.  So I wondered, what if I asked him to use those images in his next essay?  Isn’t this a way to integrate technology into the language arts curriculum—taking digital pictures and using them with text? But really, when is the last time you asked your students to include images in their essays?  Probably never, right?  When students include pictures, it’s usually to adorn the cover of the essay beneath one of those annoying plastic report covers.  But consider how many images the average student encounters … Continue reading →

Posted in Informational Texts, Lesson Plans, Reading, Technology Integration, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Diigo: A Powerful, Hands-On Research Tool for Students and Teachers

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Scott

Informational Texts Common Core Standard #1 – Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. Remember back when we were in school and research meant pouring over books in the library with a stack of note cards?  When I was in college, I became very handy with Post-it® notes and multi-colored highlighters for finding “textual evidence.”  I miss those days hunched over a notebook amid piles of old books.  I loved rolling up my sleeves and immersing myself in the physical work of learning. Students seldom set foot in brick-and-mortar libraries for research anymore, and they rarely flip through actual paper books or periodicals either.  Most research is done with electronic resources now, and I don’t know any current students who know what a library card catalog looks like (you know, the ones with the long, narrow … Continue reading →

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Blending Art, Literature, and Problem Solving at the J. Paul Getty Museum

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Scott

Common Core Standard 7 for Reading presents teachers with many possibilities for mixing all kinds of art forms with literature.  Music, photography, painting, sculpture, and many other media are easily brought into the classroom today because of the internet…the important thing is to use these resources heuristically. 7. Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment (e.g., Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” and Breughel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus). Teaching students to analyze subjects or scenes in comparative forms gives us an opportunity to explore with them the traditions of storytelling—the many and various ways stories can be told and have been told throughout history.  Poetry, short stories, plays, and even novels and epic tales have important connections to art and present new, thoughtful ways to analyze and evaluate themes. To start, you … Continue reading →

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Broaden Students’ Cultural Perspectives with Project Gutenberg

Posted on October 30, 2011 by Scott

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 →

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Common Core Reading Standard #5—Analyzing Plot

Posted on October 22, 2011 by Scott

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 →

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Common Core Reading Standard #4—Vocabulary in Context

Posted on August 24, 2011 by Scott

This week is my last one before returning to the classroom on Monday.  I have to be honest, thinking about the first day of school still makes me really queasy even after eleven years.  Of course, I do plan to continue this series of posts about the Common Core through the fall.  This week we begin with “Craft and Structure.” 4. Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language of a court opinion differs from that of a newspaper). So this standard is all about vocabulary and author word choice, teaching students how to understand meanings in context and how to analyze diction. Usually for this blog I focus only on free resources for integrating technology, but Academic Merit’s Literary Companion is … Continue reading →

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Online Resources for Analyzing Character

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Scott

This week we look at the last of three standards under “Key Ideas and Details” in the “Reading” section of the Common Core: Standard 3:  Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme. For students to understand how a character develops over the course of a text and how his or her interactions impact plot and theme, they first need to know where to begin.  A good place to start is to help them get into the mind of the character.  The idea is to help students take a character and, to borrow a quote from Atticus Finch, “climb into his skin and walk around in it.”  The internet offers many ways to facilitate this creatively with technology.  Here are a few ideas and sites that might work … Continue reading →

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Writing about Theme with iWrite

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Scott

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 →

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