Guided Journals and Literacy

I was "exploring the blogosphere" this summer when I came across the website GraceisOverrated.com.  Blogger Christine Zimmer has a great site where she posts ADORABLE hand lettered journaling pages that you can fill in and colour.

http://www.graceisoverrated.com/

I loved the site and ordered a pocket journal from her Etsy shop for me and my friend and partner in Education related crime (and actual crime if you count the time I called 911 on a boy I saw manhandling his girlfriend in a field a few years ago), Daniella Czudner.

http://www.graceisoverrated.com/

Now, Daniella is much more of a people person than I am and she e-mailed Christine to tell her how much we loved the journals.  Then, like every teacher, we started to talk about how great it would be to do an activity like this in the classroom.  With the support of our Principal and our Parent's Council, we are hosting Christine in a few weeks to do both student and teacher workshops on Guided Journaling.

I can't tell you how excited Daniella and I are.  You have to check out Christine's site; it is amazing.

I will be sure to post some pictures from the workshops.

Using Pinterest

I cannot overstate the number of ideas I have found on Pinterest that I am using in my classroom.  My teacher candidate Sarah and I have been pinning ideas back and forth.

Our latest idea was inspired by a free lesson by Tracee Orman called "Using Twitter to Make Connections".  She has some great resources on her Pinterest site or her classroom website.  We also found a few pins about using Twitter in the classroom.

Here are a few pictures that are inspiring us right now.

This picture is from http://mesmrswhitesclass.blogspot.ca/2012/08/my-twitter-door.html

http://mesmrswhitesclass.blogspot.ca/2012/08/my-twitter-door.html

This one is from http://artfor1170.blogspot.ca/2012/01/twitter.html

http://artfor1170.blogspot.ca/2012/01/twitter.html

I will update this post when we get our own Twitter board up.

Why Differentiate?

I feel this way about the OSSLT sometimes as well.  Students who have learning disabilities will struggle as much on the Literacy Test as that fish will trying to get up that tree.

Using Tagxedo

My smart teacher candidate found a neat website that is an alternative to Wordle.  It is called Tagxedo (www.tagxedo.com). You can enter text and the website puts it into a shape.  We are going to try it with The Hunger Games.  Students will find adjectives that describe a character and put them into a Tagxedo shape.

Here is my exemplar.  I just cut and pasted a portion of text from Part 1 of the book so they can see what it will look like.

Thanks for the idea, Sarah!

I love looking at other teachers' classrooms

My favourite teacher blog posts are the ones where I get to see into other people's classrooms.  So, I am going to post a few pictures of mine today.  I have a few shots of my classroom after a day of classes.  I have a couple of Grade 12 classes and one Grade 10 class.  I need to do a good cleaning and reorganizing but this it, mess and all.

This is the front of the room.  We still have old blackboards so I put up a white board at the front with velcro.  We also still use TV/VCR sometimes.  Don't laugh.  There is also a projector next to my podium so I am not a dinosaur. I teach from the front and have my desk at the back.

This is the side view of the room.  I am luck to have a bank of cabinets.

This is the back corner.  The shelves come from our now defunct library (that is another story).  The old Mac was generously donated by my sister.  Thanks, Melanie!

This is a view of the back of my room, including my Smart board and my teacher desk.







I also have some close ups of two of my movable white boards at the front.

Here is my Objectives Board (for Learning Goals and Success Criteria)

It is a small dry erase Board I got from Home Depot.  I used some American Crafts stickers I had lying around for the titles.  My latest project connects Reading Strategies to the Objectives Board.  I will be trying it out tomorrow.














Here is my other white board, "Ticket to Freedom".  It is my exit card board. I use it primarily with my ENG 2P1 class.

TLLP 2013-2014

My friend Daniella and I have decided to try for another TLLP grant.  We are interested in using graphic texts like graphic novels and comic books in the High School classroom.

The idea of using more graphic texts has been floating around in my mind for a couple of years.  I love graphic novels and comics.  Daniella's son loves them as well.  What really made me see the potential of using graphic novels was an incident that happened in my grade 10 Applied class a few weeks ago.  We read every day at the beginning of class and I have a student who was a pretty reluctant reader.  Then, I gave him Amulet, a graphic novel by Kazu Kibuishi.  He cannot put it down.  He is on Book 4 now.  I think this might be the way to get more students engaged in class.

I have read a bit about teaching using comic but we need time and money to get the project going.  Enter the Teacher Learning and Leadership Program through the Ministry of Education.  I am excited about it.  We have asked for both digital and print texts and some iPad Minis to deliver the digital portion.  I am keeping my fingers crossed.