I am inching towards getting my 80-plus students involved in the Voices on the Gulf project. We have a lot of begin-the-year activities going on (reading Rikki-Tikki-Tavi in order to talk about protagonist and antagonist, creating Dream Scene digital stories, etc.) and I have been searching for something to read about the Gulf Oil Spill […]
Search Results for: Dream scene
Spending some time in the National Gallery on Writing
This notice from NCTE got my attention: The National Gallery of Writing, hosted by NCTE, now boasts 2,136 galleries and 19,395 submissions at this writing! That’s a pretty cool number, so I decided to tour around a bit. There is some wonderful writing in those galleries, although navigation through the labyrinth isn’t so easy. How […]
Wordling Obama’s Education Speech
President Obama gives his speech on education today and the White House released the text of the talk yesterday. I grabbed the words and put them into Wordle and created this image: My aim is to show this to my students in context of the speech and talk about some of the themes that will […]
How I used Tech this School Year
(from a student) The school year finally came to an end yesterday (Kids left on Thursday) and I am left in a bit of a reflective mode, even though the end of the year rush has not yet settled in for me. (Plus, I have two summer camps to get ready for — Claymation and […]
And so, the year begins
Our school year began today and although I had a fitful night of sleep (which included a middle-of-the-night inspiration for an opening day activity with tech), I have to say: I have a wonderful class of sixth graders. Wow. They seem wonderful in so many ways that I figure I am a lucky duck. So, […]
Slice of Life/SmallPoems Day 7 (underground artists)
(I am participating in the March Slice of Life challenge via the Two Writing Teachers site. Slice of Life is the idea of noticing the small moments. I have been a participant for many years and each year, I wonder if I will have the energy to write every day. This year, I am going […]
What If the “M” in MOOC Meant Minimal?
Those of us who have been part of the Making Learning Connected MOOC for the past three summers (and beyond) have been fortunate indeed. The National Writing Project not only conceived and launched the CLMOOC with help of a grant program through the MacArthur Foundation; NWP also funded the work behind the scenes, from stipends […]
Library of Congress Poetry: Black Knight, Preaching
(I’m exploring poetry through images by tapping into the extensive collection of the Library of Congress on Flickr. There are some amazing images shared with the public and more coming every month or two, it seems. What can inspire you? Be sure to cite where you got the image from. Use Alan Levine’s Flickr Attribution tool […]
Graphic Novel Review: Escape to Gold Mountain
(Note from Kevin: A few years ago, I was a reviewer for The Graphic Classroom. I really enjoyed the way we look at graphic novels with a lens towards the classroom. The site got taken over by another site, and then … I guess the owner of The Graphic Classroom stopped doing what he was […]
Book Review: You
Novels about video games often run the risk of being too immersed in the gaming culture to establish a solid story, or they go the other way and become so little about the game that the story never connects. Austin Grossman’s novel, You, mostly avoids those pitfalls as he weaves a story of a game […]