Teacher Resource - Newspapers in Education

The Boston Herald has a free online newspaper that is easy to use on a smart phone. It has a search tool and translation tool and read-aloud tool, and you can print and email articles. You can sign up at http://nieonline.com/bostonherald/order.cfm. You will create a single username and password (can be the same word) for the entire class and enter the max number of students who will be accessing the paper simultaneously (I’d recommend 30).

They also have a Student Voices program where they publish student opinion pieces in the paper once a month (300 words or fewer), and they would love to have submissions from Everett! http://nieonline.com/bostonherald/studentvoices.cfm

Bilingual glossaries

Check out this source for Bilingual glossaries.

You can use the glossaries as reference in preparing lessons, especially when teaching tier 3 ELA-specific vocabulary.

Scroll down to find a glossary of Literary Terms & Devices for Language Arts in:

Arabic, Bengali, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, French, Haitian, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Karen, Khmer, Korean, Nepali, Punjabi, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Ukrainian, Urdu, & Vietnamese.

Positive Greetings at the Door

Check out this very simple but very powerful procedure for getting your class off to a good start and building a positive class culture: 

Positive Greetings at the Door

The simple act of greeting students upon arrival to school or class has been shown to increase classroom engagement up to 27 percent, according to Allen Allday, an associate professor at the University of Kentucky (Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2007 and 2011). In addition, one 2007 study of South Carolina middle school students showed, “Teacher greetings produced increases in students' on-task behavior from a mean of 45% in baseline to a mean of 72% during the intervention phase.” Look no further than Barry White, Jr.’s fifth grade classroom to see the power of repeat actions and traditions firsthand. The North Carolina teacher greets each student with a personalized handshake that's reflective of their individual personalities. (From ThinkCERCA blog)

TEACHING SECONDARY STUDENTS TO WRITE EFFECTIVELY

The newest blog post from Literacy Lines, the Keys to Literacy blog:
Teaching Secondary Students to Write Effectively

Write Boston Follow-up: High School

Answer one of the following questions and/or respond to someone else's question or answer:

1. What ideas are you toying with for writing in the remainder of this year or next year?
2. What ideas do you have for giving kids the support they need and mechanisms for organizing their thoughts without creating writing robots or a never-ending first draft?
3. Anything else related to extended writing assignments in your classroom that you want to share?

Unpacking Problems of Practice - Write Boston PD

     During our last meeting for the Write Boston PD, we were required to discuss certain dilemmas we face in the classroom. The dilemma I presented to the group was that I need some strategies to help my students who give up easily when faced with a difficult task. I got some great feedback from my group to help with difficult vocabulary/main idea/confidence builders. An idea I was given was "The Most Important Word" activity to have students identify the most important word in a text to help better understand the main idea of the text. We discussed positive reinforcement as a necessary tool in the classroom as well as acknowledging certain assignments are difficult prior to students seeing them to make them aware everyone should have difficulty with it and boost their confidence. I think we had some great discussions during this time and a lot of the feedback for all of the dilemmas was very useful.

Taylor

Literature Circles

In literature circles, small groups of students gather together to discuss a piece of literature in depth. The discussion is guided by students' response to what they have read. You may hear talk about events and characters in the book, the author's craft, or personal experiences related to the story. Literature circles provide a way for students to engage in critical thinking and reflection as they read, discuss, and respond to books. Collaboration is at the heart of this approach. Students reshape and add onto their understanding as they construct meaning with other readers. Finally, literature circles guide students to deeper understanding of what they read through structured discussion and extended written and artistic response.Perhaps the easiest way to understand what literature circles are is to examine what they are not.

Literature Circles are . . .	Literature Circles are not . . .
Reader response centered	Teacher and text centered
Part of a balanced literacy program	The entire reading curriculum
Groups formed by book choice	Teacher-assigned groups formed solely by ability
Structured for student independence, responsibility, and ownership	Unstructured, uncontrolled "talk time" without accountability
Guided primarily by student insights and questions	Guided primarily by teacher- or curriculum-based questions
Intended as a context in which toapplyreading and writing skills	Intended as a place to do skills work
Flexible and fluid; never look the same twice	Tied to a prescriptive "recipe"

From Getting Started with Literature Circles 

by Katherine L. Schlick Noe & Nancy J. Johnson 

Here are some resources for running Literature Circles:

Literature Circles Resource Page

Literature Circles in High School (video)

Literature Circle Role Sheets

Literature Circles in the Middle and High School Classroom Facilitator’s Guide

Literature Circles Assignment, Book List, Roles, and Assessments for a Grade 12 ELA Class