Archive for category literacy

Goin’ Gloggin’

Jan 3

Posted by John Howell in literacy | 1 Comment

Kevin’s Meandering Mind is a blog I have been following for the last couple of days now and his writing is steeped in some really good ideas. I am going to follow suit in his latest, Considering Glogster, as a reading project with my fifth graders. Here is a link to his Glog which I used as a model to create my own.

Reasons Why Using a Glog is an Awesome Idea

  • Extends their learning and interests by identifying and linking to a variety of other sources online
  • Chance to share their creative spirit online with the embeddable feature that Glogster provides.
  • Talk more with each other about the books they are reading.
  • More accountability
  • Using a Glog is just plain fun!


If you are interested in creating a Glog with your students here is an extensive list of Frequently Asked Questions that will go over much of what you’ll need to know to get started.

Skype in the Classroom

Nov 11

Posted by John Howell in literacy | 1 Comment

Using Skype in the classroom without a doubt enhances the literacy experience for a student.

Here is what I have seen:

1. Students practice their communication skills

  • speak with clarity
  • listen for meaning

2. Students make visual connections that deepen their understanding of a text

3. Students build on their schema

4. Students become much more engaged in the text

5. Students begin to look for ways to question the text in an effort to have another Skype experience in the classroom.

Of course many others have written about this same experience.  Just google “using skype in the classroom” and you will see what I mean.

While reading the story Dear Mr. Henshaw by Beverly Cleary, my fifth grade students were generating questions about the main character’s dad who is an over the road truck driver.  Leigh Botts, the young boy and main character, missed his dad because he was gone all the time due to his job and it ultimately lead to a divorce.

Here is an abbreviated list of their questions:

  • Where do truck drivers sleep?
  • How do they cook on the truck?
  • Do they use maps or GPS?
  • How do truckers make their appointment like the dentist or doctors?
  • What do they haul?
  • Don’t they get tired of driving all day?
  • I wonder if they like their job?
  • How do they deal with being away from home for so long?

So we turned to Skype and called a truck driver so they could get some answers.  The truck driver we called is my dad and it just so happens that my mom is also on the road with him.  They have a laptop with a web-cam and we were able to sit in the front seat and get a first hand view of the life of a truck driver.  The students enthusiasm was palpable and it was clear that I need to continue to incorporate powerful literacy experiences like this in the future.

Here is a small portion of that experience:

Writing While Reading

Oct 18

Posted by John Howell in Web2.0, literacy, reading | 2 Comments

Writing While Reading
I write all over the pages of every book I read.  It helps me have a conversation with the author and allows me to keep track of my thinking while I am reading.  I would love to have a Web2.0 tool that allows me to highlight, underline, and take notes in the margins while reading online.  Is there any such tool available? I just read through  Alex Beam’s article I Screen, You Screen, We All Screen where he quotes Anne Mangen highlighting the differences of reading a traditional book compared to reading online.  She says:

The feeling of literally being in touch with the text is lost when your actions – clicking with the mouse, pointing on touch screens, or scrolling with keys or on touch pads – take place at a distance from the digital text, which is, somehow, somewhere inside the computer, the e-book, or the mobile phone.

I hear ya Anne!  If there is an online article or blog post that I really want to read deeply I will often print a hard copy so that I am able to write all over the paper.  If I don’t print off the article I will often highlight a section of the text, as if I am copying and pasting, which gives me a focus during the online reading experience.  It also gives me a specific purpose for using the mouse, it limits my scrolling, and seems to limit the distance between me and the digital text.  It’s not perfect but it helps my brain.

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Fundamental Shifts in Literacy

Jul 20

Posted by John Howell in literacy | No Comments

How We Dream by Richard E. Miller

“We are living at the moment of the greatest change in human communication in human history.  We now have the capability of communicating instantly, globally.  This is the time to be engaged in the work of literacy. It has never been a more important moment for this profession or for people who take reading and writing seriously.”

I’m a teacher.  I love books,  the art of writing with well sharpened pencils, and pads of paper that are bit smaller than 8.5 x 11. I have an endless supply of sticky notes and more three ring binders than one human could ever want.  However, I am struck with the realization that my learning experiences and comfort in school may be completely irrelevant to any discussion of the education of today’s students, or my own children for that matter.

Richard Miller’s video succinctly illustrates the fundamental shifts in literacy that have taken place, and it will be up to those of us who are in the business of education to get comfortable navigating through this connected media in order to help prepare our digitally marinated students and children.  I on the other hand, have been paper trained therefor I have had to learn, and continue to learn, a new skill set and new digital language.

5:38

To create those spaces we need an extraordinary combination of resources that we do not have at this point.  We need inspiring teachers.  People who tell you they’re teaching visual literacy, I don’t think they’ve yet begun to deal with how profound this change is.  We do not have a pedagogy at hand to teach the kind of writing I am describing, it needs to be invented.  We need inspiring spaces and we need inspiring pedagogy’s.

We can do this – we need to do this – for my children and yours.

Amelia

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Re-Visioning the Writing Classroom

Mar 17

Posted by John Howell in literacy, writing | 3 Comments

“Show me, don’t tell me,” a line I have no doubt lifted from the famous Lucy Calkins. In all of the writing we do in our class I am constantly asking my fifth graders to do just that, show don’t tell. “If in your story you are writing about a time when you are scared then how can you show me that with your words? If the alien you are writing about is “ugly” then describe that crazy beast in a way that will create a visual and mental image in your readers mind.“

We have made incredible gains over the last couple of weeks in our writing and the students work is jumping off the page. Their word choice is strategic and well planned, they’re finding their voice, and becoming much more confident with the conventions of writing. Perhaps it’s because spring has sprung or is it something more?

So let me dig in and reflect for but a moment.

I believe the difference is the computer lab. After our planning time and the first drafts were written on paper in class I then had the students type those rough drafts using Microsoft Word at the computer lab. Their first drafts were then sent to me through the Digital Drop Box within Blackboard where I had a chance to embed comments within their work and resend it back to the student within the Digital Drop Box.

I very quickly realized that there were immediate advantages with conferencing this way and there were immediate disadvantages as well. Ultimately, I want my writing class to be a fluid time where conversations about word choice and voice are common among all but much of that writing talk disappeared and I found the Digital Drop Box became a bottle neck during class time.

So the immediate solution was to have the students print out their work so I can sit with them and write comments and suggestions all over their papers. Then they could go back to the computers and take their time with my comments and play around with their work until they found how they liked it. It really worked for me. It was fast, very business like, and gave me a chance to see immediate progress in the writer not just the writing.

Through this process however, I was able to identify an immediate gap within my class; they really don’t know how to use Microsoft Word very well. So, not only did I have mini-lessons on how to incorporate dialogue or how to use similes in their writing, but many of my mid-point lessons were about the basic skills of using Microsoft Word.

Our writing class has been at the computer lab over the last week or two and the students have discovered that Microsoft Word is a tool that can take some of the sting out of revising; they are no longer dreading having to rewrite each draft over and over by hand. Rather there has been a huge weight lifted off the shoulders of these young writers and they are free to express themselves and don’t mind the hard work or the Re-Visioning of their stories.

It has been as much a learning experience for me as it has been for the students, and as Brian Crosby would say, “it’s messy.” The look and feel of my writing class has changed. If at any time you walk into my classroom/computer lab you will see kids conferencing with one another, other students helping out with basic tech skills, other students might be fixing a printer issue, or other students discussing some other crafty cool gadget that they discovered Microsoft Word could do. These kids are talking about changing their opening paragraphs or starting with the last paragraph and moving text around and playing with words in a way that I have never really experienced before.

It is an amazingly productive time and I am so proud of how hard these kids are working.

I will post a link to their blogs so those interested can read their final copies.

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Reader’s Workshop

May 7

Posted by John Howell in literacy, reader's workshop, reading | 2 Comments

The best way for me to explain how Reader’s Workshop plays out in my classroom is by thinking about the Plate Spinner at the circus. Here’s a guy who gets one plate spinning and then gets another and another spinning. Once he gets the dozen or so plates moving he needs to quickly adjust his focus to the first couple of groups to keep their momentum going. He constantly needs to assess his plates and make quick decisions based on the needs of what he observes.


This is how Reader’s Workshop is for me, actually this is how my whole day is. I am constantly monitoring many different things at the same time where I may start with a plan but then change suddenly depending on the need of my class. It’s not perfect but it works. There may be days when I start spinning a plate and it flops and breaks, but the nice thing is that are a whole stack of plates ready to use. If at first you do not succeed, try try again.

I have found it best to just jump in and try and watch the class begin to take a life of its own. There is beauty during those brief moments when all the plates are spinning perfectly at the same time and you step back for just a moment and breath easy.

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