Classroom Tech, Part IV: Shelfari

I’m in the middle of  a series of posts outlining how I plan on using technology during the coming school year. I’ll share some tools, resources, and ideas that I intend to use with students in the classroom, and hopefully you, the reader, will share some advice or thoughts of your own, either in the [...]

Reality Television…in the Classroom?

One of my big “kicks” this year came after I read Teaching for Tomorrow as part of our building-wide professional development. This book advocates a sort of project-based learning that is based on authentic, “real world” problems. For example, we spent some time learning about the economy, and the guiding project for the unit was [...]

The Great Ideas

I just started reading a book that’s been on my Shelfari “Plan to Read” shelf for about a year. It’s called Six Great Ideas by Mortimer J. Adler. As I started reading this book, I realized that it touches on both of my academic passions: literature and philosophy (more of the latter, to be sure). [...]

Edumacation Greatest Hits

Have you ever watched a new episode of your favorite TV show, only to find that it was a compilation of clips (usually “flashbacks”) from old episodes? The Simpsons, my favorite TV show of all time, certainly had its share of clip shows. Since it’s wise to emulate success, and imitation is the sincerest form [...]

Review of The Great Books Core Sequence

I recently had the privilege of attending a Junior Great Books Training Core Sequence (courtesy of our building/district). The primary focus of the three courses is learning about and practicing the Shared Inquiry discussion, which is a Socratic-style model for discussing literature and other texts. I might post my notes here, but after taking 3 courses over [...]

Whale Rider Teaching Resources

A couple of posts ago, I made a call for resources on teaching The Whale Rider, by Witi Imahaera. Unfortunately, my impression is that few people are teaching this novel (not all that surprising), thus don’t have a lot of resources. In fact, in searching, I found many more resources for teaching the film than [...]

Ideas for “The Whale Rider”

First of all, thanks to ggratton and Tammy Gillmore for the tips on short stories! On top of their suggestions on the post on Short Story Mentor Texts, I discovered a couple of sites that might be helpful if you’re looking for short stories to use in a high school classroom:

Timeless Short Stories for Middle School and High [...]

Short Story Mentor Texts

As I’ve been reading Write Beside Them, I’ve been very impressed with Penny Kittle’s use of mentor texts in her classroom. She seems to use great works of literature, both traditional and contemporary, to help demonstrate certain concepts or skills she wants her students to develop. She has even suggested a couple of mentor texts [...]

More on Book Trailers

TPretty cool that I was thinking about this book trailer idea a while ago (here). Right around the same time (I promise I had no idea), an article was published in the journal, Educational Leadership, advocating a great, yet simple and probably obvious modification: have the kids make trailers. Derp.
I like this idea because, as [...]

Google Lit Trips

http://www.googlelittrips.com
Really cool idea using Google Earth to take students on tours of literature. The site focuses on individual books (such as The Odyssey) and where those books take us. You can download pre-made maps (some examples are Night, Kite Runner, and of course, The Odyssey).
Of course, you can also create your own lit trip using [...]