Great Online Resource

This year I'm working as my building's Individual Literacy Plan (ILP) and Response to Intervention (RtI) coordinator. I have found the most challenging part of this is to have resources available to teachers, especially in terms of reading comprehension. I found this site from Muskingum College's Center for Advancement and Learning. There are some excellent resources for content area and language arts teachers

Reflections -- 2008 CLAS conference

This year's conference theme is "Literacy Now" and, appropriately, the icons that are on the program and tickets feature rockets. Here are a few reflections on what ideas have "launched" me into inspiration for my classroom. I hope to expand on a few soon...

1. Ralph Fletcher - His humorous presentation last night focused mostly on boys and writing and some of the little things that educators can do to help shrink the gap. Choice, humor, and violence (to a point) were the three main allowances that we can provide our male writers in our classroom
2. Dan and Dawn Kirby - Their humorous presentation (it is so nice to laugh!) showed me that there is a light at the end of the tunnel if writer's workshop doesn't seem like the only "good" way to teach writing. Their discussion of memoir in a studio format was enlightening.
3. Nikki Giovanni -inspired her packed audience with her humor (yep...lots of laughing there too), poetry, and the story of Rosa Parks
4. Technology - I focused two of my breakout sessions on technology and received great ideas on how to use web 2.0 in my class
5. writing - I learned about brain gyms and how some simple, short exercises could help students get over the fear of writing or the dreaded writer's block.

Tomorrow...Leonard Pitts, Katie Wood Ray, and more inspiration.

Audience awareness

I just read this post by Dawn Hogue on the benefits of blogging in English class. I have heard many complaints about technology and how it is ruining literacy. I am sure that is the case in a few instances; however, the majority seem to be thriving. Dawn's class writing was described as "prolific" and I have seen this with students on their class wiki. While their wiki has been a bit disjointed, students are starting to link their comments to others and rearrange information on the pages to make sense. So, not only have I seen an increase on the ideas and details in their writing, but I am also starting to see a more attentive look at organization.