Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is a way to save all your favorite websites to one place that can be accessed from any computer. Its like a normal bookmark you make on your laptop or computer but you can look at and find those bookmarks using any computer anywhere! its like Google Drive, but with bookmarks!!

Heres a link to one social bookmarking site

Reading Strategy: Book Pass

The Book Pass is a neat way to get students to look through many different kinds of texts in a short amount of time. You would use this strategy as an  introduction to a unit to build background knowledge, to choose a new reading book, or select research texts for a project.You want to choose books from many different genres, including poetry, research texts, novels, etc. You want these texts to be based on a certain theme.

What you do:
1. You can do this with either the whole class or small groups depending on the topic.
2. Once you have decided the grouping, you want to pass out the Book Pass sheet, and then explain to the students that they should write the authors name in the author box, the title of the text in the title box and either comments, questions or something they have learned through the book, in the comment box.
3. Give students 2-4 minutes to "sample" the book. Once the time is up, say "Book Pass" and have students fill in the boxes and pass the book to their partner.
4. When everyone has gone through the books, you can bring the class together and discuss some of the things they have learned as well as any comments or questions they have.

Web Quests

Web Quests are fun and interactive ways to encourage collaboration and deeper thought. Teachers must create the web quest, and students once put in groups, would work through the web quest.

Im still a little uncertain about the webquest, but here are some websites to help me and you out.

example of a Web Quest




Web Quest Building:
http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=68367

http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=51190

http://zunal.com/webquest.php?w=68364

http://zunal.com/index.php



Evaluating Web Quests:
http://webquest.sdsu.edu/processchecker.html

http://webquest.sdsu.edu/webquestrubric.html



Web Quest Resources:
http://webquest.sdsu.edu/finepoints/index.htm 

http://www.webquest.org/ 

Web Quest Template 



My Web Quest

Reading Strategy: REAP

Read
Encode
Annotate
Ponder

In my content literacy class I had to give a lesson based on a reading strategy. My observation classroom does a lot of textbook reading so I thought the REAP strategy would be great for them.

What I did:
First I had students draw the four boxes with each letter separately written at the top of the boxes. In each separate box will be filled in with specific information relating to the letter in the box.

Next I had the students read by themselves, the first section of lesson two of the chapter.

Once they were done, we filled in each box together.

R box: the title of the section

E box: encode, which I had students write summaries in this box

A box: annotate, have students write notes about important aspects of the section they just read    include key terms

P box: ponder, have students think of questions they have based on the text as well as connections to other things they have learned from other classes

The first time around we filled in the boxes together. Once the students got the gist of what we were doing, I allowed the students to pair up, read and fill in the boxes themselves. When they were done we came back together to fill in my boxes that were on the smartboard.

I got to use smartboard with this lesson and it was so much fun!!

REAP reading strategy

Halloween crafts!

At the day care I work at, we decided to do some Halloween crafts. Usually the basic craft we do is coloring, but since we didn't have any printed, I decided to make my own!!

We also decided on an easy craft where the kids can get a little dirty (which they love). We will be making spiders with our hand prints, googly eyes and hand drawn spider web.  

Items you will need:

Fun colored construction paper (we used orange and purple)

Black paint

Black marker or crayon

Googly eyes 

Glue

You first want to draw your spider web in the corner on your paper.

Next get some paint out and allow the kids to dip their hands into the paint.

Place the paint filled hands onto the paper making sure only 4 fingers and down. 

Once the paint has dried, glue the googly eyes on and draw a mouth on him if you'd like and there's your little spider!!

Podcast Update

I was just given a few great video tutorials on how to use Audacity from my professor and wanted to share them with you. This program is usually not used for Mac computers, Im not sure if the program even exists for them or not. Anyways if you don't have a mac and want to learn how to make a podcast, here are three great videos telling you the basic steps on how to make a podcast using Audacity.

Video #1

Video #2

Video #3

Reading strategy: concept ladder

This strategy can be used for pre-reading, post reading as well as during reading.  I would use this strategy for text books. It encourages students to generate their own questions so they will be more invested and interested in their reading. 

At the top of the ladder you put the main idea of what ever you are reading. So for the example I have provided, the main idea of the chapter is the Nile river. 

Then as students are skimming the chapter they will write questions they have. This can be done individually, with small groups, partners or as a whole class.  You can add as many questions as you would like for the students to generate.  

In my example the textbook described the Nile as a giver and taker of life. So I asked the question "how can it give and take way life."  

While skimming, students may find the answer to their question, but if they don't, that's ok. The unanswered questions allow for further learning, whether it be as homework, extra credit or can be discussed with the class to see if they can figure out the answer on their own.