Thursday, March 28, 2013

Let the Kids Teach the Lesson

Way back in August, as I began playing with my iPad, and deciding how I would use it in my classroom, I discovered Educreations.  At that time I wrote a post about some interesting ways to use it and you can check them out HERE.  I have used in lots of these ways this year, but all of these ways have been teacher led.  While they are a great substitute for standing at the front of the room explaining, I have discovered a much better use for the Educreations app – let the kids make the lesson!

This week, my third graders have been working on Let your kids create a video to teach the class about a concept they have learned with the Educreations app.  My third graders explained negative numbers this way.  Heidi Raki of Raki's Rad Resourcesnegative numbers, which is a concept we have spent a bunch of time on already and they have brought pretty close to mastery.  So I decided I wanted them to “teach” others about negative numbers.  Since I still have Marc Prensky’s talk from the ECIS conference fresh in my head, I started thinking of ways that I could have them create a video.  There were lots of options – video an actual lesson on the iPad, use Morfo to have a talking head explain it, etc.  However, the simplest was to simply let them build their own Educreations videos. 

I asked them to explain:

1.  placing negative numbers on a timeline

2.  adding negative numbers

3.  subtracting negative numbers

 

and I told them they had to do it in less than 90 seconds of video.  The students brainstormed what they wanted to say and draw on their personal whiteboards, and then took the iPad and drew out their numberlines.  We talked about having an introduction, body and conclusion and how this mirrored our writing assignments.  They practiced together a bit and then were ready to record, which they did in short spurts, stopping frequently to pass the iPad, switch slides or whatever was needed.

The whole process took less than 40 minutes and they had a pretty successful video.  It wasn’t perfect, which gave us an opportunity to give a glow and a grow.  It definitely won’t be the last video they create, and it was a wonderful learning experience. 

Here is the video that they created:

We marked their videos public, which gives us a link that we can send on to parents or bookmark for their digital portfolios.

Have you ever had your students create their own Educreations videos?  What topics could you have them cover this way?

Heidi Raki of Raki's Rad Resources

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Take a Bite Out of Learning at BBC

It’s time for the Wednesday Website suggestion!! For two years, I was the Technology Specialist at a scwebsiteebook242hool in Georgia. During that time, I amassed a large collection of websites that I use with my students. You can download my E-Book of Websites for the Elementary Classroom for free from Teachers Pay Teachers or Smashwords, or, you can check back here each week for the Wednesday Website suggestion.

Before I started teaching a British Curriculum, I used the BBC websites as great references with cool games, especially BiteSize.  This year, I am teaching the UK National Standards, and BBC BiteSize has become my go-to site for games, models, student information, and even some videos that help me “flip the classroom”.

The BBC BiteSize is my website suggestion for this week.  It is broken into KS1 (Key Stage 1), which is Foundation through Year 2 or PK – 1st grade, KS2 (Key Stage 2), which is Year 3 – Year 6 or 2nd grade – 5th grade and KS3 (Key Stage 3) Year 7 – Year 9 or 6th through 8th grade.  (Do be warned that if you are teaching US Standards, the UK Standards can be ahead by 6 months to a year in expectations.)

Utilize BBC's amazing, free web resources in Maths, Science and English, including games, explanations and quizzes.

Once you choose your Key Stage, the site is broke into English, Maths (yes there’s supposed to be an S at the end) and Science.  Each subject is also broken down into additional categories.

Utilize BBC's amazing, free web resources in Maths, Science and English, including games, explanations and quizzes

Utilize BBC's amazing, free web resources in Maths, Science and English, including games, explanations and quizzes

Then, each sub-subject has games and lessons that are specific to the UK standards for that Key Stage.  My kids LOVE these games because they are interactive and fun.  I LOVE these games because they work on specific skills I need them to work on.  There are TONS and TONS of games and lessons here, but let me show you just one that my kids love.

This week, my third and fourth graders have been working on negative numbers.  They are expected to be able to place a negative number on a number line, compare negative and positive numbers and to add and subtract negative and positive numbers.  This site provides assistance with all of these expectations.

Utilize BBC's amazing, free web resources in Maths, Science and English, including games, explanations and quizzes

My kids love to play the game – Mission 2nd Negative Numbers. 

Utilize BBC's amazing, free web resources in Maths, Science and English, including games, explanations and quizzes

 

In the flashy game, the kids order negative numbers from smallest to largest in order to steal the robot’s energy.  It starts with a great tutorial to walk kids through the expectations and even gives them a numberline as a guide.

Utilize BBC's amazing, free web resources in Maths, Science and English, including games, explanations and quizzes

Then, they can open doors in order to use the keys in ascending order.  At this point, the game also mixes negative and positive numbers.

Utilize BBC's amazing, free web resources in Maths, Science and English, including games, explanations and quizzes

Finally the students cross a force field by comparing two numbers, generally a mix of negative and positive or two negative numbers.

Utilize BBC's amazing, free web resources in Maths, Science and English, including games, explanations and quizzes

In addition to the games, there is also a section where students can read through simple explanations of concepts.

Utilize BBC's amazing, free web resources in Maths, Science and English, including games, explanations and quizzes

Finally, there are quizzes that help give students a chance to check for understanding.

Utilize BBC's amazing, free web resources in Maths, Science and English, including games, explanations and quizzes

As you can see, this is something the kids can get into and that makes a great math center or math homework.  This is just one of many, many areas available on the BBC BiteSize sites.  Which sections have you used, or would you like to use, with your class?

Heidi Raki of Raki's Rad Resources

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

TESOL Teaching Tip #45 - But Miss, I Heard it in a Song!

As a teacher at an International School, many of my students are English Language Learners. Even my native English speakers are living in a non-English speaking country. Due to my unique teaching position, I have had some readers ask for tips on teaching English Language Learners. Here is this week’s Tuesday TESOL Teaching Tip:

TESOL Teaching Tip - Teach taboo words. Students will hear taboo words in songs and on the streets. ESL or ELL students often don't know that these words are taboo, so we need to teach them. For specific information on this topic, come to my blog - Raki's Rad Resources.

ELL Teaching Tip #45: Teach Taboo Words

As an English teacher in Morocco, my students rarely speak English when they are away from me.  However, they do sing in English.  That is because more than 50% of the songs on our radio stations are in English.  This is not uncommon in non-English speaking countries, due to the prevalence of American pop music.  My husband did not learn English until his twenties, but he grew up singing Michael Jackson in English.  However, because the general public does not speak English, the curse words that are “censored” from general radio in the US and other English speaking countries are not censored here.  So, it is not uncommon to hear kids singing along to curse words and not knowing that they are saying anything inappropriate.

For awhile, I tried to ignore the curse words, thinking if I didn’t give them the power to shock, then it wouldn’t be a big deal.  Then I heard one of my students mis-use a curse word in conversation, not having any clue that the word a bad word.  Luckily he was talking to me and not someone who was clueless as to how he came across this word. However, this made me realize that when we teach children English (or any language) we are teaching them to communicate for better or Teach taboo words to esl students in order to prevent them from making communication taboos.worse.  Part of communication is understanding what words are taboo.  It’s also not enough to just say “Don’t say that word!”.  We should explain at least a little bit about the meaning of that word, in case they do say it, or in case they have it said to them.  I do try to keep these explanations as simple as possible, but I have realized that it is necessary for students to know that if someone says “Kiss my a**”, this is a bad thing, but if they say “Another word for donkey is a**”, then it’s actually an acceptable use of the word. (I’ve actually recently learned that in the UK, this is the way it is said even for small children.)

In addition, I have learned to explain appropriate timing for other partially taboo words, especially those dealing with bodily functions.  These normally come up in general conversation and I actually found myself saying last week “We don’t say: I do a burp, we say I burped.”  Talk about things you never thought you’d say as a teacher!
Overall some tips on taboo words are:
1.)  Don’t freak out when they say them.  Ask where they heard that word, and explain an appropriate meaning (A** is a bad word for your bottom.)  Then explain that we don’t use that word in polite conversation – or school.

2.)  Address those song lyrics and movie lines with curse words that you hear them using in conversation.  For older students, this is a great time to talk about knowing appropriate contexts for words.  For younger students, give appropriate substitutes that can be used.

3.)  Be careful with your wording, and be prepared to justify your explanation to parents and administration.

4.)  Talk to students about using language as a communication tool.  Remind them that some words are not appropriate for school conversations and that this is true in all languages.

Everythings-Intermediate-Expo7222232Do you enjoy the weekly TESOL Teaching Tips? Would you like to view an hour long presentation on this topic? I recently presented on Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners at the Everything’s Intermediate Expo. Now you can grab the presentation for just $3.95 from Teacher’s Notebook.


Find more TESOL Teaching Tips here, and come back every Tuesday for a new tip!

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Monday, March 25, 2013

Do You Judge a Resource by its Cover?

You know the saying don’t judge a book by it’s cover?  How much of a lie is that!  I was standing in the bookstore the other day and I totally judged each book by it’s cover.  If it was missing the cute cover, I didn’t pick it up and look at it.

This was an eye opener for me.  For almost 4 years now, I have been fighting the “cute cover” that everyone puts on their resources on Teachers Pay Teachers.  I’ve always thought that people would prefer to see what they are getting than a cute cover.  I also thought that if the product itself was what a teacher needed, than that would matter more.  These days, I am beginning to wonder.

So, today I went through my Vocabulary Packets and re-worked the covers.  What do you think?

Here’s the before:

tools

And the after:

image

Pin the cover that you like better to a Pinterest board.

Does the change in cover make you more willing to look at the product?  Does the change in cover make you more willing to buy the product?  I’m really interested in knowing your honest responses, so please leave me a comment.

I think that the second cover will get more pins.  I think this is also going to teach me a lesson.  Over the course of the next few months, I will be working on re-covering and re-working many of my products.  Of course, since I have over 400 products on Teachers Pay Teachers and I create new stuff for my classroom every day, this may take awhile!

This concept also got me thinking about my students’ presentations.  In today’s image centered, web based world, should we be teaching more about making your web based productions (glogs, prezi’s etc.) stand out?  Should that now be a part of publishing your writing?  Hmmmm…thoughts to ponder.

Heidi Raki of Raki's Rad Resources

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Are You Teaching Digital Natives?

On March 15th, I was privileged to see Marc Prensky speak at the ECIS Technology Conference.  If you’ve never heard of Marc Prensky, he is the author of the multiple books, including Digital Game-Based Learning, Don’t Bother Me Mom – I’m Learning, Teaching Digital Natives, From Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom and Brain Gain: Technology and the Quest for Digital Wisdom.

Marc Prensky is also a wonderful speaker who kept us all very engaged.  He spoke about the importance of using technology to connect with our students, and about teaching students to use technology to connect with each other.  He was nice enough to share some of his slides with me, so I’ll share them with you here.

One of the biggest thing I hear from teachers is that technology is an engagement tool.  However, Marc Prensky says that technology should be more about connecting than engaging.

Marc Prensky Presentation - ECIS Tech Conference, London, March 15

He also said that the idea of grouping children by age is not the way to reach the needs of our children. 

 

Marc Prensky Presentation - ECIS Tech Conference, London, March 15

 He reminded us that our students have a completely different viewpoint of technology.

Marc Prensky Presentation - ECIS Tech Conference, London, March 15

One of my favorite parts was when Marc talked about how technology is not about the cool new tool, but rather about the thinking that goes into using – and creating – new tools.  He also mentioned that most of the time the time spent planning the creation of a technology project provides more learning than the time spent creating a new technology project.

Marc Prensky Presentation - ECIS Tech Conference, London, March 15

 

The most important thing that I took from Marc Prensky’s presentation was that teaching students to use technology is equal to teaching kids to read in today’s world.

Marc Prensky Presentation - ECIS Tech Conference, London, March 15

Finally, Marc talked about video and the sharing of short videos on YouTube to increasing the connection process.  He says you should try to post one per week.

Marc Prensky Presentation - ECIS Tech Conference, London, March 15

Have you ever seen Marc Prensky speak or read one of his books?  If you haven’t I’d definitely recommend it.

Here is his keynote from the conference:

Please leave me a comment about your thoughts on Marc Prensky’s ideas and feel free to stop by next Sunday for more information the other presentations from the ECIS Conference.

Heidi-Raki-of-Rakis-Rad-Resources_th

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Number Combinations App

Understanding number combinations is a key piece to math.  My math program stresses kids being able to find number bonds and connections in number combinations.  So, when a friend introduced me to Hungry Fish, I knew I had stumbled on a great practice tool for my kids.  The games spits out a variety of bubbles with numbers in it and a fish with a larHungry Fish math app makes a great independent math center.ger number on the fish.  The number on the fish is the number the fish must eat.  Students drag the bubbles around to make combinations that will add up to the number on the fish.  Simple and easy, this app makes a great independent math center.

What’s your kids’ favorite math app?

 

Heidi Raki of Raki's Rad Resources

 

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Make the Most of Your Field Trips

As a teacher at an International School, many of my students are English Language Learners. Even my native English speakers are living in a non-English speaking country. Due to my unique teaching position, I have had some readers ask for tips on teaching English Language Learners. Here is this week’s Tuesday TESOL Teaching Tip:


ELL Teaching Tip of the Week: Use Guidance Sheets During Field Trips and Videos

Field Trips and video experiences give English Language Use checklists to help ESL students get more from field trips.Learners (ESL students) a chance to practice real life listening skills, and experience English in a very hands on way.  However, the rate of speech in a video and the rate of speech used by a tour guide are much faster than the rate of speech of a teacher, especially an ESL Teacher who knows to slow down when she (or he) speaks.  Additionally, during field trips students are moving, walking and distracted by other things to see.  This combination of a lack of attention and increased rate of speech means that many ESL students don’t get everything they can from these wonderful learning experiences.  So, how can we help them out?  Here are some tips:

1.  Prep them before you go.  Before you head out to the bus, make sure that you go over what students will see, reducing some of their distractibility level from the start.  In addition, go over the key vocabulary words that students will need in order to understand a tour guide.

Use checklists to help ESL students get more from field trips.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2.  Give students something to physically do during a field trip.  Create a specific notes sheet or use a general graphic organizer to help students remember to stay focused on listening.

Use checklists to help ESL students get more from field trips.During my class’ recent trip to a furniture manufacturing factory, we filled out this form as we looked for (and listened for) the key vocabulary terms we had been studying during our unit.  Feel free to grab this sheet free from my Teachers Pay Teachers store if you are headed to a factory field triimagep any time soon.

3.  Debrief after the field trip.  Take time after the field trip to let student discuss what they have seen.  Listen to what they have to say and help them fill in any vocabulary that has slipped by them.

Using these three simple tips can increase the amount of understanding your English Language Learners get from field trips and videos.


Successful Strategies for English Language Learners by Heidi Raki of Raki's Rad ResourcesDo you enjoy the weekly TESOL Teaching Tips? Would you like to view an hour long presentation on this topic? I recently presented on Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners at the Everything’s Intermediate Expo. Now you can grab the presentation for just $3.95 from Teacher’s Notebook.


Find more TESOL Teaching Tips here, and come back every Tuesday for a new tip!
Heidi-Raki-of-Rakis-Rad-Resources322[1]

Sunday, March 17, 2013

ECIS–Technology Conference De-brief

What an amazing weekend this has been!  I arrived in London – actually Cobham, 40 minutes outside of London - on Wednesday (March 13th) for the ECIS Tech Conference titled: Learning to Love the iGeneration, and it’s been a whirlwind of activity and thinking for me ever since.  Here is a brief overview of what I’ve been doing:

Wednesday – We got in late, so we stayed around the hotel and ate fish and chips at the local pub – The Fairmille.

ECIS Technology Conference - Learning to Love the iGeneration

Thursday – I didn’t have meetings, but my colleague, Jen Kadiri, went over the first day of leadership meetings.  I will have a full report from her in a blog post coming soon.  While she was in meetings, I walked to the train station and went into the city where I got to walk around and see some of the key monuments.  Here is some of what I saw: 

ECIS Technology Conference - Learning to Love the iGeneration   ECIS Technology Conference - Learning to Love the iGeneration

ECIS Technology Conference - Learning to Love the iGeneration     ECIS Technology Conference - Learning to Love the iGeneration

 

Friday – We began the conference, which was located at ACS International School in Cobham.  (I have collected so many ideas and suggestions that it will take me MONTHS to give you everything I learned.  So, each Sunday, I will be posting a Conference debrief with further details on one of the speakers I saw.)  Here are the speakers I saw on Friday:

ECIS Technology Conference - Learning to Love the iGeneration

 

Morning Keynote:  Marc Prensky, author of the book Teaching Digital Natives.

 

Breakout Session 1:  Speaking their Language – where I learned about some cool programs to use with students who are language learners

Breakout Session 2: ME!  This is when I presented my ECIS Technology Conference - Learning to Love the iGenerationworkshop on Using Technology to Create Community.  It was well attended and went very well.  You can see what the participants had to say about the 16 websites HERE, and what your fellow blog readers had to say HERE.  By the way, if you are one of those who took the time to critique the websites before today, check our e-mail box for an e-mail from TransferBigFiles, as you will ALL  be receiving the 12 teacher resources in the Goodie Bag Giveaway.

Breakout Session 3:  A panel discussion on how curriculum should change to include technology

ECIS Technology Conference - Learning to Love the iGeneration

 

Afternoon Keynote:  Chandran Nair, a key spokesman for environmental and economic issues in Asia and author of the book Consumptionomics.

 After all of the exciting learning, we attended a wonderful dinner at a local winery and spoke to teachers from Germany, Doha, Italy and England.  We also learned about the fabulous world of geo-caching, so look for a post on that soon!

Saturday – We headed back to the conference full of excitement from the first day’s activities.

Morning Keynote Speakers: 

ECIS Technology Conference - Learning to Love the iGenerationJeff Utrecht, who spoke about how students are using technology to change the world and author of the book Reach: Building Communities and Networks for Professional Development

Julie Lindsey  who is a founder of the Flat Classroom movement

Breakout Session 1:  Sorting to Searching with Jeff Utrecht, an amazing session on how to teach kids to use Google to the full of its worth

Breakout Session 2:  Using iBook in your classroom, an example of using this program to create a book about the Olympics

Breakout Session 3:  Flipping the Classroom and Differentiation, a session with Heather Martin, who creates amazing videos and posts them on her YouTube channel in order to flip her classroom.

Afternoon Keynote Speaker:  Caliean Hargrave from IBM, who spoke about the technologies that IBM are creating and the programs they have to work with kids

 

As you can see, this has been an amazing amount of information.  I have provided links to each of the people I have links for, feel free to check them out, but also feel free to stop by each Sunday for more detailed information about each presentation.

Heidi Raki of Raki's Rad Resources

Friday, March 15, 2013

French Calendar

This year I am the luckiest teacher in the world. I get to teach at the best school ever – International School of Morocco, with some of the best, most creative, teachers ever. Each time I walk into someone else’s classroom, I get inspired and we just seem to spiral great teaching ideas off of each other. It’s a wonderful place to teach, and since we are all collaborating, it’s a wonderful place for our kids to learn – a teacher’s dream, right? I have tried and tried to convince the other teachers to create blogs of their own to spotlight and share some of their amazing ideas, but everyone is super busy. Instead, they have each agreed to let me spotlight some of their ideas right here on Raki’s Rad Resources. So, each Friday night, I will be posting an ISM Spotlight.

This week, we are spotlighting Gaille Theotiste, our French teacher at ISM.  Madame Gaille, as she is known to the kids, came on board a little late in the year, but she has fit into our school community so well.  She is able to seamlessly balance teaching FSL to our non-French natives with teaching reading comprehension and proper composition to our native French  speakers.

French Calendar helps students with different textsOne of the things that Madame Gaille does each day is her calendar routine.  What many of you might not know is that French (at least French in Morocco) is taught in cursive from Kindergarten.  As a school that follows a UK curriculum, our students don’t learn cursive until third grade, so not all of our students know how to read  cursive. So Madame Gaille has created this cute calendar to help them become familiar with three fonts that they need to be able to read the calendFrench Calendar helps students with different textsar in.  Every day, as students review the calendar, they use a clothespin to indicate the month, and under the clothespin is a number of the day of the month.   

Come back next Friday to find out what the other ISM teachers are up to.

Heidi-Raki-of-Rakis-Rad-Resources_th[1]

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Making Word Clouds

It’s time for the Wednesday Website suggestion!! For two years, I was the Technology Specialist at a scwebsiteebook24hool in Georgia. During that time, I amassed a large collection of websites that I use with my students. You can download my E-Book of Websites for the Elementary Classroom for free from Teachers Pay Teachers or Smashwords, or, you can check back here each week for the Wednesday Website suggestion.

This week’s website suggestion is a two for one.  I love to make word clouds with my kids.  They are a great activity to use at the end of a vocabulary unit, or as a way of gathering prior knowledge at the beginning of a unit.  There are two sites I use to make word clouds with my kids – Wordle.net and Tagxedo

 

Wordle is much simpler to use.  You simply click on Create, type in your words and click GO.

Use word clouds as a way to review what your children know about a topic.  Ask them to brainstorm twenty words on a set topic and make those words into a word cloud using Wordle or Tagxedo.

Wordle will then create you a simple word cloud.  You can format the direction of the words, the color and the font. 

Use word clouds as a way to review what your children know about a topic.  Ask them to brainstorm twenty words on a set topic and make those words into a word cloud using Wordle or Tagxedo

Once your word cloud is the way you’d like it, you can print it or save it to the public gallery, but you cannot save it to your individual drive.

Use word clouds as a way to review what your children know about a topic.  Ask them to brainstorm twenty words on a set topic and make those words into a word cloud using Wordle or Tagxedo

 

 

The second word cloud website is called TagxedoTagxedo is more complex to use, but it also offers additional options that are often worth the complexity.

After you click CREATE and go into the Tagxedo Creator, you need to click on LOAD in order to find the screen which will allow you to enter text.  Then you will need to click SUBMIT in order to change the words into a word cloud.

Use word clouds as a way to review what your children know about a topic.  Ask them to brainstorm twenty words on a set topic and make those words into a word cloud using Wordle or Tagxedo

Once you have your word cloud, you can change the color, theme, font, orientations and layout.  You can also change shape of your cloud into a large variety of shapes, by choosing SHAPE under the OPTIONS tab.

Use word clouds as a way to review what your children know about a topic.  Ask them to brainstorm twenty words on a set topic and make those words into a word cloud using Wordle or Tagxedo

Once your word cloud is complete, you can save it to your own drive, print it or publish it to the web by clicking on SAVE/SHARE.

Use word clouds as a way to review what your children know about a topic.  Ask them to brainstorm twenty words on a set topic and make those words into a word cloud using Wordle or Tagxedo

The finished products from Tagxedo will always have a credit on the image you save or print, giving Tagxedo copyright.

 

Here are some of the word clouds my students created at the end of their last unit.  We used Tagxedo as a way to focus on the important ideas that came out of our units of study.  The students brainstormed words that were important to their topics – Africa or Celebrations – and used those words to create these word clouds.

Use word clouds as a way to review what your children know about a topic.  Ask them to brainstorm twenty words on a set topic and make those words into a word cloud using Wordle or Tagxedo    Use word clouds as a way to review what your children know about a topic.  Ask them to brainstorm twenty words on a set topic and make those words into a word cloud using Wordle or Tagxedo

Use word clouds as a way to review what your children know about a topic.  Ask them to brainstorm twenty words on a set topic and make those words into a word cloud using Wordle or Tagxedo   Use word clouds as a way to review what your children know about a topic.  Ask them to brainstorm twenty words on a set topic and make those words into a word cloud using Wordle or Tagxedo

Use word clouds as a way to review what your children know about a topic.  Ask them to brainstorm twenty words on a set topic and make those words into a word cloud using Wordle or Tagxedo   Use word clouds as a way to review what your children know about a topic.  Ask them to brainstorm twenty words on a set topic and make those words into a word cloud using Wordle or Tagxedo

Use word clouds as a way to review what your children know about a topic.  Ask them to brainstorm twenty words on a set topic and make those words into a word cloud using Wordle or Tagxedo   Use word clouds as a way to review what your children know about a topic.  Ask them to brainstorm twenty words on a set topic and make those words into a word cloud using Wordle or Tagxedo

How could you use Word Clouds in your classroom?

Heidi Raki of Raki's Rad Resources

Monday, March 11, 2013

Six Writing Traits Lessons

Hi guys, we have a guest blogger today.  She’s here to talk about Six Traits Writing – one of my favorite programs.  Her name is  Tama and she’s in my neck of the woods (or at least on my side of the Atlantic ocean), over in Paris.  She also blogs at Across the Pond, so please stop by and check her out.signature

 

   

Hi everyone! Salut from Across the Pond Blog in Paris, France. I am guest blogging today here at Heidi Raki's Rad Resources blog. I am super excited to be here and blog with you about something we all know - The Six Writing Traits.  However, there is a fabulous site that I use that shows you how to incorporate literature into the writing process. I love this idea as it makes it more interesting for the students and they also have something to refer back to and, you, as a teacher, have something concrete to model for the students which is always helpful.

Jodie Black and the Northern Nevada Writing Project have an excellent site to engage writers at an early age. How they aim to teach the six writing traits into the early grades is through literature. This gives the children not only a visual to refer to but an idea of something to think about. How many times have you heard, "I don't know what to write about." By intertwining literature into the concepts the students have a better understanding of what is needed to start the writing process.  The Nevada Project has put out a guide of 36 lessons that you can purchase that incorporate the six traits into a literature program. There are also some samples of writing lessons that you can use to get you started.  Yes, you do have to have the books they are referencing in the lessons, but most of them can be found in your pubic library or you can purchase them used from any number of resources or think yard sales!! The Writing Project also has a guide for older primary students as well. Here is the link to some samples for older students.

Another great resource I have found is the Month by Month Trait Based Writing Instruction Book by Maria Walther and Katherine Philips. This guide has proved indispensable for me as not only does it offer wonderful resources for writing, it also ties in your morning message to the writing program so the children can link back to their writings by again having a visual.
 
 
As an example using a writing activity from the Nevada Project, we followed the lesson using the story, All the Places to Love.  After reading the story and modeling the lesson, the children then came up with their own writing about a special place using positional words. Here is a link to the lesson and  a link to what my children wrote for this activity.
 
 
Across the PondBe sure to check out all these great resources to make your writing program even better. See you all around the blogosphere.
Cheers,
Tama
 


Sunday, March 10, 2013

6 More Days to Help Me Build Community

and to win that amazing goodie bag!

Hey guys, sorry I’ve been so absent this week – I had a big birthday party to plan for my two birthday boys.  My sons will be 2 and 9 this week, and as all my fellow working moms know, those mommy moments must take precedence!

Being a mommy must take precedence over work.   Being a mommy must take precedence over work.

In addition, I have been busy making last minute arrangements for the ECIS Technology Conference, as I leave for London Wednesday morning!  Wow did that sneak up on me!

European Council of International Schools Technology Conference - Goodie Bag - 12 FREE teacher resources available for reviewing community building websites.However, I had to stop by and remind you guys that you have another 6 days if you would like to add to evaluate some of those community building websites and enter to win the 12 amazing teacher resources that are a part of the Goodie Bag Giveaway.  Click HERE for all of the details.

Another cool technology project that has just been completed is the FREE 20 Terrific Presentation Tech Tools for Kids, which has recently been put together by 20 Free presentation technology toolsLaura Candler of Corkboard Connections.  She includes many of the websites that we are reviewing – including one of my favorites – Storybird.  Stop by and download her free document.

Don’t forget to stop by and review some of those websites and enter to win the Goodie Bag Giveaway.  Hope you have a great work week!

Heidi Raki of Raki's Rad Resources

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

St. Patrick’s Day Supplies

Do you need the luck of the Irish?  Or do you just need some resources to motivate your students as they wait around for Spring Break?  Here are some St. Patrick’s Day Resources that you can download completely free.  Enjoy you pot of gold!

Pot of Gold Self Correcting Puzzle helps students with number combinations.

 

Pot of Gold Self Correcting Puzzle helps students with number combinations.

 

 

 

St. Patrick’s Day Writing Prompts – Download each prompt with space for writing from Google Docs.

 

Free St. Patrick's Day Writing Prompt

 

Free St. Patrick's Day Writing Prompt

 

Free St. Patrick's Day Writing Prompt

 

Free St. Patrick's Day Writing Prompt

 

Free St. Patrick's Day Writing Prompt

 

Free St. Patrick's Day Writing Prompt

 

Free St. Patrick's Day Writing Prompt

 

Need more resources?  Here are a few things I have available for a fee.

 

Primary Level St. Patrick’s Day Centers Packet – 5 quick and easy centers that can be copied and used with no cutting or laminating.

Primary Level St. Patrick’s Day Centers Packet – 5 quick and easy centers that can be copied and used with no cutting or laminating.

 

 

 

St. Patrick’s Day Clipart that can be used in your projects.

 

St. Patrick’s Day Clipart that can be used in your projects.

 

 

 

 

 

What does your class have planned for St. Patrick’s Day?

 

Heidi Raki of Raki's Rad Resources