Search results matching tags 'reading' and 'high school english'

Blending Art, Literature, and Problem Solving at the J. Paul Getty Museum

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:08:25 GMT

Common Core Standard 7 for Reading presents teachers with many possibilities for mixing all kinds of art forms with literature. Music, photography, painting, sculpture, and many other media are easily brought into the classroom today because of the internet…the important thing is to use these resources heuristically. 7. Analyze the representation of a subject or a key scene in two different artistic mediums, including what is emphasized or absent in each treatment (e.g., Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” and Breughel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus). Teaching students to analyze subjects or scenes in comparative forms gives us an opportunity to explore with them the traditions of storytelling—the many and various ways stories can be told and have been told throughout history. Poetry, short stories, plays, and even novels and epic tales have important connections to art and present new, thoughtful ways to analyze and evaluate themes. To start, you … Continue reading →

Common Core Reading Standard #5—Analyzing Plot

Anonymous — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 16:24:41 GMT

Looking at CCS standard for reading #5, I am encouraged to see critical thinking required of our students. It is important to ensure that skills like problem solving, analyzing, and evaluating are at the core of our reading, writing, and speaking skills curricula. It is also essential that we keep in mind the goal of generating independent, self-directed (and self-reflective), life-long learners. 5. Analyze how an author’s choices concerning how to structure a text, order events within it (e.g., parallel plots), and manipulate time (e.g., pacing, flashbacks) create such effects as mystery, tension, or surprise. For standard #5, the key term is “analyze.” In Bloom’s taxonomy, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation are the top tiers we strive to reach. A lesson plan from teacher Patricia Schulze provides some excellent opportunities to use technology for this standard. The technology for the lesson comes from a site you are probably familiar with—Read, Write, … Continue reading →

Common Core Reading Standard #4—Vocabulary in Context

Anonymous — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 22:59:50 GMT

This week is my last one before returning to the classroom on Monday. I have to be honest, thinking about the first day of school still makes me really queasy even after eleven years. Of course, I do plan to continue this series of posts about the Common Core through the fall. This week we begin with “Craft and Structure.” 4. Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language of a court opinion differs from that of a newspaper). So this standard is all about vocabulary and author word choice, teaching students how to understand meanings in context and how to analyze diction. Usually for this blog I focus only on free resources for integrating technology, but Academic Merit’s Literary Companion is … Continue reading →

Online Resources for Analyzing Character

Anonymous — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:12:27 GMT

This week we look at the last of three standards under “Key Ideas and Details” in the “Reading” section of the Common Core: Standard 3: Analyze how complex characters (e.g., those with multiple or conflicting motivations) develop over the course of a text, interact with other characters, and advance the plot or develop the theme. For students to understand how a character develops over the course of a text and how his or her interactions impact plot and theme, they first need to know where to begin. A good place to start is to help them get into the mind of the character. The idea is to help students take a character and, to borrow a quote from Atticus Finch, “climb into his skin and walk around in it.” The internet offers many ways to facilitate this creatively with technology. Here are a few ideas and sites that might work … Continue reading →

What if Your Textbooks Were Free and Customizable?

Anonymous — Tue, 31 May 2011 22:40:22 GMT

As the school year winds down, you might be thinking about what new or different books you hope to use in the fall. If you are, I encourage you to check out Open Educational Resources (OER) textbooks. OER or “Open Source” textbooks are digital, often customizable, textbooks published and available on the web. Many of them are quite comprehensive and are written by highly-qualified professionals with advanced degrees. These books also often include interactive elements and multimedia such as sound and video. Best of all, they’re free. In the Classroom Here are some OER sources you can explore. Since these are open and free, you’ll see that you can pick and choose from multiple sources for your students instead of having to commit to one textbook from one publisher. Many of them are also available in PDF format for download and to print either for free or for a … Continue reading →

The Internet Archive: One Very Big Collection of Multimedia

Anonymous — Wed, 18 May 2011 00:25:07 GMT

The Internet Archive is a huge, well…archive. Basically, it’s a collection of images, video, music, audio recordings, and texts. Once you explore this massive digital library though, you’ll see that it’s hard to get your head around just how much is collected here. For example, the audio section includes an archive of millions of recordings of everything from an audio version of The Quran to radio talk show recordings. The music section includes live music recordings from the Grateful Dead and millions of others. The text section, called the “Open Library,” includes millions of documents from textbooks to novels and … Continue reading →

What if Hamlet Had a Facebook Page and Tweeted?

Anonymous — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 23:06:43 GMT

Ok, so the days are finally getting longer here in New England and the end of the school year is within sight…but I still feel like there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done and the students are growing restless by the day. So, as usual, I’ve been digging about on the web, looking for resources to keep my students busy and learning as the weather grows warmer and their attention spans shrink. While digging, I came across a site from the UK that is an impressive social network for teachers called TES Connect. TES Connect … Continue reading →

New “Epic Comics” Lesson Explores Epic Simile with Comic Creator Technology

Anonymous — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 15:32:20 GMT

Last week I wrote a post about using online comic creator applications to create comic strips based on scenes from Homer’s Odyssey. Today I’ve published a lesson plan based on this idea. This plan explores Epic / Homeric Similes, vivid word choices, and tone in the Odyssey based on Common Core Standards for Literature–Craft and Structure. I tried to keep the lesson basic and easily adaptable, so there is plenty more you could do with these resources but this plan will get you started using online comic creator applications. I hope you will explore the lesson and share your classroom … Continue reading →

Students can Illustrate Epic Similes with Comic Creators

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 23:46:20 GMT

Gearing up for my Odyssey unit, I’ve been searching the Internet for a creative way to engage my students using technology while tackling a challenging read. While looking, I stumbled across Spore Comic Creator, a free online application that you can use to bring Homer’s rich language alive by creating custom comic books. With this online application, students can go beyond visualizing the battles with giant cannibals, the treachery in the cave of a barbaric Cyclops, and the terror of the man-eating Scylla–they can turn the words to images and at the same time learn to recognize and understand the … Continue reading →

The Jack London Collection Online

Anonymous — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 14:08:52 GMT

Jack London died of kidney disease when he was only 40, but during his short life he was an unusually prolific writer. When he died in 1916, he left behind everything from the adventure novels for which he is most known, to journalism, essays, and letters. The Sonoma State University Library has gathered and organized much about this important American author in the Jack London Online Collection. This site includes an audio book version of The Call of the Wild, a radio drama, a searchable collection of images of him, his family, and friends, and a sizeable assortment of primary … Continue reading →