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 ...

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, ...

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 ...

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 ...

Summer has finally arrived here in Maine.  I hope many of you, like me, have finished up the school year and can now take some time to recuperate.  Looking forward to a productive summer, I am planning a series of blog posts focusing on the Common Core State Standards Initiative.  My plan is to post regular articles with a simple goal: each blog ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...