Hello Literacy Lovers!

I am looking out my window at the beautiful snow falling here, and for whatever reason, it inspired me to blog! Rather than blog about the snow, however, I wanted to share a short animated presentation that I created using one of my favorite new digital tools- Powtoon! Those of you who know me (which I'm pretty sure is all of you) know that I love nothing more than a good old fashioned gorgeous, colorful literacy chart! However, I am finally coming to terms with the fact that I cannot avoid digital literacy any longer, as this is where education is headed... so I am jumping on board and trying to learn/utilize digital literacy tools as much as I can.

I saw a presentation using Powtoon at a recent school board meeting and loved it so I decided to explore this tool for myself. It can be used in so many different ways to support literacy work in the classroom and is a tool that students can learn how to use themselves to enhance their digital literacy skills and to create animated presentations, movies etc. 

Here is the link to the first Powtoon that I created as part of a staff development session on Writing Conferences. Enjoy! After watching, please comment below on your favorite digital literacy tools and/or on how you foresee using Powtoon in your classroom to support liteacy instruction.

Writing Conferences Powtoon
 

The Power of Transference

Nothing is more exciting than seeing kids "transfer and apply." This is a great phrase that I learned from Shana Frazin, a staff developer at Teachers College. My interpretation of this phrase is: taking something that you have learned and transferring and applying it to another piece of work, subject area, or another part of your life. 

As a lover of literacy, I am always excited when kids can transfer and apply between reading and writing. Very often, I will try to make these connections and applications explicit for them (demonstrating reading-writing reciprocity), but the most exciting moments are when kids do this work on their own.

Quick example from the trenches: 

I have been working with the 3rd grade classes in my school on a character unit of study in reading workshop. Recently, we have been working on using sophisticated vocabulary words to describe the changing feelings that characters have across texts. 

Today, one of the 3rd grade teachers told me that suddenly, all of his students are "overjoyed" in their personal narrative pieces in writing workshop. We laughed because this is one of the feeling words that we are encouraging students to use in lieu of "happy" during reading workshop. Even though, "overjoyed" might be a bit dramatic for some of their small moments, how wonderful that his students demonstrated a form of reading-writing reciprocity..."transfer and apply" at it's finest!

What are your thoughts?

Please comment below to share instances in which you have seen your students "transfer and apply" either within or across subject areas. Or feel free to share ways that you are now thinking you could teach them to do so!

What is revision?

How often do we actually explain and define revision for kids? Or do we just say: "Here are some ways that writers revise," assuming that they know what we mean when we say "revise"?? The word revision, quite literally, means to see or look again. I think it is extremely important, when cycling through the writing process in any unit of study, to help students understand not just how to do that stage of the writing process, but also what that stage is really all about and why writers bother working through it. 

I have been working with a 2nd grade teacher during writing workshop, and most of her students are in the revision stage. Rather than starting by teaching her students ways that writers revise, we spent one workshop teaching them what it means to revise and what types of revision tools writers use (flaps, post-its, carrots, colored pencils, etc.) Once the students understood what revision was and made some of their own choices for how to revise their writing, we then began teaching them various strategies that writers use to revise. It has been amazing to watch the students understanding of revision evolve and even more amazing how much stronger their writing has become in such a short span of time!

Here are a few charts that we used to support the revision work in her classroom:

Need a Halloween costume for school?

I know that this is not literacy related but every now and then, I may stray from the blog theme! If you are having trouble thinking of a creative costume to wear to school on Halloween, check this out:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lilis2/halloween-costumes-for-elementary-school-teachers

Hello LOL Readers! 

Did you know that October 21st is the NCTE's National Day on Writing? Celebrate with your students by giving them extra time to write in a genre of their choice and to share and celebrate their writing with others!

The link below features various authors talking about why they write. Share a few of these audio clips with your students and then have them compose and share (or record) their own "Why I Write" statements for the National Day on Writing!
 
http://www.ncte.org/dayonwriting/testimonials

Here are some of my favorite books for teaching and supporting the writing process, which are great to share and discuss on October 21st...or anytime throughout the year!

          
        



Please comment below to share how you plan to celebrate the National Day on Writing with your students!