Great article at: http://www.edweek.org/rc/issues/english-language-learners

I found this great article about English language learners. It really highlighted some of the points about learning English as a second language and had some good statistics. At the bottom were some great resources.

Technology in the English Classroom: http://www.acs.ucalgary.ca/~iejll/volume4/Coogan/

I found this great article about infusing technology into the English classroom. It helps to enhance student's skills with technology and engage students with learning. I found it really interesting and useful to help connect students with others around the world by making technology universal. It also had a lot of great ideas for ways to use technology in the classroom. Check it out if you have a minute!

The Digital Divide: http://www.education-world.com/a_tech/tech041.shtml

After viewing this week's videos, I wanted to look for more information on the digital divide. I found a great site that provided resources and links that really looked into this issue. I was most surprised by the fact that even with technology advancing, the gap between people that have access to computers and those who don't is still growing! With all the advances that make technology easier for people to access, there are still people who aren't able to participate in our society. The site also provided a message board so that educators can share with others which I thought was a great tool. Hope this site is as helpful to you as it was to me.

Michelle

Ask and you shall receive

Have you heard about this site, www.donorschoose.com

It's a great resource available for teachers to use to acquire resources for your classroom. Basically you post information about yourself, your classroom and your requests. Let's say, for example, you don't have a SMARTboard but you would really like one. You could post your request on this website. A donor would come along with some money and if they liked your project they might put up money towards it. Sometimes a single person puts up the entire amount of money to fund a project but more often several donors contribute smaller amounts until your project idea is fully funded. Once the funds have been donated a check is mailed out to you. It is a really interesting concept! Check it out!

Too Much Technology for Young Children- Is There Such a Thing??

Today at school, while assessing two of my kindergarten students, something happened to me that has never happened in my five years of teaching.

When assessing Jimmy, I had asked him to spell the word "we"- one of our kindergarten high-frequency "bedrock" words. I waited for him to write the word, and when he moved his hand so I could see, there it was- in his sloppy (but legible) handwriting- "wii". After Jimmy, I later assessed Max, and when I asked him to write the word "we", he looked at me (somewhat confused) and asked... "Like the game?".

This experience really got me thinking about how far technology has come regarding exposure to it at home, and how much it touches the daily life of young children.

At lunch I was talking with some teachers about this experience, and one teacher asked "How much technology is too much for young children, anyway?" This question got me thinking, and when I got home and spent some time on the computer, I decided to "google" to see what I could find on the internet regarding too much technology for children.

I found this article, "Kids and Tech: How Much is Too Much?" on technewsworld.com.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/52677.html?wlc=1236809784

It has a lot of interesting points. A lot of it is about television and video games, but there were portions that involved the internet and computer use.

I could summarize the whole article, but I won't. Instead, I've pulled a few quotes that I found interesting and worthy of reflection.

In the "Pros and Cons" section, there is this quote:

"In the past, we only had to be concerned about too much TV exposure. Now we have video games, computers and cell phones. It is overwhelming for young children and creates patterns of behaviors similar to addiction patterns."

It continues... "[childrens'] brains get used to too much auditory and visual stimulation -- and in the absence of these stimulations, they do not know what to do with themselves," she told TechNewsWorld. "They get anxious, restless, bored and aggressive."

"The use of this technology begins early. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 31 percent of children age three and under are already using computers. Sixteen percent use them several times a week, 21 percent can point and click with a mouse by themselves, and 11 percent can turn on the computer without assistance."

(This reminds me of those "Windows" commercials, that have really young children doing amazing things on them, like importing photos from a camera, then editing and e-mailing the photo to a family member!)

"[A researcher] summarized a point on which most medical experts can agree: Parents should supervise their children's use of technology."

I think that the last point really is THE most important... That parents need to respect technology, use it with caution and use it appropriately- not as a "babysitter" or as a replacement for real-life experiences that need to be shared between a child and a parent.

The Daily Topic- Students receive up to 6 writing prompts per week!

http://writingfix.com/classroom_tools/dailypromptgenerator.htm

I found the daily topic on the above website. I thought it would be so great to have students choose one writing prompt per week to respond to and then either post on the classroom blog or email to their teacher. The best part is that it is a free service and the topics are always new and exciting!

The Daily Topic: A Yahoo Group
Did you know you could have six random prompts e-mailed to you weekly from this prompt generator? All you have to do is join the Yahoo Group called "The Daily Topic." Click here to sign up for this free service.

Also on the writing fix website are lesson plans, journal prompts, writing traits, writing process, writing genres, writing tools for the classroom, and writing across the curriculum. Each of those topics have numerous sub-topics to assist in teaching writing.

http://writingfix.com/process_workshop.htm Tools for a Writing Classroom: The Writing Process & Writers Workshop ideas for managing and maintaining a workshop environment in your classroom. I found this site to be chalk full of writing resources.

"Writing Workshop:one teacher's approach" is an incredibly comprehensive explanation of one teachers approach to setting up an effective writing workshop for her students.


Setting Up and Maintaining a Writer's Workshop in a Secondary Classroom .

4Teachers.org resources to help you organize

"4Teachers.org works to help you integrate technology into your classroom by offering online tools and resources. This site helps teachers locate and create ready-to-use Web lessons, quizzes, rubrics and classroom calendars. There are also tools for student use. Discover valuable professional development resources addressing issues such as equity, ELL, technology planning, and at-risk or special-needs students."
This site has links to numerous resources, some better than others, but I am sure most of us can find something useful here. The one thing I think we all need to be aware of us is not overwhelming ourselves with resources. If you don't already have a way to organize all your favorite links, beyond bookmarking, I think that is imperative. Whether you use Porto Portal or TrackStar, which is available through this link, it is important for a teachers sanity to know there is a structured place to go to that allows easy access to links, sites and lesson plans we would like to use in the classroom. This blog alone, with all of the wonderful input you have all contributed, has provided me with multiple resources that I plan to incorporate into my classroom in the future.

http://www.eduplace.com/tales/

This is such a silly yet fun site! It is essentially on-line madlibs. In case you have never heard of madlibs, it's an English teacher's rainy day/Friday afternoon dream. Madlibs came in books that you could use over and over if you photocopied the pages. Essentially, without knowing the content of the story, students are asked for example to give a plural noun__________, past tense verb___________, adverb_____________, adjective____________, place___________, famous person___________...to name a few examples. Then you plug those words into the story, and it is guaranteed laughs for both the teacher and students. Generally, learning grammar is confusing and tedious so finding any sort of fun alternative is a bonus for middle and even highschool English teachers as well as fourth and fifth grade teachers. My students never tired of madlibs. I also liked that students can work independently or with a friend on the computer. The program also offers part of speech support if they are stumped.

http://www.eduplace.com/kids/hme/

Above is the link to the entire Houghton Mifflin site. It has language arts activities for students in grades K-8. My favorite link besides the web tales is the site that offers tons of graphic organizers to aid in the writing process. They have cluster graphs, desribing wheel, KWL charts, and a sandwich chart to help students learn to write paragraphs. I use to do the hamburger paragraph, which is the same idea. The graphic organizers for the younger grades has a graphic organizer for paragraph writing, but it is an ice cream cone. It is worth looking at each of the charts because they would be very useful.

"The Other Side" of the Internet

I understand that the Internet is a powerful tool that can bring us to new places and learn new things, but did you know that almost one in four children between the ages of 11-19 have been the victim of cyberbullying. Imagine if that was your child. Imagine if your child was doing the bullying...

Last weekend I saw a movie called "Odd Girl Out". It was a movie all about cyberbullying. As I was watching the movie I was also thinking about the past discussions about how we are not prepared for the new technologies. It made me wonder, are we ready for all of the new crimes that are happening/will happen because of the use of the internet?

Did you know that identity theft is on the rise? Be careful what you are actually doing on the internet and giving your credit card to.

Internet romance is also on the rise - but so are crimes in which people meet on the internet and one ends up dead.

I don't mean to sound negative about the internet and the great things we can do with it...but I think as a reflection to the You Tube video we need to consider if we are also prepared for all of the cyber crimes that will be on the rise in the future. Yes, schools should absolutely expose students to great websites/technologies, but we also have to have discussions/seminars about internet crimes and how to protect our children.

Just something to think about...

Raz-Kids Reading Program

Raz-Kids (http://www.raz-kids.com/) is a great site for developing reading skills (fluency, decoding and comprehension) for elementary level students. They have an extensive set of short stories that are leveled (based on grade, DRA, Reading Recovery and Fountas/Pinnell). You can allow students to pick the books they want to read from the library or what I like best is set up individual libraries for each student based on their reading level. Students can read or listen to the stories and there is a short comprehension assessment after each one. You can generate a set of reports that track student progress. New books are added on a regular basis. I use it as part of my Reading Workshop, primarily for my struggling readers, but it can also be used for centers or whenever a student has access to a computer and time to read. This site is associated with another excellent resource, Reading A-Z (http://www.readinga-z.com/theme/index.html).
The only negative is that there is a cost associated with the site. It’s dependent on the number of computers that are licensed. They do have a set of books that can be tried free of charge. I’m curious if anyone knows of a similar site that may be free of charge?