You Tube

Rosanne Markham October 20th, 2009

Exciting news–You Tube is now unblocked in our district for the next 90 days. It is a trial period to see if, as a district, we can use it responsibly without having students view inappropriate material. There are so many wonderful resources for teaching on You Tube. I hope you will take advantage of this trial and download some great videos to augment instruction in your classroom. There are some links to some great videos listed in a previous blog to get you started. You can also access Teacher Tube, which is exactly like You Tube except, obviously, it is intended specifically for classroom use. Remember, not only can you download videos from these sources, but you can also contribute to them. Perhaps a class project could include making an instructional video and posting it to You Tube or Teacher Tube.

Here are some quotes to keep in mind from the district announcement:

” The District has two concerns with You Tube—it can be a time waster and it can provide access to inappropriate sites.  . . . As part of this rollout, the committee is recommending that administrators and teachers review three district policies relevant to Internet usage.  First, the Employee Computer Use Agreement which states: “A.   Employees who supervise students with access to computer equipment shall be familiar with the Granite School District Student Internet Use Agreement and enforce its provisions.” and “B.  All student computer use must be supervised.”

Finally, the Granite District Web Page Guidelines state:

“8. In order to protect the safety and privacy of students, the following restrictions apply:
A.     Personal contact information about students must be published on school or district web sites.  Personal contact information includes student addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and any other personal information that could be used by unauthorized persons to make personal contact with a student.
B.     Student names, student photographs, personally identifiable student work, information files about student participation in classes, activities, sports, projects, etc., may be published on school or district web sites, but only after obtaining a signed release from the student’s parents or legal guardian.  Without such written permission, no personal information about specific students can be used on school or district web sites, not even student names.
C.     It is recommended that student last names only be used when necessary.
D.    In order to prevent unauthorized persons from identifying students by name and face, the names of students must never appear on the same web page as their photograph.”

Finally, here are the links to the entire Granite District Employee Computer Use Agreement
and the Student Internet Use Agreement. Happy YouTubing!

Change, Adaptability, Flexibility

Rosanne Markham August 26th, 2009

Ever wish you could show a good, short video about change, adaptability, or flexibility? Check out the videos on this site!

http://mscofino.edublogs.org/2009/03/01/worth-watching/

Welcome Back Teachers and Students

Rosanne Markham August 26th, 2009

The first week of school has always been one of my favorites: seeing excitement and anticipation on the faces of my new students; building classroom community; having a fresh start to refocus my goals and curriculum; getting new school clothes and supplies (I know–not important, but fun!). 

While I had my core materials and curriculum to draw upon, each year I would try to find something new that I could do to inspire my students and provide them with a real-world connection. One way to do this is to participate in writing contests. If you are interested in a list of good writing contests for your students, check out this link on the UCTE website. 

A great opportunity for 9-12 graders is to participate in the annual English Quest Competition. Students compete in 18 different categories to demonstrate excellence in English Language Arts. For more information, including registration forms, visit the UCTE English Quest site. I’d love to see a contingent of students from Granite School District enter the competition this year. Contact me in advance, and I’ll see if I can pay for your sub so you can go along.

The new school year also provides opportunities to attend and/or present at conferences and workshops. Here are links to two that you should consider:

UCTE Fall Conference

  • October 23rd,  8:00-3:00, BYU Conference Center

UCIRA Fall Conference

  • November 20 & 21, Sheraton Hotel, Salt Lake City

Be watching your email inbox for flyers with more information on these great conferences.

Good luck with your new students. Enjoy these first few weeks!

Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning

Rosanne Markham March 18th, 2009

I received a notice from IRA today about a new book called Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning by Doug Buehl. This book contains “over 40 user-friendly strategies that scaffold comprehension.” It then provided one free strategy, Self-Questioning Taxonomy, for download, which I am including as a link in this blog post.

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview about 25 teachers about instructional strategies they use in their classrooms. One of the questions was, “How do you incorporate critical thinking and higher-order questions in your classroom?” Several teachers mentioned Bloom’s taxonomy in their answers. This Self-Questioning Taxonomy uses Bloom’s as a foundation, but also provides concrete examples of questions that can be used in both informational and narrative text to deepen thinking for students. I found these questions very useful and could see multiple applications in the language arts classroom.

How do you incorporate critical thinking in your English language arts classroom? Please share your ideas with us in the comments section of this blog. I look forward to hearing from you!

Vocabulary Lists

Rosanne Markham March 11th, 2009

Janice Johnson and Angela Brickey, West Lake Junior High teachers, have created a great vocabulary review activity for our junior high students and have graciously shared it with us. Each commonly confused word is put in a box, and students must create lists of sentences or words that demonstrate their understanding of the correct usage of the word. Thanks, Janice and Angela, for sharing your good ideas! If anyone else has some great material to share, send it my way and I’ll post it on our blog.

English 7 Commonly Confused Words

English 8 Commonly Confused Words

English 9 Commonly Confused Words

English 10 Commonly Confused Words

More Vocabulary Help

Rosanne Markham March 10th, 2009

Are you looking for ways to increase student engagement in vocabulary development? Here are two sites that just might help.

  • Brainyflix is sponsoring a contest for students until March 16th (I know–very short notice, but I just found out today). Students choose a word that is on the SAT and make a short video to help others students learn that word. The winning video gets $600 in prize money ($200 to the student and $400 to the class or school club of the winning student’s choice). Even if your students don’t enter the contest, they can access the videos and learn new words.
  • Wordia is much the same. Their instructions say: “Think of a word that has special meaning to you. Record a video defining your word. Upload the video.”

How creative can your students be? Will they remember vocab words better if they have created a video about them for others? Let’s try it and see!

Core Vocabulary On-line Quizzes for Students

Rosanne Markham March 5th, 2009

I have created basic quizzes on Quizlet.com for all the required prefixes, suffixes and roots in the ELA core 7-11 and put them in a Utah English Language Arts Core group. You can access all of them from http://quizlet.com/group/31409/

If you don’t have an account, you will need to sign up to view them all, but the site is free and only takes seconds to log in. In addition to being able to print flashcards, there are five different activities for students: introduce the vocabulary words, practice with the words, take a test on the words, and two games to build automaticity with the words.

I am also going to create sub-sets of these terms that correlate with the Granite Scope and Sequence for each term, but since it is 3rd quarter, they should be practicing all of them this term anyway.

Hope this helps!

Hello world!

Rosanne Markham February 23rd, 2009

Welcome to graniteblog.graniteschools.org/ela. In a quest to better communicate with teachers in Granite School District, I decided that it was time to create an English Language Arts blog. I hope that this blog will be beneficial to the ELA teachers in Granite School District. I plan to use it to post ideas on infusing technology into our curriculum, notify teachers of upcoming events, and share great ideas for increasing student achievement in the classroom. I also plan on posting videos, podcasts, PowerPoint presentations, and other resources for teachers to use with their students.

Let me know if this meets your needs. I look forward to working on this and communicating more effectively with the English teachers of our district. Happy blogging!