Digitial Libraries — Read, Write, Think — pt. 2

Ok, so it’s not tomorrow 🙂 (please see below). This post on Read, Write, Think will focus on web resources, student materials and learning beyond the classroom.

Writing Fix

 

The Web Resources gallery is an annotated listing of “useful English language arts” resources available on the Internet.  This list contains goodies such as “Writefix” where teacher’s teach writing instead of just “assigning it.” There are writing prompts and lesson plans including the creative iPod inspired “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow” featuring the Beatles’ song and others.

 

Other interesting resources include the “Young Writers’ Workshop” where parents and teachers can use cool writing prompts to encourage young writers who may even be published 🙂 and the National Archives video section.

National Archives VOD

An impressive strength of the Read, Write, Think site are the wide variety of  Student Resources which are essentially interactive modules to support literacy learning which make practice and producing fun for K-12 students.  There are over 50 visually rich tools for guiding students through letter recognition (ABC Match, Alphabet Organizer ) to analysis of story elements (Drama Map, Literacy Elements Map, Plot Diagram) to inquiry based research (Animal Inquiry, Read, Write Think Notetaker.  Students can create or decorate their own works using a wide variety of tools

Shrek Satire

(Book Cover Creator, Comic Creator, Profile Publisher) as well as engage in pre-writing activities using graphic organizers (Circle Plot Diagram,  Graphic Map).  Doodle Splash is a fun applet which combines drawing with writing prompts. Each tool has a descriptive page with hyperlinks to lessons that use it, for example: Exploring Satire with Shrek (suitable for grades 9-12).

Visible through the drop down site guide box, are links to podcasts and videos (the site may be searched by keyword to find these materials; a direct link is available on the “Learning Beyond the Classroom” module).

 

I really like the diversity of the students featured on this section of the web site because the inclusion of all students as potential learners.  The resources, inlcuding literacy activities, booklists, podcasts and videos, are grouped into age ranges/

Beyond the Classroom

grade levels. The focus in on family literacy and how caregivers can engage or develop these skills in their charges.

 

Read, Write, Think site is a comprehensive digital library for educators, containing tools, lesson plans, videos and interactive learning games. Most highly recommended for K-12 🙂

 

Digital Libraries — Read, Write, Think, pt. 1

Read, Write, Think is a collaborative project authored by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and the International Reading Association (IRA). It is part of the Thinkfinity.org suite of educational sites (formerly Marco Polo). Over the years, this site has grown to incorporate some outstanding tools to support English language learning, literacy and reading in its digital library.  Because the site has so many, rich and outstanding resources, this post will focus on Lessons, Standards and Literacy Engagments sections. Tomorrow’s post will focus on web resources, student materials and learning beyond the classroom.

For example, lesson plans, arranged by grade bands (K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and high school) and by strand (“Learning language,”, “Learning About Language,” and “Learning Through Language”), are standards and researched based. They are very comprehensive, including links to resources and assessments such as instructional strategies, rubrics, as well as student learning materials such as worksheets, resources or interactive learning modules to for guided practice or to produce materials. As such, the lesson plans and supporting materials are an excellent way to meaningfully integrate technology as a pedagogical tool into the curriculum.

To find lesson plans on a topic, select a grade band, a literacy strand and a “literacy engagement” (genre study, grammar, phonics etc) from the drop down boxes:

Finding Lesson Plans

Let’s, for example,  search for a 3rd grade lesson on reading comprehension:

Lesson Search

 The results listing  of intradisciplinary lessons may

Lesson Plan -- Story Elements

be sorted by date, title, grade level or abstract. One of the lesson plans, on story elements, was developed by the IRA; it is actually a description of a unit study taking place over five, 45min. sessions. Lessons may be printed using the “Printer Friendly Option” (top right). This standards based lesson includes a description of student objectives, activities, teaching strategies and timeline of events. Supporting materials include: instructional strategies (research), student handouts (rubrics, story maps, conference guides for discussion), an overview of an instructional plan, extension activities and student assessment. Lessons, whenever possible, include engaging web based resources or interactives. This plan is no exception containing a link to Storyline Online, where actors read stories such as Stellaluna.

Stellaluna

All lessons address one or more of the 12 IRA/NCTE standards for English Language Arts. 

The idea of literacy engagements is to highlight functions of language for students during the learning process to increase awareness to ultimately impact student understanding and achievement. More specifically, “Literacy engagements simultaneously involve learning language (as students listen to it and use it with others in their everyday lives), learning about language (as students try to figure out how it works, engage with their teachers in focused instruction on how it works or in critiquing its impact), and learning through language (as students use it to learn about or do something)” (http://www.readwritethink.org/literacy/index.html).  Examples of strategies and types of learning engagements are given, which helps both educators and students to focus on the learning tasks and objectives.

Outstanding research based lesson plans and supporting materials! View next post for more details.