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Practise blog

One of the books on my top 5 book list is The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.  

What book would you recommend to anyone else reading this blog?

Using Blogs in Education - an overview

Benefits

I believe the key idea behind using blogs in education is that they offer students and teachers an

AUTHENTIC WRITING EXPERIENCE

Last year I attended an ALEA Conference at which the wonderful Mem Fox spoke about how to get students interested in writing; she felt that students need to know that they have a genuine audience for their writing as well as a genuine purpose.  Writing a short story or essay for your teacher counts for neither!

Blogging, on the other hand, is one of the amazing new opportunities available to every Tom, Dick and Harry to be published.  Clearly that's not always a great thing, but it helps to remember that blogging has the potential to reach out to people who have exactly the same interest in foods beginning with the letter 'C' as you do.... Isn't the idea that we've all got a story in us?  We just need an audience to hear us out.  And we know for sure that our kids have plenty of opinions to offer!

So that, to my mind, is the most exciting reason to use blogs in the classroom.  Here are a few more great reasons:

• They give students the opportunity to communicate and collaborate with people outside their usual sphere (including beyond geographical borders)
• They improve student motivation for writing
• They give students opportunity for feedback outside of the classroom (you know how they don't always listen to what you have to say?)
• They facilitate all of those 21st century skills that we're trying to build: collaboration; media literacy; technology skills; constructive critiquing; digital citizenship;personal reflection.....

How To...

Just sign in to Blogger like I did!  I didn't read any instructions; I just keep mucking around with it and see what I can come up with.  But for a bit of information:

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Helping students make sense of their textbooks: Deconstruction

Purpose: To help students easily locate information and discern the importance of information.  Useful to help summarise/make notes.  It is not an automatic skill to be able to use textbook information effectively.  It is our job to teach the skill.

Resources:

·         A photocopy of a double-page spread from your subject textbook – one per student (make sure the page you use have many layout elements on them)

·         Each student needs different coloured pencils x 6 or 7

·         Student worksheet

Process:

Begin at the beginning of the textbook page and work your way through the layout elements, in order.  Project onto screen.  You might choose to cover IDENTIFY all elements first, then do DESCRIBE features of each element next, then EXPLAIN the purpose of each element, or do a bit of a mix, as I’ve done below.

1.       IDENTIFY the layout elements and DESCRIBE their features:

a)      Note the first layout element on the page (usually the TOPIC HEADING).  Discuss what features make it different to any of the other headings on the page (eg. larger font, diff colour, diff style). Have students search the remainder of the page, and then further into their textbook, to find headings at the similar heading-hierarchy level.  If on the page, they can colour all appearances of it in eg.BLUE.

b)      Note the next layout element on the page (often a bolded paragraph – a BLURB or SUMMARY of the topic).  Discuss its distinctive features (eg. bold, larger font, a couple of sentences).  Have students search the remainder of the page, and then further into their textbook, to find similar blurbs.  If on the page, they can colour all appearances of it in eg. RED.

c)       Note the next layout element on the page (often a SUB-HEADING).  Continue as above, using different pencil colours to colour different elements.

d)      Continue as above for all layout features of the page.

Typical features include:

·         Unit Headings

·         Blurbs/context/background paragraph

·         Topic Headings

·         Sub-Headings

·         Paragraphs of text

·         Photographs

·         Diagrams

·         Tables of information

·         Captions

·         Cartoons

·         Callouts (little ‘factoid’ pieces)

·         Keywords

·         Symbols (based on a legend provided at the beginning of the textbook – eg. in a music textbook a little picture of a musical note¯with p.54 next to it might mean there’s an associated musical score to play on p.54)

2.       At this point, you could give students a little test – eg. give them a different photocopied page, work in groups to complete a list of instructions in the fastest time, like:

“In blue pencil, colour in all of the sub-headings.  In green pencil colour all of the captions.  Draw an arrow pointing to a key word….”

Students should be able to identify and locate the key elements that divide up information on a textbook page.  Next, they need to know which type of element will give them which type of information:

3.       UNDERSTAND and EXPLAIN the purpose of the different elements on a textbook page.

a)      Go back to the first element (eg.TOPIC HEADING).  Discuss what type of information it gives you (eg. it tells you what this whole section/chapter will be about).

b)      Do the same for the next element, and so on.

4.       Have students complete notes on everything they have learned. SEE SAMPLE BELOW:

Layout element	Features	Example from page	What does it do?  What can I use it for?
Main subject heading	Largest font.  Different colour.	Plate Tectonics	It tells me what this section of the textbook is about.
Context paragraph	Different font to rest of text. In a box.	Paragraph beginning: “If you look at a map of the world…”	It gives me a brief overview of information relevant to the subject.  I could use it to help me focus on what ideas are most important on the page.
Sub-headings	Bold font. Larger font than normal text but smaller than page heading.	Continents that move!	Sub-headings break up the information on the page into smaller topics.  They can help me choose which part of the page I can look on to find specified information.  They can also point to the main idea covered.
Paragraphs of text	The majority of the page – in a small font.  A series of paragraphs.	Paragraph beginning: “In 1915 Alfred Wegener proposed…”	The majority of information about the topic will be included in these paragraphs.  Each paragraph should contain one main idea, and if I want to know what idea is covered, I should look at the first two sentences.
Bolded words	Bold text within the paragraphs.	supercontinent	These words are often KEY WORDS – they are important words to know if I want to understand the topic.  I can most likely look up their meaning in the Glossary.
Illustrations	Pictures in text boxes.	A map of the world showing matching mountain ranges.	Illustrations are used to illustrate (give an example) the information that is already provided in the written text.  I probably won’t get new information here, but it can be useful to look at the illustrations to give me a better understanding of the information.
Callout/ Factoid	A little textbox separate to the main text.  Contains short, sharp detail.	Science Focus	This information is usually only for interest purposes.  It probably won’t help me understand the topic, but it may be interesting.

Teachers: Reading Tools for students; post-its and annotations

When students complain that they can't understand the information on a large page (or pages) of writing, there are a number of possible reasons: that it really was too complex; that they were just being lazy; that they were overwhelmed by the amount of text; or that they just don’t have any strategies for tackling large amounts of reading.  Most of these issues can be rectified by taking a small amount of time to teach a few simple reading strategies.  Two of the simplest are outlined below.

Making annotations directly onto the page

If students own the text they are using, or if the reading is on a photocopied page, then writing all over the page can be a useful tool.  Many of us have developed an aversion to students writing all over their texts, but what better way to engage with what you’re reading?  Adults do it all the time with texts from which they are learning.  Furthermore, with the rise of electronic texts, ‘defacing’ a page can have less permanent effects!
There are many ways to annotate a reading.  Over time you will develop your own preferences, as will your students.  A place to start, however, might be:
• Identify the left hand page margin as a place to write summary notes.
• Identify the right-hand margin as a place to write questions.
• Identify the top of the page as a place to write unknown words.
• Identify the bottom of the page as the place to write the 3 main points covered on the page.
• Students should also draw arrows, underline, and circle words and phrases that can be copied or summarised in the spaces allocated.

Allow the use of different coloured pencils, pictures and so on.
A huge ! could mean “Look at this important point”, and
a huge ? could mean “I don’t get this bit”.
Below is an example of an annotated text using the above ideas:

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO HAVE STUDENTS ANNOTATE A COPY OF THEIR SUBJECT TEXTBOOK WITHOUT WRITING ON THE HARD COPY, TRY SCANNING THE RELEVANT PAGES AS PDF’s. STUDENTS CAN THEN USE THE ADOBE TOOLS TO ANNOTATE ELECTRONICALLY.

Using Post-it notes

When you have a large amount of written text you wish students to read and understand on their own, and you don’t want them writing on the page, provide small sticky notes that they can use while reading.  They can place sticky notes to mark:

• -          words or passages they don’t understand
• -          ideas that are appealing to them
• -          information that is new to them
• -          information they already know
• -          a mistake they find
• -          ideas that are important
• -          ideas that are unimportant
• -          and so on

You just need to establish what you want them to look for beforehand.  You might be resourceful enough to find different coloured post-its to denote different things on a page (eg. ‘The red post-it is to mark the most important idea’).  Students can, of course, write notes on their post-its.

You need to follow-up on the reading and have students DO something with their post-it pages.  Perhaps they could write out dot-points based on their post-its.