August 2, 2008
Teachers sharing = lots of Learning Gems!
Posted by bookjewel under Book Week Gems, Learning Gems, Reading Gems | Tags: literature bookweek writing bookreview |Teachers have always shared material and ideas (some better than others, it’s true) and now the Internet has made sharing much easier for all of us.
I must admit to being a slow sharer; I always thought my work and ideas unworthy until I was encouraged by several colleagues. However, once I started sharing I was unstoppable!
A light bulb moment
Anyway, it suddenly occurred to me that as a blogger, I now have a way to share materials with a wider audience and, hopefully, save someone a little bit of time or, even better, inspire them!
So here goes…
Sharing some recent ideas:
Literature Discovery Festival
I’m quite pleased with this idea…feel free to use it if it suits your school situation. I decided one week to celebrate literature and reading was simply not enough! Rather than one ‘Book Week’ I decided my school needed a three week festival to celebrate books, reading, writing, literacy…etc. It includes author visits. During the festival I am running a daily quiz and several competitions including:
Fifty-word story competition: I’ve run this completion before and was quite surprised how well it worked.
Bookmark book review competition: Designed this sheet yesterday to simplify the book review process .
I hope the above handouts and ideas are useful to you and save you little bit of time!
During the festival I am also running an adapted version of the reading game. (The link is a Powerpoint presentation explaining the game.) I have adapted the game to suit my school library.
Enjoy!
PS: Please let me know if you find these ideas useful.
August 2nd, 2008 at 10:40 pm
I have had the same feelings - my ideas, lessons, etc are unworthy. But like you, I’ve found that now that I’m sharing people in my building were seeking me out for ideas! I also found that by sharing I was able to incorporate a lot of writing into my Computer Science classes.
Your Festival ideas are great! I was already thinking how could I do something similar, or adapt this for my classes.
Oh, I like the photo of the Victoria Coast as well!
August 2nd, 2008 at 10:42 pm
I can’t think of a better reason to blog.
There are times when one needs to diarize. When that need arises I won’t tag or ping. Perhaps, a second blog for that purpose might be right.
Thanks very much for the resources. I like the typeface very much, as well.
-Skip
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Great resources! Thank you for the creative fifty-word story idea, which should inspire some entertaining submissions. The student samples especially help! I’ll share these with teachers in my district, and I know they’ll appreciate it!
August 2nd, 2008 at 11:56 pm
I had thought that teachers that would not share were most often just wanting to hold onto their original ideas. You opened my eyes to another reason-one that is not selfish at all.
I wanted to share an idea that I saw at a public school that I was visiting. I am not a librarian but I love to read, have my own kids hooked on reading and think that the library is one of the most important places that a person can learn about the joy of reading.
In this school worked an incredible elementary librarian (now probably a library media specialist). She made every week a special reading week. In the main entry hall of the school there was a special display case that she changed weekly. It was made to look like a prize or present. In it was a featured authors books, information about them, real items that gave clues about the book and a challenge question that when the students came to her for library class they could get answered. The teachers in the school made it a point every week to walk their classes to the case, gather round and talk about the books and the author. Most often the “challenge question” got answered earlier than library class because the teacher asked the students to research it. All teachers said that their students looked forward to the surprise reading case each week. You would not think that 6th or 7th grades could get excited about this but they did.
I have seen some really nice bulletin board displays of featured authors in many schools that I have visited. I think the reason that the surprise case worked its magic was 1.the students were led to the case with a sense of mystery 2. they could gather around and see interesting things 3. the classroom teachers enthusiasm, excitement and follow through.
Thank you for letting ME share something with your readers on your blog.
*Heidi
http://hpence.blogspot.com
August 3rd, 2008 at 3:21 am
I love expanding the festival. I started experimenting with additional medias last year and thinking about having a ‘literacy festival’ - movies, art, multimedia, spoken word, music.
I’m finding boys 8 - 12 much more excited about writing a moviescript than an essay. Have you seen the book review done as a movie trailer? Wonderful stuff.
There is a huge connection to the content when they are doing more than “schoolwork”!
Tom