Megan Zeni, the wonderful teacher from Richmond, has again shared some ideas for teaching outdoors with her latest called "Playful Learning Outdoors in June." It can be found here and is worth a peek. I particularly like the resource about bees and building a bee hotel or condo. She shares links to other great sites as well, such as Juliet Robertson's site Creative Star learning, and her post about "10+ Ideas for Windy Days." Overall, Megan shares some great opportunities for oral language, diagramming, labeling, captioning, and numeracy! Adrienne Gear has posted her latest OLLI and it ties in beautifully with outside learning. She uses one of my favourite books by Kate Messner, Up in the Garden, Down in the Dirt. The lesson ideas are fabulous, as usual, and provide lots of opportunity for student choice.
0 Comments
I have been given suggestions for lots of places to investigate for ideas. Thanks to my dear friends for sharing these!!
Ideas for Outside Learning - the opportunities for conversation and writing are endless
I am huge fan of Katie Novak, one of the UDL gurus (Universal Design for Learning). Her website and blog are full of supports for UDL. A recent find of mine is the page full of Distance Learning Plans that Katie and another educator, Allison Sancinito, have created. The plans may not be something that you would use in their entirety, but they may provide you with some ideas that you could use in the next new normal we are finding ourselves in. For example, you and your students could participate in "tag-team art" outside or learn about the science of laughter. The link to the plans can be found here.
Over the last few weeks, the amazing Adrienne Gear has been sharing some fabulous ideas to support all of us as we continue through Emergency Remote Learning, and into whatever it will become over the next few days and weeks - another new normal. Adrienne provides lesson ideas, complete with suggested anchor book and activity page(s). Wherever possible, she recommends online versions of her chosen anchor book, and in some cases, other books that could be used in a similar fashion to the one she uses in the lesson. Her most recent one connects to online videos and other types of information that students could use to further their learning if they were interested. Thank you, Adrienne!! Click here to go directly to Adrienne's OLLI's (online learning lesson idea). Adrienne's most recent anchor text...looks like another book to add to my shopping list!
11 Meaningful Writing Assignments Connected to the Pandemic Writing gives students an outlet to express their feelings and connect with others during this unsettling time in their lives. This was a timely article to cross my path today. I have been reflecting on a recent statement a colleague made about our students. They are crying out to be heard and to connect. They do not have the breadth or depth of life experiences that adults do that might help them to navigate through the pandemic (key words being might help...not sure if my breadth and depth is always steering me through the storm). Humans are often better able to process if they can talk about or write about what they are feeling. Anyways, this article might provide you with some ideas to support your students. You can link to it here. This was shared with me by a good friend during a discussion about how teachers could learn more about what their students are thinking and feeling during our continued journey through the COVID-19 storm. Kristin Visscher, an educator from SD#37 Delta, has shared her ideas in a document titled Using Learning Journals to Move Students Toward Self Regulated Learning, found here. By asking what her district calls the Big Three (What are you learning? How’s it going? Where to next?), her students are able to share their successes and define what their needs might be. There is great potential in using her ideas in out current context and beyond. Think about the ELA learning standards would be working towards developing, as well of the Core Competencies! Thanks for sharing, Kristin!
Kristin's journal prompts If you are wanting to provide some choice as to how learners practice their High Frequency words, click here for a document for a list of possibilities. My favourite one asks learners to find their words in actual text. Thanks to collaborativeclassroom.org for sharing these ideas.
If you are looking for short videos to help support younger writers at home, you might find the ones found here to be helpful. I think that some students, and their caregivers, would find them helpful and good starting points for some new writing. Thanks to Tanis Anderson for sharing this on her blog.
Linda Rief, author of The Quickwrite Handbook, has shared some ideas for sharing writing prompts with kids. Through the use of sample pages from her book, she provides us with ideas for first draft responses to mentor texts, which are provided. This is about writing quickly, 2 to 3 minutes, and getting the ideas down without worrying about the "conventions police". Click here to access the pdf version.
Welcome to the first post on Lots on Literacy! My hope is that this will become a place where we can share our thoughts, ideas, and favourite things around the huge topic of Literacy. As we continue to navigate our way through Emergency Remote Learning, I will be posting links to websites, documents, and ideas that may be helpful to you on your own personal journey.
So, to get started... POPEY (Provincial Outreach Program for the Early Years) is a website that is a rich source of resources and they have recently launched their Home Learning site, which can be found here. They have included downloadable resources such as learning menus and additional documents that you may find useful. Jennifer Serravallo is one of my favourite literacy gurus and is the author of two amazing books, The Reading Strategies Book and The Writing Strategies Book. She is common sense and writes to make things easier for teachers, K-8. In response to our current world context, she has posted a few videos on FaceBook and the most recent one that I have watched is focused on how to conference with a student, via phone or online. You can find it here. Kristi Mraz is an educator that I had the pleasure seeing when attending the Reading for the Love of It conference in 2018. She is an instructional coach, PK-2, and has been sharing ideas on her blog that you might find useful. Click here to link directly to her blog. Thanks for joining me here! |
AuthorNancy Reid ArchivesCategories |