Literacy
Joyce J. Hopkins, LLT
Teachers’ Corner
Time for Conversations
One of the most important things we can do is slow down the clock, helping each other to pause and take time to think about our work. When the thinking can be done aloud, with colleagues who respect each others words, that’s when a thriving literacy community is born. Wayne Dyer describes what we are after in this quote: “We are in a partnership with all other human beings, not in a contest to be judged better than some and worse than others.” “How can we teach this to children in this frantic testing era, if we don’t make time to learn it from each other?
If you’re starting to think through plans, activities, and goals for professional development next year, you can’t go wrong by putting time for conversations among colleagues about literacy at the top of your list – slow, unhurried, respectful exchanges about what you all value the most in literacy learning, and how you can help each other realize those values together.
And if the close of the school year is starting to feel “just a bit over-the-top-how-can-we-possibly-accomplish-all-we-need-to” crazy, then maybe there’s an opportunity now to experience the power of slowing down the clock. Is there a department meeting in the next few weeks, in which teachers could pause together and think about what they most want to celebrate from their students’ literacy learning this year? Maybe a hot pot of coffee and a plate of fresh cookies or fruit, and an opening of thanks for all the good things that have happened in literacy this year to begin this important conversation is the best gift we can give each other late in the school year.
Free Rice: Tools for Web-Based Vocabulary Learning
Wouldn’t it be great if someone created an online game that builds student vocabulary in a way that has students clamoring to play? And wouldn’t it be great if we could solve the problem of world hunger?
“Free Rice” combines these two worthy (though disparate) goals. Each word defined correctly builds your tally of grains of rice donated to poor communities, and the game is designed to scale the difficulty of the words up or down depending on your responses. This feature allows students of almost any age or ability to enjoy it.
You can give the game a test run at this link: http://www.freerice.com/index.php
|
|
