Links

The following are links to some cool and useful tools for teaching creative writing along with some interesting articles about literacy in education:

Education in the News

There have been several news stories about how the psychology of grading in red ink negatively affects student performance. Click on the link below to hear an interview on NPR with Professor Abraham Rutchick (Psychology Department, California State University, Northridge). What do you think?

Why do we make children sit still in class? This is the title of an interesting CNN news article that explores this problem in the classroom and describes some solutions to help the wiggly students across the nation.

 Every teacher has students who cannot sit still and who find reading a chore. Reading at a desk makes them restless and unfocused. The following article has an interesting approach to this dilemma

Websites and Printables

Language Arts for K-12 has plenty of resources for teachers. There are printable grammar, language arts,vocabulary and literary terms worksheets available for free. There are also some

online games for students that might be fun for a once in a while rainy recess activity.

Poets.org is an interesting resource for teachers. Upon signing up (free) you can have several newsletters delivered to your e-mail account which contain poems of the day and also a newsletter specifically for educators which contains lesson plans and resources for teaching poetry which are aligned with the common core standards. The web-site also has tabs that can be accessed immediately to find resources.

For a fun and creative way to have students create a writing and presentation assignment, you could use Voki, where students can create speaking avatars to read the words they write, or record their own voices reading their work. Just a novel idea to keep students excited and engaged. My simple Voki avatar is seen on each page, just click to hear the audio welcome.

As a teacher in  training I feel like I need all the help I can get, and so this free lesson plan site is a good resource to find some great ideas and lesson plans that can be used or tweaked to fit your needs.

I've recently had a lot of fun playing around with this fun and interactive site that creates story starters. This is an engaging tool for the younger elementary age students to use. I hope you find this useful in your classroom.

This link to a print-out explains very simply what a Haiku is and gives space on the page for the student to write their own.

The Storybird web-site is a great interactive tool that allows students to write stories based on visual prompts. Once students have written their story, they can save and share their digital masterpiece!

Read Write Think is a wonderful resource for teachers to help find lesson plans and interactive activities such as the interactive Venn diagram to help students gather their thoughts about books they are reading.

A friend of mine is a writer and has published a book for middle school teachers called 'Teaching the Story'. Carol is also fine tuning a historical novel set in Charlotte in the 1950's. She has an excellent blog in which she has writing tips, book reviews and great book giveaways. It's worth a look for ideas and inspiration.

Below is my link to my observation experience at Hawk Ridge, including my Arizona Technology Integration Matrix.

Books for Inspiration and Ideas.

This teacher text will help you plan lessons on creative writing around your differentiated students, from ELL, to gifted and talented and challenged.

Teaching Writing: Balancing Process and Product by Gail E. Tompkins  would be a helpful resource to use when teaching creative writing to your students.

Links to both of these books on Amazon can also be found on the Shelfari bookshelf.