Jan 08 2007
Shower Thoughts
No! Not thoughts on when or if to shower, but thoughts that I have while in the shower 
I’ve blogged a lot this week about lesson plans for next week and I really thought I had it down, but I also had a nagging thought that I even voiced in a post (see bold below).
I was looking at some wikis that I had created, but never actually used with my classes and I decided to resurrect them. When we were reading our first novel, Tangerine by Edward Bloor, I set up a wiki for the kids to write a summary and discuss characters, plot development, themes and symbols. I never got around to doing it with them, though. We have one more week of reading Absolutely Normal Chaos by Sharon Creech so I set up a wiki for them to discuss this book. I need the kids to complete everything by the end of next week, though – only 4 days of classes. I’ll have to assign some for homework, but I’ll give them class time to complete the work too. Here’s the assignment as the kids will see it – Room 140 – Reading.
Well, I have decided that it is NOT enough time to teach them how to use the wiki and have them do a good job summarizing the book on the wiki with only 4 school days. Instead, I’m going to have them complete a neat thing The Reflective Teacher posted on his blog a while back – The PocketMod. We will discuss themes and symbols and characters and setting and main idea and all those other things we do to analyze novels and they will write it out on the PocketMod. Each flap will have a different requirement (that I’ve yet to work out, but I will right after I finish this post ). I have tons of colored printer paper, so the kids can choose their own colors. The can also illustrate as appropriate, but what they have to say will be what they are graded on. Hmm I think I’ll have the kids help me develop the rubric (if there’s time).
I was planning on using the PocketMod for the skills we cover in Reading as some state test prep so this will be good practice for using it well.
Ok – now I need to go edit the assignment on the classroom blog and change my lesson plans.
2 responses so far
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Good to know I’m not the only one struggling with how to use new tehnology with kids. I read through the last few posts and I like the ideas you have for the assignments. I then checked out your lesson planning wiki and liked it so much I made my own! What a great idea! Do you always use pbwiki? Have you tried wikispaces?
Have a great weekend.
Kelly
I’m glad you could use my ideas – that’s what this blogging is all about – sharing and collaborating! I use both pbwiki and wikispaces. I think I will use wikispaces with my students rather than pbwiki, because wikispaces has a better editor – the kids don’t have to learn the wiki codes.
I never did have the reading kids do the wiki for the novel, but I’m thinking about having them create one for the terms/skills then need to know for our state test. I also might have my 7th grade computer class create a wiki about Online Safety.
I’ll post on my blog when those are set up.