Guest Post from William Kist (@williamkist)

What are the implications for a “brick and mortar” English classroom in an increasingly globalized world?  What are the implications of legislation that is increasingly common across North America requiring all high school students to complete at least one online course?  How will English teachers leverage this new boundary-free classroom space?  Will many English teachers be able to cross these borders when they work in districts that block many sites that enable international student collaborations?  What are texts that aid in making for a globalized English classroom?  These are some of the many questions related to the global English classroom that we will be discussing on the next #engchat! 

I’m a former high school English teacher who now teaches pre-service teachers at Kent State University.  I’ve been profiling innovative teachers since the late 1990s and have collected my work in two books, New Literacies in Action, and The Socially Networked Classroom.  I’m currently writing my third book which will describe the work of teachers who are attempting to take advantage of being able to communicate with colleagues and students in distant time zones.  What are teachers doing with this new power to be globalized?

William Kist will host #engchat on November 7th at 7 PM EST.  He will be leading a discussion on leveraging Web 2.0 tools to bring global educational opportunities to our students.  Please join us for another engaging conversation via #engchat.  Thanks!

Archive for October 24, 2011

This week we were joined by author Ben Loory as our guest host. He is the author of a recently published anthology of short stories entitled STORIES FOR NIGHTTIME AND SOME FOR THE DAY. We had an opportunity to see where he gets his inspiration from, how short stories differ from novels, and a chance to see how we pair up works and use short stories in our classes.

A transcript of the our chat is available here.

#whyiwrite

I write to remember and to forget, to understand and explore and to play with ideas roaming my mind. I write because sometimes it is easier to speak to a page than a person.  I write even though it is not easy at times.

I write because as a teacher of writing, I want to experience the struggle, anxiety and pain of having to produce writing on demand. I want to remember the experience of feeling less-than-confident about what you've produced often at the request and demand of others.

Over the past few years, my writing has become more public. This was not a natural evolution in my identity as a writer.  Even now, I have fears and hesitations about sharing my experiences as teacher and learner with the larger world.  Nonetheless, I find value in the feedback, the continuing conversations around a topic.  My ideas gets better when they are shared with others.  This is why I write.

Archive for October 17, 2011

Last night's discussion was hosted by Aliza from @Flocabulary about how we teach vocabulary. We had seven questions that we pondered and I'm going to list them below (copied straight from Aliza's tweets!). Check out the link to the full chat archive to see how we answered them. (SPOILER: There were some pretty amazingly creative ideas bounced around as answers to question 5 that are worth checking out!)

You can also see the pre-chat blog post shared on Flocabulary's blog.

Check out Flocabulary's website for the great resources they offer to engage your students in vocabulary, reading and writing, literature, current events, history, science, and math.

1. How do you *directly* teach vocabulary? (Or do you *directly* teach it?)
2. How do you *indirectly* teach vocabulary?
3. For those who do direct vocab instruction, what words do you teach? How do you choose? Where do you find them?
4. How can non-English teachers help students with vocabulary?
5. What are your most unconventional ideas for teaching vocabulary?
6. What are your favorite vocab games?
7. What's your favorite word??

Guest post from @flocabulary

Each Monday night from 7-8pm, engaged and creative English educators connect on Twitter to discuss a pertinent topic and share lesson ideas. It’s called English Chat, or in character-constrained Twitter-speak, #engchat. On Monday, October 17, we’re honored to moderate the discussion. 

If you’re new to Twitter, or have never experienced a Twitter chat, learn more about why every teacher should join twitter. To follow the conversation, set a filter for #engchat and add your comments by adding “#engchat” to your tweets. If you’ve never Twitter chatted before, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how quickly you can develop a strong PLN, or personal learning network.

Topic: How do you teach vocabulary?

We chose this topic because we believe that when you teach vocabulary, you teach reading. We are interested in learning about how teachers integrate vocabulary instruction into their lessons and use it to teach reading.

Here are questions we’ll cover during #engchat on Monday, Oct. 17. Feel free to suggest related questions and ideas you’d like to discuss in the comments.

1) How do you directly teach vocabulary? How do you indirectly teach vocabulary?

2) What words do you teach? Where do you find them?

3) How do you integrate vocabulary and reading instruction?

4) What are some of your best lesson ideas to teach vocabulary?

5) What are your most unconventional ideas for teaching vocabulary?

6) How can non-English teachers help students with vocabulary?

If you’d like to learn more about #engchat, visit http://www.engchat.org/. Or just reach out on Twitter by using the #engchat tag. Even though the chat is on Mondays, educators share ideas more casually at all hours, every day. Learn more about Flocabulary at flocabulary.com. And you can connect with Flocabulary on twitter by following us here.

We look forward to chatting with all of you, next Monday at 7pm!

Archive for October 10, 2011

Tonight we were talking about fandom in the English classroom. You can read the guest post from our host Peter Gutierrez (@Peter_Gutierrez) with his thoughts on the subject from before the chat here.

The conversation touched on the idea of pop culture - which we generally consider to have the biggest fan bases among teens - and how our fan activities actually connect to what we want our students to be able to do. Read. Analyze. Write. Connect with others. Participate in a larger dialogue. It can't be a "spoonful of sugar" approach - we shouldn't just be using flash to get kids to find the classics (or in CCS terminology "challenging works") to go down easier. We need to see this as a valuable connection to the activities we engage in and the "work" we do when we are impassioned about a subject. And talk about how they connect to the work we do in any subject - not just those that they are most impassioned about.

Which leads to the thought that we as educators need to wave our fan flags a little more often. Share what we geek out over, what we know a lot about - whether it's our subject matter or not. We stand to make vital connections with our students in doing this.

The entire chat can be viewed here.

National Safe Schools Day is October 5th

Guest post from @safeschoolsNOW

Take a stand for inclusive safe schools on October 5, 2011.

The annual National Safe Schools Day highlights students, teachers, schools and communities speaking out and taking action in building inclusive safe schools and spaces during Bullying Awareness Month in October.

Last year over 31 cities nationwide participated.

Organizations, k-12 schools, colleges and local communities took action on National Safe Schools Day with rallies, candle light vigils, student assemblies, classroom discussions, community service projects, letter writing campaigns, training’s, GSA events and also by wearing the color purple in support of safe schools and anti-bullying.

What will your school or local community do on October 5th to spread awareness and to speakOUT for inclusive safe schools free from bullying and harassment?

Join the movement for inclusive safe schools today.

Share your commitment to building inclusive safe schools by taking action, spreading awareness, support and resources. Join us on October 5th in making it better now.

Make safe schools a priority in your local community. Together we can create inclusive safe schools and spaces for all students and teachers.

Join us on Facebook.

Follow us on Twitter @safeschoolsNOW  #safeschools

Look for lesson plan resources  for National Safe Schools Day and Bullying Awareness Month and support information coming soon.

Guest Post from Peter Gutierrez

I am excited to host #engchat on October 10th at 7 PM EST. To join the discussion, log on to twitter and follow the hashtag #engchat.  Here are some thoughts on the topic for the evening:


There are so many great things going on English classrooms these days that part of me wishes I'd kept teaching middle school: the emphasis on authentic writing and on inquiry, the desire to connect with students' passions and outside-of-school literacies, a richer and more streamlined integration of instruction and media (including student production), and generally a wider, more encompassing notion of what constitutes literacy. What's missing, though, is a concept that unites all of these goals, and more: being a fan. It's a topic that I've spent the last few years speaking and writing about, as in this policy piece for Language Arts and, indirectly, in this article about the real meaning of Harry Potter. While hardly an expert in curriculum or pop culture, I look forward to discussing their intersection on #engchat and learning a lot in the process. 


_______


Peter Gutierrez has long been involved in discussion around literacy and education.  His experiences include:


-former Board member, National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE)
-NCTE Spokesperson on media literacy and graphic novels (former NCTE Media Commission member)
-author of forthcoming Corwin Press title Beyond Engagement: Pop Culture Fandom in Today's Classroom  (speaking on topic in relation to film at NCTE convention in Nov)
-hist writings have been published by School Library Journal, Screen Education (where I'm a columnist), Huffington Post, New York Times, Financial Times, The ALAN Review, TribecaFilm, BookShelf, etc.

Archive for October 3, 2011

This week's #engchat discussion was hosted by Angela Maiers (@AngelaMaiers) on the topic of passion-driven learning. What does it mean to be passionate learners? How can we encourage students to become passionate learners, ones who learn/do/create what they are internally motivated to do so? Does choice encourage this kind of learning? Does saying "no," discourage it?

For the answers to these and other questions pondered over the course of a busy hour (and some of the answers were absolutely poetic!), check out the archive here.

You will also appreciate a look at Angela's post "Guidelines of Passion-Based Learning."