Harness Twitter and Your Audience Backchannel with Wiffiti

Recently I posted about trying out Wiffiti in my professional development sessions. "Use Wiffiti to Engage Your Audience." Since then I've used it a few more times with great success. I thought I'd share a live Wiffiti screen with my readers. This is from my most recent training session at Pomperaug High School in Southbury CT.

Wiffiti accounts are free and it's very easy to use. I created a new Wiffti screen using the school logo and set it to gather the tag #R88. The evening before the presentation (and again that morning), I posted a Tweet asking for greetings – “Say hi to Monday's teacher workshop at Pomperaug HS. (Southbury CT) Go Panthers! Tell us where you're from & why you Tweet. Add tag #R88”  As participants arrived in the workshop, they were greeted on the big screen with encouraging words from all over the world. 

During breakouts I switched back to projecting the Wiffiti screen and invited workshop participant to text message into the screen. They had fun with shoutouts to their friends and comments about the workshop.  Pretty impressive when you're talking about the impact of technology on teaching and learning!

Many thanks to my Twitter PLN who took the time to send us a greeting. You made this possible!

18 CCSS Literacy Strategies for Struggling Readers – Defining, Summarizing and Comparing

I’ve been working with teachers to develop learning strategies to support the Common Core literacy and comprehension skills that students commonly use across the content areas. This pdf includes 18 lessons organized in two ways: by comprehension strategy – defining, summarizing and comparing and by target reader – non-reader, word caller and turned-off reader.  The lessons are designed as templates which teachers can modify to use in their specific subject areas.

Strategies for Struggling Readers 3MB pdf   

There are two key elements that teachers should keep in mind when working in each skill area.

Defining

  • Before the formal definition has been introduced, students should be asked to make connections between their prior knowledge and the term.
  • After the term has been defined,  students need activities to more deeply process the term.

Summarizing

  • Students should be asked to make their own judgments about what’s important to them (instead of just repeating the details the teacher highlights).
  • Students will be able to more readily summarize, if they are asked to share what they’ve learned with an audience other than the teacher.

Comparing

  • Students should develop the comparison, not simply repeat the model that we present to them.
  • Student should be asked to share what they learned from the comparison.

Inspire Your Students To Tell A Story With Prezi

I've been using Prezi in my workshops and have written a few posts illustrating it's features – brainstorming with Prezi and embedding Prezi in your blog.

Enjoy "Create a Prezi" – a fine video that demonstrates the process in under 5 minutes. (No, I didn't create it!) It will inspire your students and give them a chance to break out of the lineal / PowerPoint style. (Thanks for the tip – Twitter/ashleyproud)

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Motivating Students – A Make and Take Workshop for Teachers

This week I head back to Edison School of Engineering & Manufacturing, to conduct a two day follow up workshop.  Our previous work together identified four target areas: 

  1. Motivating students
  2. Making learning relevant
  3. Student-centered learning strategies
  4. Effective use of technology

We are going to start by modeling a “Brainstorm, Group, Label” activity (See Tool 13).  It will also  set our agenda for the “make and take activities” of the workshop. Day two begins by modeling a “Fishbowl Discussion Group” on the topic of effective next steps. We’ll use the ideas generated in the fishbowl to design a Strategic Planning Grid (below) to prioritize their staff development for the fall.

Plan-grid

Most of our time over the two days will be spent assisting teachers in designing specific lessons. I’ve assembled some Literacy Strategies that teachers can use as starting points for modify their existing lessons. 

Non-readers”  for students who lack decoding skills.

Word-callers” for students who can decode, but lack comprehension skills.

Turned-off readers” for students who have the decoding and comprehension skills, but lack motivation or engagement.

I’ll also be showcasing some web tools that are very engaging for students.

Wordle (text analysis) 

Many Eyes (data and text visualizations)

Prezi  (presentation tool) 

Dipity  (timeline builder)

Bubbl.us (brainstorming)

Flickr Tag Related Tag Browser (image tag analysis)