Monday, May 07, 2007

Blissful Nerdiness

Yes, we're 168 days into the school year. Yes, we have 11 class days remaining. Yes, the children remain shocked every day when they see I expect them to continue learning.

All those truisms aside, I'm nerdy excited about tomorrow's lesson. I completed my ActivBoard flipchart for tomorrow's class, and it's a good one. My students are working on understanding how verbs work to better grasp what they're looking for when they edit others' work and their own.

There's something to be said for building a common language.

We've attacked the ignorance from several fronts. Still, some vestiges remain. Never fear, United Streaming to the rescue. I found a not-altogether-campy video from US to use as an intro./review to the basics of verbs and stuck it in the presentation. Finding something useful about grammar on United Streaming felt like a bit of a coup. From there, some great interactive practice is built into the flipchart.

But the fun doesn't stop there. Upon completion of the flipchart, I exported it as a PDF. You may ask, "Why, good sir, would you do such a thing?"

First of all, what's with the "good sir"?

Second of all, I posted the PDF on my ANGEL page for those students who will be absent tomorrow or will need to review what we cover.

But wait, there's more. I also created an online formative assessment that is self-grading and includes a link to the day's PDF in the quiz's instructions.

Each of these pieces creates a foundation on which I can then build to create authentic assignments through which my students will be able to exhibit their new vocabulary as well as spread the learning. Watch out blog.

I've just got to remember all of this at the top of next year so it doesn't take me 168 days to get so close to synergy.


technorati tags:, , , , , ,

No comments: