Books in the Hands of Kids Weekly + Great Teaching in the Classroom = Reading Gain

Is there a correlation between circulation statistics for our school library, great teaching in the classroom and higher reading scores?  Circulation has almost doubled at West Milwaukee Intermediate School since 2007. Teachers are working hard to encourage their students to read in the classroom and in their spare time.

This year, eighth graders made a 15% Advanced/Proficient gain in reading on the WKCE, compared to their scores in the sixth grade. Seventh graders made a 14% Advanced/Proficient gain in reading on the WKCE, since they started last year in the sixth grade.

Google Wonder Wheel

Three Good Reasons to Use Wonder Wheel




Wonder Wheel: A Search Thesaurus
Wonder Wheel is located in the left side panel on the Google search page. This wheel (of wonder) shows related search terms to the current searched query. It enables you or your students to explore relevant search terms which might be the ones you originally wanted to search for, or simply give you more options to gain more information.
Example: biomes

Boolify

Searching Smart With Boolify from AdamBellow on Vimeo.


"Boolify makes it easier for students to understand their web search by illustrating the logic of their search, and by showing them how each change to their search instantly changes their results. The goal of Boolify is to help users better to understand and perform Internet searches. Boolify utilizes the Google search engine, and therefore it is designed to illustrate Google's search methodology, which varies in some ways from strict Boolean logic."

Animoto in the Classroom

Animoto

Enhance your digital classroom with Animoto, the perfect tool for creating videos and presentations. It takes just minutes to create a video which can bring your lessons to life.
Educators can apply for a free Animoto Plus account to use in the classroom.

List serve ideas for using animoto:
The following are ideas for using Animoto within the classroom:

I use it to make book trailers.  The language arts teachers have used it to display six-word memoirs their students write.  They have the students each make a PowerPoint slide (and then convert those to .jpg files) with the six words they've chosen and a picture to represent their memoir.  The teachers create one Animoto video per class because of the limitation on song length.  Hope that makes sense.

Our teachers are using Animoto (grade 9 and 10) to do book trailers in English.  A Health teacher (9 grade) used it to do public service announcements for different drug use.  A Physic's team (grade 9) is talking about using it to explain the different possibilities for alternative energy choices.

The 9th grade English teacher and I just did a collaboration where the students did 30 second book trailers for their recreational reading books. The kids loved it, and got really into it, and the principal came down for a whole period to watch the finished products. Definitely something we will do again.

I started using it in persuasive writing.  A 5th grade teacher asked me for help and I suggested taking their writing and turning it into an Animoto movie.  They had written to their parents asking for a pet.  We condensed their arguments into 7 ppt slides (1 title slide, 3 slides for their points, 3 for parent responses)  They LOVED it! 
Preview a lesson, "hype it"

"Advertising" a field trip or event

Student projects: theme, tone, mood, symbolism, conflict, point of view

Persuasive visual essays

Visual narratives

Scrapbook or yearbook retrospective

Reports: work experience placement, presentation of cultural study of country, state reports

Music class: visuals to fit the musical style/composition being studied

6th Grade Students Present Research on the Great Depression using Edu.Glogster

Visual Story Telling - Door Scene Two

Visual Story Telling

Door Scene One

Is it possible to transform american education in an era increasingly shaped by visual media and advanced technology? Seventh and eighth grade TAG students begin to  master the skills needed for living and working in the 21st century by creating storyboards for film projects. 

Their first assignment was to film a sequence involving one actor opening a locked door while showing visible anxiety because of a sound. The actor is able to get to the other side of the door and show relief. Student groups needed to collaborate to decide roles in the film making process. Director, camera person, actor, editor.

The second assignment used the same scenario, but asked the groups to create a new ending.