The Answer - A blog about Education, Preparation, and Commitment.

Classroom Spotlight: Using Glogster to support digital literacy

September 30, 2010 by Jeremy Jones

Last week, YES Prep Southeast teacher and 2009 Teach For America Houston Corps Member, Marjorie’s Spanish I kids used Glogster to create glogs (interactive posters) about influential Hispanic figures, including Selena Quintanilla Perez, deceased Tejano singer, and Lionel Sosa, marketing visionary. Using the resource, students incorporated text, images, music, and video to demonstrate their knowledge, ideas, and creativity. They presented their interactive posters to their classmates and classroom visitors last Friday, and it was great to see students and staff so engaged by this digital classroom experience.

If you’d like to learn more about glogging and how to promote digital literacy in your classroom, visit: http://edu.glogster.com.  

To read about more great teachers ensuring

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Dear Learning Lab: How do I get students to follow homework directions

September 29, 2010 by Jeremy Jones

Dear Learning Lab,

I have a couple of students who never seem to follow directions on their homework! They’re bright kids, but they can’t get full credit if they’re not doing everything I ask…

Sincerely, Put a smiley face in the top right corner of your paper if you read the directions

Dear Smiley Face,

Although we want our students to ultimately be able to read a paragraph of directions and follow all of them to a T, some of our students (general ed and sped!) lack the reading comprehension skills and the self-discipline to complete assignments exactly as we specify. To combat this, we as teachers can help them build those skills by providing some accommodations to address the problem and then slowly ease them off.   Some suggestions to assist students include:

• make

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How YES Prep teachers are increasing student motivation in the long term

September 28, 2010 by Jeremy Jones

Eric Jensen gave several suggestions for how to increase student motivation. Our campus has taken those main points and given more specific suggestions as to what this might look like in a YES Prep classroom.

-Make sure students have either a process model to follow or a strong end goal.

oPosted Big Goals

oUse of tracking boards

oCreate posters of graphic organizers that contain important unit information

-Ensure they have the working tools they need.

oPlace bins of markers, highlighters, scissors, glue, and/or tape in the center of your table

oHave papers hole-punched in advance

-Provide plenty of encouragement, but not a direct reward.

oGiving props

oGiving beast points

oCelebrating student answers with positive praise

oUsing positive framing

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