Weekly+Updates

Posted, April 26 We have reached the home stretch. Next week you should be finished with your P.S.A., for Check Point three, and I will be looking at your final projects to view your completed Wikis. Hopefully you have been adding things all along, adding interesting links, making sure to make your wiki visually interesting and informative for students.

Wednesday, May 1st you will be presenting your Wiki to the class. You will have ten minutes to take us on a brief tour of your final project, and show us one of your digital projects.

Check Point Four (due May 9) will be your final paper, which should have the link to your wiki on it. Your paper should include your understanding of the new literacies and how you can use them in your practice as a teacher of adolescent literature.

Your practicum journal, final paper, (your artifact for Wisconsin Teaching Standard 4) and reflection uploaded to Chalk and Wire are all due by May 9th.



Posted, April 1st Happy April Fool's Day, and more importantly, better weather! By Wednesday, April 3rd, everyone should have posted your Digital response to literature and the Common Core Assignment. Your digital poems should be posted, and you should be working on an outline of your final paper. Included in the introductory paragraph, please state your understanding of the new literacies and how it connects to the teaching of adolescent literature. We are heading into the last part of the semester, your final digital project, the P.S.A or Public Service Announcement, and our final communal novel, Starters. As well, your final checkpoint for your adolescent literature project will be due at the end of the month. Please check the updated course calendar for weeks 6-12 in the syllabus section to the left. Bring Starters to class on Wednesday. Check out the new Dramatic Role play section on this WIKI where I posted some of your activities (photos and video).

Posted, Thursday, March 14, I am very happy to see that you have read three of the four novels required for this class so far, and that you have also created three digital projects. The digital poems are unique expressions of meaning you took from our latest novel, Dead End in Norvelt. I hope you get a chance to view your colleague's work on this WIKI. You also are nearing Check Point 2 - next week. For Check Point 2, remember to add one more page on your wiki for a new digital project related to your chosen novel. Please create a model, provide clear directions and also a rubric. The links should be working to the Common Core and MN English Language Arts standards assignment. Remember to use your grade level for the book you chose to read. Copy and paste the standards on the page related to the project you were given in class. As an alternative, you could do this on a different project of your choosing within your WIKI. IF you do this, please remember to change the project title on the document.

Be on the lookout for the new four week calendar which I will get up by next Thursday. Hopefully, giving you this worktime, you can put some nice finishing touches on your Wiki, as we head into April and the final weeks of our class. Try to at write a thesis statement for your final paper.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!



Posted, Thursday, Feb. 28th

I am hoping this week is proving productive for you. Your final project should be coming along. Bring a draft of your poem based on one of the books we read to class next Wednesday, as well as three deep questions for Dead End In Norvelt.



Posted, Tuesday, Feb, 19th

Class! I realize that many of you are overwhelmed with the amount of readings, keeping up with your theory/practice journal, reading the adolescent literature, working on the projects, and creating your own project!

As we move into the second four weeks, we will slow down considerably. Please see the syllabus page to the left for an updated course schedule for the second four weeks. The focus of this next four weeks will be to continue reading, working on your final project and digital poem, with a conscious connection to the Common Core State Standards.

Check out the New Literacies Dictionary on the Wiki homepage!



Posted on Wednesday, February 13th

Your thematic braidings are very impressive. I am enjoying going through each one and delighted to see all of the diverse themes we found in SMILE, the quotes and connections, as well as questions are very thoughtful so far...

Our next project will be to venture out into narrative writing using the digital tool, Voicethreads. For this lesson, you will be writing an original narrative from the perspective of one of the character's found within the novel WONDER. You will be creating 7 slides in Voicethreads. The first is the title slide where you introduce the perspective of the character of your narrative. The narrative should be written in 1st person, and directly speak about the experiences within 5 chapters of the book. The last slde will feature references (document your images). For this project you will be checking out a microphone headset in the Educational Technology Center. You will be posting your Voicethreads as a link on the wiki.

Also...Checkpoint 1 will be due soon, so begin creating you WIKI as a future teacher of adolescent literature. Using your chosen novel, create on digital literacy project and write a rubric for assessing it. You should create a model and post it on the Wiki.




 * Posted on Monday, Feb. 4 with addition on Feb 7**


 * Feb 7 addition: I have revised the directions for embedding the braiding. Please post by next week's class!


 * By now most of you have successfully joined the WIki, signed up for a google account, and posted flikr favorites on the wiki. I hope you are exploring genres of adolescent literature and by next week should be independently reading your chosen novel. This week we begin discussing genres of adolescent literature, and specifically focusing our attention on Graphic novels and how graphica is integrated into adolescent literature classrooms. You should be reading Smile): this week.**


 * We will begin a new digital response project using Google Doc Presentations this week. I made up this assignment and I call it THematic Braidings. One of the most important skills in being a careful and thoughtful reader is making connections. By making connections between self and literature, literature and other texts, and literature and world, students begin to see the relevancy of what they are reading and universal themes inherent in literature. As you read Smile, think about themes that emerge and how those themes connect with your life, other texts and the world at large.**

Posted on Monday, January 28**
 * .[[image:update.jpg]]**

Welcome to our class! If you arrived here, you have joined our course WIKI for TED 707, Teaching Adolescent Literature and the New Literacies for the Elementary Teacher. Each week I will post an update

This week you have several tasks to complete:

1. Join the course Wiki. Instructions on how to do this are found on the video above.

2. Sign up for a Google Account. Instructions on how to do this are found on this video.

3. Sign up for a free Flickr Account, and practice saving copyright free images from the Creative Commons section in Flickr. Instructions on how to do this are found on this video. Post your Flickr Account link on Flickr User page on the Wiki, by copying the link (url), and returning to the wiki. Go to the page you wish to edit and click Edit. Put your cursor in the spot you want to post the link to, and title your flickr favorites (example Wright's favs). Highlight the text (Wright's favs or whatever your title is) and go to the link icon at the top of the page. Click on external link. Paste the link inside your space, and you should have a link.

4. Search for an adolescent novel which you will use for your final project in this course.