Language+Arts

==Welcome to the Language Arts track! My name is Aly Tapp, and I teach 11th grade English at York Suburban High School. I am also the technology integration coach for YS, so I am passionate about engaging students with digital tools.I look forward to meeting you and learning with you this week!==


 * Email: atapp@yssd.org or tappaly@gmail.com**
 * Skype: aly.tapp**
 * Twitter: @alytapp**

This is our tentative schedule of events:
Monday: “Reading Revolution”

Goal: Learn strategies for increasing interest in reading and increasing active reading of relevant and challenging texts.

Purpose: English teachers need to evaluate how they explicitly teach and model reading skills using a variety of texts. Technology can be a natural fit in this process. Teachers can also increase student interest in reading by presenting opportunities to develop personal reading habits in their students.

Activities:
 * Percentage assessment: How much time do we spend with fiction? non-fiction? digital text? Print text? Modern? Classic? Are our percentages reasonable? What might we change?
 * Using blogs and RSS to gather personally relevant reading material
 * Talking to the Text -- Digital annotation and its role in active reading (prose, poetry, non-fiction)
 * Active Reading Strategies -- modeling and teaching explicitly

Tuesday: “Real Writing”

Goal: Incorporate increased peer and teacher formative assessment/feedback and reach an audience beyond school walls.

Purpose: Gone are the days when students wrote a paper, submitted it to an audience of one, and waited for nothing more than a letter grade to be assigned. Today’s students need to be active writers who give and receive frequent and meaningful feedback from a variety of local and far-reaching readers.

Activities:
 * Shared writing: Using Google Docs (and similar digital tools) to allow for anytime/anywhere writing and revising.
 * Using screencasting to increase depth and frequency of feedback and assessment.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Increasing audience -- joining with others beyond school walls (writing partners, blogging, publishing, digital portfolios).

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Wednesday: <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Research in a Digital World”

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Goal: Learn new strategies for finding and organizing research materials, revise the research process so that it reflects new post-secondary expectations, and model responsible use of others’ work.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Purpose: Today’s students must be able to use cutting-edge techniques for gathering and organizing research and composing the research paper.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Activities:
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Using RSS, Diigo, and advanced searching to hone research and discover new sources for information.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Using digital tools to manage the research process.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Copyright and Fair Use: Teaching students to be responsible digital citizens.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Thursday: <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Speaking Out”

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Goal: Empower teachers to deepen classroom community, collaboration, and student engagement through digital discussions, forums, and virtual classroom space.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Purpose: Social networking has a prominent role in students’ lives, and teachers can harness its power to draw students together and challenge them to think and share.

<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Activities:
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Increasing transparency -- allowing students, parents, administrators, and community to see through classroom walls by using blogs, course management systems (like Moodle), or even a class website.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Using digital discussion to foster and deepen face-to-face discussion and transfer ownership for learning to the students.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Presentational skills -- Teaching students how to design an effective slide deck using presentational software (PowerPoint, Glogster, Prezi, Keynote, etc.) and deliver an effective presentation that elaborates on the material in the slide deck.
 * <span style="background-color: transparent; color: #000000; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Creating a museum tour -- using technology to increase efficiency in sharing presentations, and increasing student interaction with the presented material.

Making a QR Code



Aly's Blog, Recipe for Time

Aly's "Next Year I Will" document (anything we could work on together?)

Nathan's Site