Pearls of Literacy

If Obama has anything to say about it, kids will be in school all summer. After all, most kids aren’t needed to plow the fields, which is why the school year was organized with summers off.

Go ahead and share your opinion!!

According to the associated press, “Kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests — Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days).”

Check out this link!

The best thing I learned from looking at Marva Collin’s work in Chicago is the way she teaches reading. She believes reading should be taught using the Socratic method, with the teacher controlling the flow of the material. At each juncture in the reading the teacher asks questions and checks for understanding.

This way, the students aren’t lost by the end of the reading.

She says, “The Socratic method of asking questions until students, through reasoning and thinking, discover that they had the answer all the time. It simply had to be archeologically uncovered by a caring and determined teacher.”

“Entre Les Murs” is in French with English subtitles. What a great teacher movie!

Watch the teacher ask questions. Notice how he tries to pull information out of the kids, instead of making them memorize the capitals of the world.  Asking higher order questions allows students to find the answers within themselves.  It also suggests that the knowledge inside of them is the values and characteristics which will allow them to be successful in the world. Literal level questioning implies that the knowledge that is worth knowing is not inside of them.

The Socratic method of teaching…asking questions…instead of lecturing and using Bloom’s Taxonomy to guide these questions is a great teaching strategy for teachers who are working in multicultural, mainstreamed, or alternative  settings.

Check out this website on how to pose good questions to students.

Once, in the corner of a ham and beef shop,
Two little sausages sat.
One was a lady and the other was a gentleman.
Sausages are made like that. (Anonymous)

I had always suspected that there were a finite amount of great story plots. Sometimes I read stories or watch films, and I can tell what will happen…the story is timeless or universal.  Certain plots do occur again and again, and provide an opportunity for English students of any age to stretch their thinking about literature and life. Literature and life do reflect each other after all! The biographies of Charles and Mary Lamb, Shakepeare synthesizers, are almost as dramatic as the stories they retell–Hamlet or Macbeth.

Here are the plot lines:

1. Overcoming the monster: Theseus and the Minotaur

2. Rags to riches: Cinderella and Jane Eyre

3. The quest: King Solomon’s Mines by Henry Rider Haggard. I downloaded most of his books for free!

4. Voyage and return, Peter Rabbit: He ventures out and is healed with chamomile tea, sounds tame but it is life and death!

5. Comedy: In general these are love stories, ending in birth of relationship or baby

6. Tragedy: Julius Caesar or Macbeth

7. Rebirth: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgkins Burnett

Wallace Stevens said, “Literature is the better part of life, as long as life is the better part of living!” So much to read…summer list is coming soon, but don’t forget to have fun!

Click here for a book on the seven basic plots.

“The Deep Web covers somewhere in the vicinity of 1 trillion pages of information located through the World Wide Web in various files and formats that the current search engines on the Internet either cannot find or have difficulty accessing. Search engines find about 20 billion pages at the time of this publication.”  Click Here to Read More~!

Imagine how exponential the growth of the deep web will be in the next 50 years, if this is how many pages we have– a trillion– in a decade or so! With so much information archived on a daily basis, it will be necessary to have tools on hand which can access various categories of information.

So, how can you get access to billions of other pages? The links below are specialized and may help you find just the “needle in the haystack” you need! Click Here for a Deep Web directory.

I have been using Finding Dulcinea and Mahalo with good results.

Shmoop: From the Urban Dictionary…

Click here to Shmoop!!

Somebody must have asked the million dollar question: what do cyber English teachers need? The answer is Shmoop!

Students can “cite the site” in just three key clicks! Further, the best secondary novels and drama titles are here, with categorized quotes, questions and study guides. The poetry pages are just as good, and more titles are on the way! There are also great U.S. history pages, and they are aligned with many of the novels. I love this site, and I hope you do, too!

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Wouldn’t it be “loverly” if we could all learn a word a day for the rest of our lives?

Recently, I had the good fortune to study Spanish in Panama. So many new words– it is very daunting. But after a month, though I wouldn’t call myself conversational, I would say I was much improved! I hope this improvement will help my class communication with my Spanish speakers! In any case, it will make me a better teacher, because I definitely know  how hard it is to function in L2.

Here is a link for you. Click Here for the Vocab Grabber! What is cool about this is…you can add a chunk of text where there are a few words you don’t know, and the visual dictionary will explain it.  You will see this in upcoming lessons! It is a sideline of the “Visual Thesaurus.”

Cinco de Mayo, or the "fifth of May", in Spanish, is a holiday in Mexico, mostly celebrated in the state of Puebla, but recognized around the world as a  supremely ¨Mexican¨holiday! This holiday celebrates the Mexican army's  defeat of the French forces at the Battle of Puebla, on May 5, 1862. Today, Cinco de Mayo festivities have crossed the border, and many U.S. Cities have celebrations. This year due to the swine flu outbreak, many celebrations have been canceled as Mexican performers, dancers and singers, are reluctant to travel due to risk of infection. Check out this website for six great links to Cinco de Mayo information!

“Write about what makes you different.”
Sandra Cisneros

“Read like a wolf eats.”
Gary Paulsen

Book Glutton reminds me of the Amazon Kindle. You can upload books and read them on your computer. The difference is the Kindle is mobile, small and light…you can carry it anywhere. Book Glutton may not need to create a hand held portable alternative! I’ve been traveling, and seeing lots of people with small computers, only slightly larger than the Kindle, and with a long-life chargeable battery. These small computers are called “netbooks,” and though they don’t have the horsepower to use a webcam or have a multimedia chat, they are fine for reading and writing! And…fine for Book Glutton!

I like the fact you can annotate and make comments as you read on Book Glutton. They don’t have thousands of books to read yet, but I bet they will as publishers understand people will buy to annotate and read with classes or friends! Teachers can have a class group which is “privado,” and students can read and comment. Go Book Glutton! Check out the text widget below…

Check out the cool movies on this site!