One aspect of Atwell’s method writer’s workshop that I enjoy is the minilesson. My own teaching theories pair well with the minilesson because of the fact that I am free to help my students on a one to one basis very frequently. Also, the minilesson is able to capture student’s attention and keep them engaged…Read more Methods #11: The Minilesson

Nancie Atwell introduces her students to daily writing workshops by explaining writing territories to them. Essentially, a writing territory is a something from the author’s personal experience. Writers generate a list of there experiences from which they can access a wide variety of topics to write about. The way I shared this with my own…Read more Methods #10: Writing Territories

In The Middle, by Nancie Atwell begins with the conceptualizing each teacher must go through in his or her professional career. Atwell explains her former process of being a creationist that developed and maintained a curriculum for the first several years of teaching. One difficult student helped Atwell to rethink her system through his own…Read more The Gist of It

It is hard to think of where to start when wrapping up my discussion of LouAnne Johnson’s Teaching Outside the Box.  I guess I could start with my own admission that she helped inspire me to becoming a teacher and mentor for our youth.  I can only hope that I can be half as good as her.  I was in…Read more Methods #8: Teaching Outside the Box Conclusion

Why did you go into teaching, or why are you thinking about going into teaching? I’ve struggled with answering this question since committing myself many years ago to a teaching program.  Honestly, I still struggle with them.  After all, an undiagnosed dyslexic that struggles with comma usage and grammatical rules doesn’t even sound like a good…Read more Methods #7: 20 Years From Now

As I begin to wrap up discussion of Thinking Outside the Box, I have found little, if anything that I did not agree with LouAnne Johnson’s point of view with regards to teaching in general.  This is unusual for me in that I love to argue.  Perhaps it is the kid in me that feels…Read more Methods #6: Trying to Disagree, for the Sake of Arguing.

LouAnne Johnson shares her experience with her past students and how she fosters the desire for personal growth with her students in this section of Teaching Outside the Box.  Mrs. Johnson always takes the time to connect with her students in order to understand them and build trust with them.  She explains that any student…Read more The Three R’s Reading, Reading, Reading

One thing that I can completely agree with LouAnne Johnson about is students dislike for poetry.  I have not yet taught a poetry unit but my students shuddered when I told them we would be learning about poetry in the coming semester.  I think it is wonderful how LouAnne Johnson tackled introducing the subject to […]

Teaching Outside the Box has been and enjoyable learning experience.  I have always enjoyed reading authors that are not afraid of telling it like it is while providing real world examples, especially when it is a ‘how to’ style of book meant to assist the reader in completing the same type of work of the […]

Create Date:12/23/14 <img src=”https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1pN2lvg4EGH5VS9WbgcorRTqX8tgCoZBW5qz7jDC1J20/pub?w=480&amp;h=360″&gt;

Though I was tremendously pressed for time throughout this semester I learned a tremendous amount about perhaps the most important subject we can engage our students with – technology.  I have learned that one does not have to be a tech savvy guru in order to create a learning environment for students to flourish in.  Many students are […]

Digital story http://www.powtoon.com/embed/cqL9cERXuvx/

There are several metaphors that jump into my mind when I think of teaching. The teacher is the coach is perhaps the first metaphor that I can think of.  The students are the athletes working together as individuals of the same team in order to have a successful season, or year . Though this is […]

I am no aficionado, but this was by far the best TED talks I have seen.  Perhaps, the most hard hitting lines of the speech were, “All kids have tremendous talents and we squander them.”  I completely agree that we focus more on what others tell us our students need to learn then we allow […]

Can any school foster pure creativity? In short… NO. After reading the article on Mind Shift, I do not feel that any school can foster pure creativity. Every school system has its own flaws. Public school systems deal with too many students and bureaucracies to foster more than minimal creative output from students.  I agree with […]

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Today’s DS106 assignment is writing a response to the prompt below. Where are they going? Dawning his favorite driving goggles, Ralph leapt into the motorized carriage with the spring of a dog half his age.  It had been years since Ralph had his loyal servant, Reginald, take him for his Sunday drive to the zoo.  Ralph loved […]

Digital Story Telling is a very unique means of massive collaboration on projects from ideas and conception to creation.  DS106 is one site that allows for open participation in daily assignments with no hidden agenda other than creating art on massive digital and real world scales DS106 is a unique platform for digital story telling. […]

Perhaps, the most frequent excuse I  have used for my own limited use of all things internet is my own desire to be more personable in real life.  Too many times have I seen people face-deep into Facebook across the table from a nearly mirrored reflection face-deep in Twitter or vice versa.  People have become […]

Perusing the internet for information on digital footprints has led to some intriguing discoveries.  Though I have a very limited footprint and only minor usage on social medias such as Twitter or Facebook, I was still able to discover several of my past addresses and phone numbers.  Being of limited technological skills, I must admit […]

Prior to taking this Digital Literacy class I was very much a newb when it comes to blogging in general.  Admittedly, stereotypes of snooty blowhards pretty much kept my curiosity at bay.  For shame!  Luckily, it is not everyday that I realize I have been a complete idiot.  In searching resources about blogging in the […]

Connected classrooms are a wonderful way for students to discover that they are part of something much bigger than themselves.  Students may understand statistics given to them on wonderful sites like 100people.org but they do not understand what those numbers truly mean.  For example, earlier this year my students visited 100people.org in order to discover […]

A Personal Learning Network or PLN is an essential tool for modern era educators that strive to lead as master learners in their classrooms.  The challenge of building a PLN from scratch is immense, but manageable when taking the right steps.  http://teacherchallenge.edublogs.org/creating-a-pln/ lays out the groundwork for creating a PLN and offers tips for managing […]

Experiential learning is a cyclonic learning style in which students engage in an event that is a very hands on means of learning.  Experiential learning occurs outside of the traditional classroom environment and exists in activities such as workshops, internships, and service learning, undergraduate research, study abroad, and other creative and professional work experiences.  Ultimately experiential […]

It is easy to agree with great ideas presented by subject matter experts.  I can remember watching Dangerous Minds and thinking that I would love to have the kind of impact on people who the teacher did in that movie.  It is no wonder that I find myself constantly agreeing with LouAnne Johnson while I’m […]

After watching the YouTube video and reading the blog at http://weblogg-ed.com/2010/teachers-as-master-learners/ I was left with a feeling of inadequacy.  Will Richardson did make me rather confused.  Which is a good thing… it is the root of curiosity and the basis of all education. Schools would not exist were it not for the need to educate the […]

Perhaps the most notable subject that I have come across in this book so far deals with prejudice.  To me this topic is very important because I personally despise intolerance on any level.   The best way that I feel we can coexist is by trying to recognize our own insecurities and to find the […]