The Best of I Want To Teach Forever: June 2009

For whatever reason, I found a lot of inspiration to write again this month after a couple of months where I struggled. I hope that you find my best work useful and/or helpful:

• 3 Ideas to Prepare Students for College Placement Exams [6/9]
• Top 7 Ways To Use A Document Camera In The Classroom [6/14]
• Replace Make Up Day With "GPA Day" [6/23]
• Sample End of Year Survey [6/25]

I've also shared lots of great articles, ideas and resources via my weekly Five for Friday series. Finally, catch up on the 52 Teachers, 52 Lessons community project (weeks 19-22).

If you like this site, the best ways to support it are to subscribe to my RSS feed, become a Follower (click Follow on the sidebar), and to share links on your blog or favorite social bookmarking site (click the Share button below for some quick and easy options). You could also pick up a copy of my book, Ten Cheap Lessons: Easy, Engaging Ideas for Every Secondary Classroom, for $12 paperback/$6 digital.

52 Teachers, 52 Lessons #22: Teach in a Dynamic Environment

Our contributor this week is an expert in English as a Second Language. After four years teaching English Language Learners in Texas, Shelly Terrell moved on to teach children, teenagers and adults who are ELLs in Germany! She blogs at Teacher Boot Camp. Her wise advice comes in three parts:

Teach in a dynamic environment!

When students walk into my classroom, I want them to be motivated to learn. Sitting in desks that face you is boring! Create a dynamic environment full of rich sayings, learning stations, and student expression. In my high school classroom, we would sometimes go outside for lessons or sit on pillows on the floor for discussions. Students learn in different ways! Moreover, environment impacts mood and behavior. I now set my classroom up for cooperative learning and to cater to different learning styles. The workforce is dynamic and students will have to be prepared to work in a variety of settings. Students will probably never work in an environment with a desk facing the boss all day!

Pause!

I have taught what many would term "trouble" students. I learned quickly that getting angry only spurs the situation. What works best is allowing "cool-off time" for the student and teacher. If you have stations set-up, the student can find some alone time. When you feel the student has calmed down, then speak with the student in an area away from the other students. Find out what is the real problem behind the outburst. Most of the time you find out that your students are juggling some serious issues and your talk with them can help them more than the punishment.

Continually self-reflect!

My students offer me feedback through dialogue journals, surveys, and conversations. Critiques are opportunities for growth. Along with the criticisms are incredible heartfelt messages of what a difference I have made. Therefore, I am never afraid to hear my students' opinions. Teachers should constantly self-reflect to ensure their teaching strategies and lessons are evolving and purpose-driven.

Read more about this project here or add the 52 teachers 52 lessons tag to your favorites. Email your entries to teachforeverATgmailDOTcom. Week 23 is scheduled for next Monday, July 6th.

25 Free Summer Reading and Writing Resources for Teachers

If you're looking for materials for summer school courses or if you just want to get a head start on next year's lessons, the Internet is a great place to begin. Sites like the Online Books Page can provide you with reading materials and help you choose reading lists. Other, such as SparkNotes and Pink Monkey, can help you develop a greater understanding of the books you are about to teach. Whatever you are looking for, you are sure to find at least one useful site in this list of reading and writing resources for teachers.

Free Books

The Online Books Page - This site is one of the best places to find free unabridged books online. There are currently more than 35,000 listings, with new books being added regularly.

Project Gutenberg - Project Gutenberg was the first site to offer free e-books and is still one of the best spots to get free unabridged books online. The site has nearly 30,000 books in its collection and links to thousands of other books that can be read or downloaded for free.

Bibliomania - Thousands of free books can be found at Bibliomania. The site also offers free study guides to the most read books and other helpful resources for teachers.

The Literature Network - In addition to an excellent database of free electronic books, the Literature Network also provides forums and quotations for students and teachers.

Librivox - Unlike the other free book sites on this list, Librivox focuses on audio books. The site's volunteers have recorded thousands of the best-loved books in the public domain.

Literature Summaries and Study Guides

Schmoop - Schmoop is a relatively new site dedicated to making reading, writing, and history fun for both teachers and students. The site offers a wide range of study guides and teacher resources as well as tips on using Schmoop in the classroom.

Litsum - LitSum is one of the best places online to get free study guides and literature summaries. The site offers more guides than anyone else and also provides topics for discussion, character analysis, and other helpful teaching resources.

CyberGuides - CyberGuides are standards-based literature study guides that are delivered as web-based instruction. Each guide has a student and teacher edition. CyberGuides are available for k thru 12 teachers.

Pink Monkey - This site offers a wide range of student friendly book summaries, chapter notes, and study guides that can be viewed for free online or printed for a small fee.

SparkNotes - SparkNotes have always been among the most popular literature study guides. You can find thousands of free SparkNotes guides online. Other resources include a searchable grammar guide and SparkCharts for teachers.

Educational Materials, Lesson Plans, and Classroom Activities

Learn Out Loud - Learn Out Loud is the Internet's largest directory of free learning resources. The site focuses more on audio and video, but lists some free text-based resources as well.

ReadWriteThink - A partnership between the International Reading Association (IRA), the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and the Verizon Foundation, the ReadWriteThink site is an excellent source of literature lesson plans for grades k thru 12.

LitPlans - This site offers literature lesson plans and other helpful materials. Most of the lesson plans are geared for middle school and high school teachers, but elementary and college-level teachers may also find useful resources on the LitPlans site.

Harcourt - This trade publisher provides teachers with free books, classroom activities, lesson plans, and other materials. Most of Harcourt's free materials are designed for elementary school students.

Scholastic - Scholastic offers a summer reading challenge, lesson plans, story starters, and many other useful materials. The Scholastic site also features a "Back-to-School Planning" section that's perfect for teachers who are working on next year's reading and language arts lessons.

Writing Prompts and Instruction

The Teacher's Corner - The Teacher's Corner has an excellent selection of daily writing prompts for every month of the year. Prompts can be printed or displayed on an LCD projector.

WritingFix - This site offers interactive writing prompts, lesson plans, and resources for the writing classroom. Other special features include a daily prompt generator, columns and advice from teachers, and student samples by grade level.

The Teaching Portal - The Teaching Portal is a Lightning Bug resource specifically designed for teachers of all levels. The site offers writing prompts, advice, and useful programs to help educators teach writing in the classroom.

MIT OCW - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers several free online writing courses at the college level that would be of interest to teachers. Most of the courses include lecture notes, reading lists, writing assignments, and other learning materials.

Purdue Online Writing Lab - Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) offers more than 200 free resources for writers and people who teach writing. The site also provides style guides and special help for ESL teachers.

Magazines, Blogs, and Other Reading Materials

Yes - Teachers can get a free, one-year subscription to Yes! Magazine when they visit the Yes site. This ad-free quarterly magazine publishes articles about education, the economy, communities, art, and other topics.

Teacher Lingo - This online community for teachers is a great place to start your own blog or read blogs written by other teachers.

TeacherVision - This site lists a selection of popular teacher blogs with frequent updates.

Books 4 Teachers - Known as the site "where teachers come to read," Books 4 Teachers is a good place to find book recommendations, lesson plans, and other useful resources.

The Free Library - The Free Library offers unabridged literary works from classic authors. The site also features free articles and scholarly papers--more than five million entries in all.


Guest post from Karen Schweitzer who writes about online colleges for OnlineColleges.net.

Goodbye, Boston!

Today I will be loading up the moving truck and cleaning up the last remnants of my life in Boston. While I'm very excited about returning to what really feels like home (the Rio Grande Valley), there were so many great things about Boston that I will absolutely miss. Here are my goodbyes and thanks:

To the students who were willing to fight for me to stay and protest on my behalf: I sincerely appreciate the thought and I will miss you. I'll do my best to get back to see so many of you graduate next year!

To the Boston Public Library system: I never thought I would actually love the library. Your collections, services and great people were amazing. Thank you especially to everyone at the Main Branch at Copley and the Honan-Allston Branch. The library was one of the first parts of the city where I really felt at home.

To everyone at the Dunkin' Donuts on Washington Ave & Sagamore Ave in Chelsea: Thank you for keeping me caffeinated and well fed! I enjoyed stopping by frequently (sometimes twice a day), and I know my students feel the same way.

To whomever made Boston so walkable, you've made me healthier, less stressed and more active.

To the guy who stands outside Haymarket Station at the Congress St. entrance every morning: Thank you for brightening my day. Maybe I'm crazy, but there's something to be said for somebody wishing you a good day and singing show tunes to themselves.

To the MBTA: Even with all the limitations and problems of the T, I never felt like I needed a car in Boston. I appreciated not having to drive, and being able to sit back and relax on my way to and from work (with the occasional hoping off one train and onto another, of course). I read as many books in my first few months of commuting on mass transit as I had read over the last couple of years in south Texas! I just hope you can get the Green Line moving a little bit more efficiently in the future.

To everyone and everything responsible for Boston's exorbitant cost of living: Thank you for making me appreciate everything I have a little better. I was forced to think about what was really important in life, and "stuff" was not on the list. I have simplified my life in so many ways out of necessity, but it's made me a better person as well. I will carry these lessons with me for a long time.

Thank you, Boston. And goodbye.

Five for Friday: Everything All At Once Edition

This has been a crazy week: it's the last week of school, packing up to move tomorrow, and thinking about major life issues like housing, transportation, and employment. This week's links deal with a little bit of everything as well (there I go again, subconsciously assembling themes for these weekly links).

1. FASFA To Get Dramatically Shorter, Less Painful [from Consumerist] - Good news for your future HS graduates!
2. Doodling Increases Focus and Recall [from Lifehacker] - I know I've been quick to judge the daydreamers in my classes... maybe I was wrong!
3. New Math [via Freakonomics] - If you've never heard of it, New Math is part art project, part mathematical equations. I like to think of it as the equations of everyday things. I'd love to have my students create their own "new math" equations as a beginning (or end) of year assignment.
4. Book Review: How to Survive (And Perhaps Thrive) On a Teacher's Salary [from Wise Bread] - Have any of you read this? I read an article with a similar title in Instructor magazine that wasn't very helpful, but I think this is a different author.
5. Never Have an Argument w/ a Student Ever Again - Sup Teach? reminds us of perhaps the two most important words in a teacher's vocabulary.

Share your best links in the comments below.

Sample End of Year Survey

I realized after posting my senior end of year survey that I wouldn't need to change much to make an end of year survey for all of my students. Indeed, I only had to change a few words here and there to make it suitable for everyone. The survey is available on Google Docs:

Sample End of Year Survey

Math in the Real World: Erasing Debt Activity

I always like to do as much real world math as I can throughout the year, but it's much easier to focus on it when summer vacation is looming. It's not busy work, nor is it completely unrelated to what you're teaching in any middle school math class up to Algebra I. It will keep students more engaged in a time where it's easy to disengage, and demonstrate to them clearly how many of the skills and problem solving strategies you've work on all year could actually be useful in their lives.

This activity came to me in the mail, quite literally: banks and credit card companies were sending me offers for big loans to pay off my debts (or just to spend frivolously--they couldn't seem to make up their minds in their sales pitch letters). The monthly payments always seem reasonable, until you look at how many months you'll be paying. If you do the math, you start to see just how much you're actually spending to have cash right now.

I've used newspaper ads for rent-to-own stores for similar lessons in the past, but this was different. The mailings I was getting contained concise applications that I shrunk down and copied; for the purposes of sharing without being sued, I created a sample application (complete with loan offers, payback options, and a form asking for a lot of personal info). Feel free to use it as-is, or replace the first part with an offer you receive in the mail. The document is hosted on Google Docs:

Erasing Debt Activity

Replace Make Up Day With "GPA Day"

Today is the last day of classes--the remainder of the week is two short exam days and a field day/end of year celebration. Traditionally this is the time when I do two things with my students:

1. End of the year reflections
2. Give them a chance to make up work
   

I realized this year that I had too many students who were satisfied as long as they were passing, no matter what the actual grade was. If they were passing already at this point, they did little or nothing to improve their grade leading into final exams. If they were failing, they did the absolute minimum needed to get that passing grade, and then quit. This is the problem I intend to solve today.

I will shift the paradigm on my students a bit, first by changing how we talk about it. This is not "credit recovery" or "make up work" day anymore: this is GPA Day. We're not going to worry only about credits toward graduation (our school has a credit system modeled after colleges, but the principle will apply at this time of year for most schools). The first two graduating classes ever at my school have helped us focus on grade point average. Some of the graduates worked just enough to pass their classes and get the credits they needed, but had atrocious GPAs due to a combination of failures and getting only the minimum grade possible when they did pass. This is now any easier idea to accept for our remaining students.

Second, I'll change what we do with our time that day. Making up assignments is no longer the sole focus--it's just part of the equation now. What I'll supplement that work with is comprehensive, whole year review assignments that will earn them points no matter what their grade is. I've put together materials that cover all of the most important topics we've covered this year, which is a good a way as any to end the year with.

Finally, we'll dissect grade point average: review what a GPA is, how it's calculated, and what it means for their futures.

In truth, this is a marketing experiment more than anything else. I think the language we use about everything at school is more powerful than most educators think. I just hope I can pull it off.

52 Teachers, 52 Lessons #21: Take Advantage of Vacations

This week's entry is from Siobhan Curious, who teaches English language and literature in Montreal. Her advice arrives at the ideal time for the majority of us who have started the summer or are just about to:

I've been writing a series of posts for the TimesOnline's education blog, School Gate, about dealing with teacher burnout. A few years ago, I was fed up and exhausted, and wanted to pull out of teaching altogether, and so I began taking steps to determine whether quitting was really what I wanted to do. I decided that it wasn't, but I realized that I had to take some time away from the classroom to refresh myself and gain some perspective. I did that - I took a semester off - and I came back to my job ready to take on new challenges.

I would strongly advise all teachers to regularly take time away from the classroom. If you don't have the opportunity to take the semester off, then at least take advantage of the vacations that you have. Get far, far away - go to another country if you can, and spend a couple of weeks thinking about anything but teaching. Do something with your hands: garden, take a cooking class, fix up your old motorbike. Go to the cottage with your family and spend your time walking, fishing, playing tennis, anything that clears your brain and moves your body. One way or another, shake teaching out of your head entirely and remind yourself that yes, you're a teacher, but you're a lot of other things too. Then, when you come back to the classroom, it will feel fresh.

Read more about this project here or add the 52 teachers 52 lessons tag to your favorites. Email your entries to teachforeverATgmailDOTcom. Week 22 is scheduled for next Monday, June 29th.

Call for Entries: 52 Teachers, 52 Lessons for the Summer

I'm excited to report that new entries for the 52 Teachers, 52 Lessons community project have been pouring in, but there are still many weeks left in the year.

Summer is upon us, and I think it's a good a time as any to request advice geared towards making the best of this time. Perhaps your advice has to do with how to reflect on the school year, regaining your sanity or health, or simply rediscovering your passion for teaching. Remember, our central question for this year-long journey is:

"What is the most important advice you can give to other teachers?"

Email me at teachforeverATgmailDOTcom when the inspiration hits!

How To Remove Permanent Marker And Tape Residue

At school we're preparing for some hardcore end of year cleaning. I know that our operations manager was concerned specifically about removing permanent marker from desks and tables. As she put it, the heavy duty chemical cleaner we have "is like acid. We're almost guaranteed to have an accident if the kids or teachers are using the stuff!" Being the good citizen I am, I quickly jumped into action to prevent such a catastrophe.

Earlier this year, I learned about a ridiculously simple method to remove permanent marker from most surfaces:

Write over the permanent marker with an Expo or other dry erase marker!

I did not believe it either when I heard about it, but it works. What happens is that the dry erase/non-permanent Expo ink mixes with the permanent marker and sort of turns it into dry erase ink. It's science! After covering the affected area, the same Expo cleaning fluid you use on the whiteboard can be used to clean it off.

Really stubborn marks might take a "coat" or two to be completely removed (as one particularly annoying message scrawled into a table in my room did) but it will work. I don't know the source of this idea, but I'm pretty sure I read it on one of the wonderful blogs I frequent (see my blogroll if you're up for investigating).

Another end of year nuisance I am used to dealing with is sticky, gunky tape residue left over from packing or duct tape. I always had a mess to clean up when I removed the numbers I had taped to my student desks with packing tape in years past. Water or regular cleaning solutions don't really help; using some kind of scraper will damage the surface. The best way to get it off is also really simple.

You can remove it by taking a new piece of tape, pushing it down onto the gunky area, and pulling. Then repeat many, many times. It is admittedly a time-consuming and laborious process, but it removes the tape residue without damaging the surface. It would be a great thing to have some students do when they're ready to help out! (Side note: This also works for removing pesky labels and stickers from books, CDs and DVDs).

As with the first idea, I'm not sure where I learned this, but thank you to whoever taught me. I think I took it for granted that everybody knew these tips until I shared them at school and received a lot of shocked or surprised reactions. I hope you find them as helpful as I have.

Please share your best cleaning secrets in the comments!

Five for Friday: Disruptive Innovation Edition

Nothing excites me more than the prospect of truly innovative educational technology changing the landscape of our profession and students' lives. On the other hand, nothing frustrates me more than the ill-conceived, over-hyped educational technology school districts usually latch on to. Thus this week's edition is all about technology that's changing education for the better:

1. 13 Top iPhone Apps for Students [from Connect with your Teens through Pop Culture and Technology] - A good companion to my advice on learning how to use this kind of disruptive innovation in the classroom (see #42 from my 50 Cheap Mini-Lessons for Teachers).
   
2. Try These Search Terms if You Want Some Malware [from Consumerist] - Avoid messing up your computer by keeping this in mind when you search.
3. Mini-Documentaries Make Math and Science Meaningful to Students [from Wired:GeekDad] - GeekDad reviews The Futures Channel, an educational video site I reviewed in December.
4. floorplanner [via Lifehacker] - When I was younger, I used to play with my Dad's 2D home design software. I think it helped me with my spatial reasoning and 3D visualization, two critical skills for mathematics. floorplanner allows you to plan a design in 2D and then view it in 3D, and I immediately look at software like this and consider the classroom applications. Lifehacker details what the free version can do.
5. Netflix App Gallery [via Hacking Netflix] - The ubiquitous DVD-by-mail service recently launched their own iPhone-esque App site. Wouldn't it be great to have a teacher-friendly Netflix App that linked films, documentaries and TV shows to relevant lesson plans and ideas?

Share your similarly-themed links in the comments. Thanks!