Anchor Charts!

                                                                               

 

Notes from Katie Khanijoun - September 2012

·        For me… it started with Pinterest… www.pinterest.com

·        What is an Anchor Chart?

o   Students brainstorm, teacher guides and scribes

o   Helps to “anchor” information in a student’s mind
(anchors new and on-going learning)   (holds our thinking in a visual place)

o   A chart you create WITH the students

------Made during the lesson (you can have examples to follow or have some parts prepared ahead of time).  You can “fix it up” after the lesson so it looks better

o   Promotes literacy and encourages independence

o   Visual reminder of strategies

o   Focuses on ONE strategy or concept or procedure

o   Excellent reference tool for students

o   Students helped to created itàmore likely to use it

·        Important:

o   Students should reference them, so should youàkeep them relevant

o   Can be interactiveà, have students use strategy and show it with a sticky note

o   Change them up when they aren’t needed anymore, take pictures of them so you can reference them for next year, also a good way to make them available for the rest of the year to students if you keep a copy of the chart in a binder

·        Also Helpful for:

Tutors, principal, parents and other teachers who walk into your roomàimmediately see what they students are learning

·        Awesome websites and resources:
http://www.cornerstoneliteracy.org/newsletter-archive/anchor-charts

http://www.scholastic.ca/education/litplace_earlyyears/pdfs/tip_archives/teachingguides5.pdf
http://suite101.com/article/use-anchor-charts-for-english-language-learners-a121105
http://jmeacham.com/anchorcharts.htm
http://pinterest.com/hellojenjones/anchor-charts/
http://www.fortheloveofteaching.net/2010/07/have-you-tried-anchor-charts.html

 

 

2012 Election Resources

The Election is just 49 days away...

I thought I'd share a handful of techie Election 2012 resources for you to explore:

The New York Times Learning Network is designed with 6th to 12th graders in mind.  They have recently posted a section with teaching ideas and resources:

... and a section with a number of great free web sites for teaching about the 2012 election:

Scholastic:
The Scholastic website is designed with younger kids in mind, and includes a number of games, videos and other resources:

 

Discovery Ed:
Holy Trinity School has a subscription to Discovery Ed, and among the resources is a weekly 3-minute video update on the election:

Remember, if you have not yet signed up for your personal HTS Discovery Ed account, our account number is: 13FF-53EE

 

BrainPop:

 

BrainPop also has an extensive Election Resources section, with quizzes, games, and lots of short videos from our friends Tim and Moby:

 

 



 

Remember, our login is dtarantino, and our password is seashell.

Do you have other favorite Election resources?  If so, share them below in the comments section:

Passwords and Email and Scantron and such...

Hello all - a few techie notes to begin the second week of school.

Passwords

Thanks for your patience as we have tried to work out network logins for all our Upper School students.  We should be in really good shape as we begin this week, but if you find you are in a lab with a child locked out, please text M, and she will trouble-shoot the problem.

Each US student will have a password page by the end of the week (see below).  We have asked they keep this in their binders as a reference, as they have so very many passwords to remember.  We will also have copies on hand.

A few notes about Email.  

• Each US student has an HTS Email account, and we have told them this is the only account they should be using at school  (the ability to G-chat has been disabled, among other perks.)

• This Gmail account easily links to Google docs or Google drive.  If you are new to this and interested in using it with your students, let one of the Tech Nerds know, and we can help you out.  It is a handy way to manage and edit papers with your kids.

• It should be very easy for you to Email your students, as they are all in the directory.

• We have told the students that they may not Email during class time without teacher permission. 

• We have also told them that if they use the Email inappropriately, they will lose all network privileges at HTS for some amount of time.

Scantron

Scantron testing begins for Upper School students this week, and Lower School students next week, and will likely take most of our technology classes over the next three weeks.  This means that much of the "Tech 101" stuff we generally introduce at the beginning of the year is not happening for a while.   If you need one of us to help introduce some techie element to one of your classes over the next few weeks  (say, saving documents to the correct drive)  just let us know.