I am a teacher, blogger, and teacher trainer with more than 30 years of experience in education. I like to explore new possibilities to engage learners and enhance their learning experiences. I am the author of the blog, Learning and Leading in the 21st Century http://aysinalp.edublogs.org / where I share my reflections and insights on learning and technology.
I am a teacher, blogger, and teacher trainer with more than 30 years of experience in education. I like to explore new possibilities to engage learners and enhance their learning experiences. I am the author of the blog, Learning and Leading in the 21st Century http://aysinalp.edublogs.org / where I share my reflections and insights on learning and technology.
You can find 48 creative writing tasks with picture prompts in these ppts. Unlike technical, academic, and other forms of writing, creative writing fosters imagination and allows students to have a voice. Therefore, it is one of the most effective ways to enhance creativity in the classroom. I share this ppt with the students at the beginning of the year and they choose one topic each month. It is one of their favorite tasks.
You can find 48 creative writing tasks with picture prompts in these ppts. Unlike technical, academic, and other forms of writing, creative writing fosters imagination and allows students to have a voice. Therefore, it is one of the most effective ways to enhance creativity in the classroom. I share this ppt with the students at the beginning of the year and they choose one topic each month. It is one of their favorite tasks.
You can find 23 creative writing tasks with picture prompts in these ppts. Unlike technical, academic, and other forms of writing, creative writing fosters imagination and allows students to have a voice. Therefore, it is one of the most effective ways to enhance creativity in the classroom. I share this ppt with the students at the beginning of the year and they choose one topic each month. It is one of their favorite tasks.
Because growth mindset is a critical element of success in school, I strongly believe that it should be taught to students. This is the lesson I prepared for my students. If you have time, at the end of this lesson you can ask your students to prepare a leaflet or a video for younger students to teach them growth mindset. For more information on growth mindset, you can vist my Pinterest board. https://tr.pinterest.com/shine58/growth-mindset/
You can find 45 creative writing tasks with picture prompts in these ppts. Unlike technical, academic, and other forms of writing, creative writing fosters imagination and allows students to have a voice. Therefore, it is one of the most effective ways to enhance creativity in the classroom. I share this ppt with the students at the beginning of the year and they choose one topic each month. It is one of their favorite tasks.
Here is a free resource for you to teach global literacy in your classroom creatively addressing the key issues. This 48-page pack will help you teach your students Global Goals for Sustainable Development published by the UN in 2016 to raise their awareness on global issues with a focus on Global Citizenship, Diversity, Freedom, Poverty, Hunger, and Environmental Issues. While learning many things about global issues and becoming a global citizen, the students will analyze a poem, read two non-fiction texts by Jane Goodall and Nelson Mandela and do the activities about them, write a bio-poem and a biography, an essay and a journal entry, analyze a cartoon and design their own, and prepare a presentation. The activities in the pack will enable you to differentiate learning naturally.
Because growth mindset is a critical element of success in school, I strongly believe that it should be taught to students. This is the lesson I prepared for my students. If you have time, at the end of this lesson you can ask your students to prepare a leaflet or a video for younger students to teach them growth mindset. For more information on growth mindset, you can vist my Pinterest board. https://tr.pinterest.com/shine58/growth-mindset/
This 22-page interactive pack includes information, different activities, links to several websites about bullying and cyber-bullying, and ways to cope with them. At the end of the pack there is a project that you can do as whole school / grade level or as a class. The activities are differentiated and suitable for all types of learners from grades 3-6.
Do you want to go global and raise awareness on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals by bringing together a range of innovative ideas for teaching creatively and addressing these key issues? Here is a free resource for you to teach global literacy in your classroom! This 24-page pack will help you teach your students Global Goals for Sustainable Development published by the UN in 2016 to raise their awareness on global issues with a focus on Global Warming. The activities in the pack will enable you to differentiate learning. You can do the inquiry project at the end of the pack together with a partner school to increase student engagement.
You can find 15 great resources for the Back to School week here. Links have been added in the worksheet for you to see where these great ideas are taken from. Check my Pinterest board for more ideas: https://tr.pinterest.com/shine58/back-to-school/
I guarantee you that your students will love doing these activities during the first week of the school year and you will become the most popular teacher at the school. All you have to do is to design a Welcome Back to School cover page for the first activity with two cartoons. The questions on page 1 and 2 are about the cartoons that you are going to choose, so please read them before you choose the cartoons. If you follow this link http://tinyurl.com/z3vk5rb or this one http://tinyurl.com/hagfo3u, you will find several cartoons to choose from.
This fun activity will also help your students to understand media messages, learn how to analyze cartoons, and to think critically. Both activities require students to reflect on the meaning of education and learning and how they learn best. The journal entry they are going to write, the cartoon and the video they are going to make will not only enhance their creative skills but will give you lots hints about their expectations from you as their teacher.
Have a great school year!
This 21st century research guide contains information on the Super3 and Big6 research skills, links to safe search sites and to videos on plagiarism, copyright, paraphrasing, citation for beginners, , Web 2.0 tools to conduct research effectively, graphic organizers, rubrics, checklists and a song on Super3. There is 1 ppt for Super3 and another one on the Big 6. Once your students master Super3 research skills, they can move on to the Big6 research process. You can use this guide to teach your students age-appropriate research skills. You can also post this guide on your school website or classroom blog.
Digital literacy is more than knowing about how and when to use the tools. It is the ability to process information by locating, understanding, analyzing, evaluating, creating, and sharing it using digital technology. In the past, we used to do it with printed materials, but now technology provides access to a much wider range of learning resources available at all times and allows us to communicate information in a variety of media beyond word and text; so, looking up information in the library in traditional ways is obviously not enough. To be literate today requires navigating a connected world offering students endless information with which they can interact in many different ways. Our students are familiar with technology but they use it for social purposes. They know how to copy and paste but they don’t know how to process information with the help of technology. They should master the critical skills to conduct research effectively and come up with creative projects instead of copy-pasted ones. For more information, you can read this post http://aysinalp.edublogs.org/2015/08/05/how-to-integrate-the-new-literacies-into-our-curriculum-part-3-information-literacy/ on my blog.
This 21st century research guide contains information on research skills, links to web research guides, alternative search engines other than Google, Web 2.0 tools to conduct research and to present effectively, information on evaluating the quality of content and websites, academic integrity guidelines with emphasis on plagiarism, copyright, summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, and citing appropriately, tips on preparing and giving effective presentations. You can use this guide to teach your students A-Z 21st century research skills. You can also post this guide on your school website or classroom blog.
This four-page creative writing activity based on BBC's short video, 'The Supporting Act' is ideal both for ELA and ESL students. It includes two graphic organizers to scaffold writing a summary, before the creative writing activity. Play the video until 00:59 and ask your students to predict the rest of it. At the end of the creative writing project, you can also show this video https://vimeo.com/82282346 to your students for fun.
This 19-page lesson is a great opportunity for the 21st century learners to learn about and practice the art of asking questions based on a digital story. Students first answer the questions after watching episode 1. They then learn about asking read on the lines/between the lines/beyond the lines questions, watch episode 2, and ask different types of questions about it. In part III, they learn about higher order thinking questions, analyze the chart on questioning for quality thinking, watch episode 3, and ask lower and higher order thinking questions about it.
In the final section, they conduct research on one of the 3 countries used as the setting of the episodes they have watched. They learn about the tools they can use to research, to evaluate and narrow down the information they have found, and to cite sources. They also learn what a big question is and come up with a driving question to conduct their research. Finally, they learn how to share their findings with their peers by preparing a visual presentation and a speech. If you have a class blog or a school website, you can share their presentations with the entire world, which will be much more motivating for your students.
The pack also includes a 21st Century style KWHLQ chart adapted from Silvia Tolisano’s KWHLAQ chart http://langwitches.org/blog/2015/06/12/an-update-to-the-upgraded-kwl-for-the-21st-century/, a research guide for the students, detailed information on public speaking and presentation skills, self and peer evaluation sheets, and an oral presentation rubric. The entire unit is suitable for ESL learners as well.
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This differentiated choice board will give your students the opportunity to learn about digital citizenship as well as practicing the 4 C’s (critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication) . My students had great fun while doing this activity. You may do it in a different way but I allowed them to choose the task they want to work on and their partners to promote student voice and choice in the classroom. The activities in the first row (horizontal) are for groups of three, in the middle row for students who want to work individually, and the ones in the final row are for the students who want to work in pairs. You can assign the tasks in the middle row for a pair of low achievers in order to enhance collaboration as they are relatively easier and shorter. Please read the instructions to use this document which also includes the Google dRive link for the PDF document. Using the Drive link will give you the opportunity to share this document with your students digitally and edit it.
On the second page there are discussion, vocabulary and reflection activities for the students to complete. I hope you and your students will enjoy it:)
The amount of information available on the Internet is astonishing, and it keeps growing. Therefore, students should learn this critical skill to determine whether the information they have found is relevant and reliable. In this unit based on evaluating websites students:
* Read a text on website evaluation
* Do a vocabulary activity on prefixes and suffixes
* Answer the questions about the text
* Visit a website and do the activities there to learn more about website evaluation
* Choose a website among the ones given in the list and evaluate it by answering the questions in a graphic organizer
* Prepare a 5–8 - minute oral presentation on it by using the information in the organizer and following the oral presentation guidelines
* Evaluate their own oral presentation and their peers' by filling in the self and peer assessment forms
* Prepare a leaflet on website evaluation for younger students.
The lesson also includes two rubrics - one for the oral presentation and the other for the leaflet.
This unit can be used with English Language Learners as well.
Digital literacy is more than knowing about how and when to use the tools. It is the ability to process information by locating, understanding, analyzing, evaluating, creating, and sharing it using digital technology. In the past, we used to do it with printed materials, but now technology provides access to a much wider range of learning resources available at all times and allows us to communicate information in a variety of media beyond word and text; so, looking up information in the library in traditional ways is obviously not enough. To be literate today requires navigating a connected world offering students endless information with which they can interact in many different ways. Our students are familiar with technology but they use it for social purposes. They know how to copy and paste but they don’t know how to process information with the help of technology. They should master the critical skills to conduct research effectively and come up with creative projects instead of copy-pasted ones. For more information, you can read this post http://aysinalp.edublogs.org/2015/08/05/how-to-integrate-the-new-literacies-into-our-curriculum-part-3-information-literacy/ on my blog.
This 21st century research guide contains information on research skills, links to web research guides, alternative search engines other than Google, Web 2.0 tools to conduct research and to present effectively, information on evaluating the quality of content and websites, academic integrity guidelines with emphasis on plagiarism, copyright, summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, and citing appropriately, tips on preparing and giving effective presentations. You can use this guide to teach your students A-Z 21st century research skills. You can also post this guide on your school website or classroom blog.
The amount of information available on the Internet is astonishing, and it keeps growing. Therefore, students should learn this critical skill to determine whether the information they have found is relevant and reliable. In this unit based on evaluating websites students:
* Read a text on website evaluation
* Do a vocabulary activity on prefixes and suffixes
* Answer the questions about the text
* Visit a website and do the activities there to learn more about website evaluation
* Choose a website among the ones given in the list and evaluate it by answering the questions in a graphic organizer
* Prepare a 5–8 - minute oral presentation on it by using the information in the organizer and following the oral presentation guidelines
* Evaluate their own oral presentation and their peers' by filling in the self and peer assessment forms
* Prepare a leaflet on website evaluation for younger students.
The lesson also includes two rubrics - one for the oral presentation and the other for the leaflet.
This unit can be used with English Language Learners as well.
Great print and teach vocabulary and writing practice for students based on the awesome video, The Present, which ran on over 180 short film festivals and won more than 50 awards. The activities include writing a summary, a tweet, a journal entry, a film review with a rubric, creating a word cloud, colour-coding parts of speech in a text, and filling in a vocabulary journal. The pack also includes some questions to enhance critical thinking skills and links that will help students write their film review. Suitable for ESL students as well.