Best Practices

from teachingmatters.org

Use an LCD projector, computer and white board to strengthen your literacy lessons

    • Project shared reading material for read-along

    • Project reading-rich websites to expand your library of resources

    • Project graphic organizers and templates during guided reading

    • Project student writing material for editing and commenting during shared guided writing

    • Project concept maps with mindmapping software

    • Go to http://www.graphic.org

Use word processing software to support editind of student wdriting in grades 3 and up

    • In gr. 3 use different colors and fonts for students to comment on each other's writing (red=punctuation, green=mispelling, yellow=sentence structure, etc.)

    • In gr. 4 and up use the "track changes" in Microsoft Word

    • Go to http://www.microsoft.com/education/WordTutorial.aspx for help

Participate in ready-made collaborative projects, motivate students as readers and writers

Publish student work on the Internet, students write for a real audience

Use a digital camera to create writing activities that accommodate students' multiple intelligences

Set up an ongoing video reading and writing studio in you classroom

Use commercially-available electronic books to expend you classroom library with multimedia reading materials

    • Support struggling decoders by reading to them

    • Motivate reluctant readers with graphics and sounds

    • Add to story comprehension with supplementary literacy activities

Create rubrics to assess student literacy learning

    • http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php

    • http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/assess.html

    • http://www.readwritethink.org