Here we go!

Amidst exciting changes and fall weather, I begin this school year with a big smile.  Thanks to my new teaching assignment at the Dunes, I can devote more after-school time to developing best practices in reading/writing instruction, reaching at-risk kiddos, and tech innovation in the ELA classroom.  So excited!

One literacy-tech experiment I tried last year with my freshmen that I'd love to build on further is the web-based classroom dictionary.  In a nutshell, I assigned my Honors English 1 students to collect and define their own self-selected vocabulary words from the common text their class was reading (in this case, To Kill A Mockingbird), and then post their dictionaries in an online forum.  

Let's give credit where credit's due: I shamelessly stole the idea from Prof. Laurie Miller at George Mason University, whose intro-level Advanced Reading class dictionary can be found here.

Then I changed it up a bit for freshmen, and made a new one here.  

Students had to post words that hadn't been posted by anyone in class yet, so that created a pretty tangible sense of urgency for them.  Fun stuff.

This would be adaptable to any subject involving reading for information, unfamiliar vocab, or literacy in general.  This year's changes will involve more visual and antonym requirements for each entry, and of course more awesomeness.