How I Teach Writing

How I Teach Writing - Video

Here is a video that I made about how I teach writing. I was exploring how teachers can use videoscribing (tech technique - see explanation HERE) to make instructional videos with the software we have in the district. I choose writing as my topic.

I have presented my writing strategies to several schools and have been video taped on how I implement writing in my classroom. I have less time to go into classrooms to teach this strategy so I thought this video might help some teachers.

I know this is not strictly "science" but I used it when students had to write papers about animals in conjunction with what we are learning in science so I thought it would be appropriate for this blog.

To see this video direct from YouTube (as opposed to an embedded link - CLICK HERE)

Comments

Leslie said…

This is a great idea. Where did you get the drawing of the cell on the right side of the notebook?

September 22, 2013 at 2:44 PM

Ramblin' Sam said…

Thanks for this. Can't wait to try with my 4th graders...

November 2, 2013 at 9:50 AM

Anonymous said…

This was a wonderful tutorial. Thank you so much. . .I think I might want to try this way of "teaching" too. . .could record when I know I"m going to be out with a sub :)

January 7, 2014 at 6:41 PM

Picture of the Day - Activity

I attended a training class and a science coach shared an activity that he does with his students to help them differentiate between observations, inferences, and predictions. He puts a picture on the interactive white board as a warm up (he gets the pictures from a variety of sources but uses National Geographic's Picture of the Day a lot). The picture above is from the National Geographic site. He has the students make five observations. Then he makes the students make five inferences. Finally he has the students make five predictions. He does this every day and it really drives home the difference between those three key inquiry vocabulary terms. I've done this activity with both my sixth and fourth grade science classes and the students really got into it and became proficient at telling me the difference between those terms.

Weathering, Erosion, and Deposition Activity

I saw this activity at a science conference years ago and haven't had a chance to use it in a classroom until this week (mainly because I didn't teach weathering, erosion, and deposition). It is a great way to reinforce the definition of the weathering, erosion, and deposition in a highly kinesthetic manner. Basically you break the students up into groups of three. One group is "Weathering" another group is "Erosion" and the third group is "Deposition". Add tape to the back because you are going to stick them to the forehead of the children in each group. The "weathering" students get a sheet of paper that is their "rock" they will be breaking down. At the start of the activity the "weathering" students will start ripping tiny pieces of their "rock" and handing it to the "erosion" students. The "erosion" students will be running their tiny piece of "rock&

Bill Nye Songs with Lyrics

At the end of the Bill Nye videos he always has a fun song that goes with the episode. You can find many of the songs as stand alone videos on YouTube. This came in handy because today I am teaching a lesson on layers of the atmosphere and found a song from his Atmosphere video on YouTube titled "Fresh Aire." I really wanted to remix it and put the lyrics on the video (so the kids could sing along and see how the lyrics matched the lesson). The first thing I did was found a site that has all the Bill Nye lyrics posted used my YouTube downloader ( see instructions here ) and downloaded the song. I then imported the video into Movie Maker Live and used the caption feature to put the lyrics on the different frames (cutting and pasting from the lyrics site into Movie Maker Live). I saved the video and reposted to YouTube so other teachers could use the video with lyrics (the finished video is posted above). The process was pretty easy and I am thinking about doing it for more

Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

Search This Blog