Spelling Connections

Previously, I alluded to a promising new website that I will be utilizing in my English class. The website is called, "Spelling Connections." Larry Ferlazzo introduced me to it.

Spelling Connections allows teachers to set-up classroom accounts, so student scores are automatically recorded. The quiz results are not saved on the student accounts; therefore, the possibility of cheating is reduced.


There are four categories of activities. Each category has activities in 8 different grade levels. Each grade level contains approximately 30 quizzes. So, there is a lot of stuff.

The activities are challenging, but the site allows students to try repeatedly until they achieve a score with which they are satisfied. My preferred activity, and the one which I have started my class using, is the cloze sentences.


The spelling activity is also good. A word is spoken, and the student must attempt to spell it.

All in all, it is a great website!

Cheating

For a few weeks now, I have been passively seeking a new site for my English class to practice their reading comprehension skills. I am a busy teacher; we all are. I want a site with prefabricated exercises that will allow the students to complete their work online and feed me the results.

I had been using MyTestBook. This is a great site, to be sure. It satisfies all of the requirements iterated in the preceding paragraph. But MyTestBook has an Achilles' Heel. I became aware that at least one of my students was cheating. He was logging into a classmate's account and viewing the other's completed, corrected quiz in order to glean the answers. So, I stopped using MyTestBook.

I suppose cheating is as old as schools. I could have continued to utilize MyTestBook, and to monitor the students as they did the assignments, but this was not how I want the internet to serve my class. I want a site that will allow the students to complete their assignments independently, at their own pace, and at home, if necessary. I do not want to have to hover over the students as they travail. A teacher must don many caps, but the role of policeman is not one I relish.

So I waited. Patiently. And then, finally, Providence arrived. But that, Dear Readers, is a story for another post.

Photo by Jim B L.

Shelfari

Oh, novel study.

So far this year, I have not commissioned my Secondary English students to study a homogenous novel.  Instead, I let them choose their own novel.  They are supposed to read a chapter for homework after every class, then comment on it on their blogs.

This experiment has had mixed results so far.  About half the students are completing the journal entries regularly; the others are not.  I wonder if the students who are not participating are affected by the lack of structure associated with this task.  Would they produce more if I followed a more traditional model of assigning a novel along with accompanying worksheet?  Or would they abstain anyways?

For those students who are participating, I fear that their summaries might become stale after awhile.

I found a website that I hope might make the task more dynamic.

Shelfari lets users catalogue the books they have read and are reading.  There are multitudinous ways to comment on and categorize your books.  The interface is very nice, with a bookshelf that can be embedded on your blog.  I created my own bookshelf and embedded it on this blog.

I think that the inherent nature of Shelfari; that is, collecting read books, might encourage my students to read.

Each book has a wiki-style page, called “Details.”  Here, anybody can make comments in various categories.  (Summary, Cast of Characters, Memorable Quotes, etc.)  I will ask my students to write a comment on the “Details” page after every class. 

I was hoping that Shelfari would provide a place for private comments, but this does not appear to be the case.  I have my hesitations about asking the students to comment on a wiki page; but then again, maybe it is a good way to encourage authentic writing.

There are two websites similar to Shelfari, and they allow for private comments.  They are Readernaut and Librarything.  However, Shelfari has the most aesthetic interface, so I will stick with it.

UFC

Every time my secondary English students have a class, I require them to read one chapter from a novel, then write on their blogs a summary of that chapter.

It is a derivative of my student-centred philosophy that the students are allowed to choose their reading material, as opposed to having me assign a single novel for everybody.  I think it important for students to enjoy the experience of reading and writing, and not feel like it is an onerous task.

One of my students asked if he could write a reaction to a magazine article.  I hesitantly agreed.  I would like to share his summary of the article, or rather, as he states, the articles.  It concerns the topic of UFC wrestling.

UFC 103 took place at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas. It was headlined by the main event bout between Rich ''Ace'' Franklin, and Vitor ''The Phenom'' Belfort. I didn't get the chance to watch UFC 103, so I read many articles describing it. I was impressed by some of the fight outcomes. First of all, I thought that Rich Franklin would of made short work of Vitor Belfort due to his high level, and continuous training compared to Vitor. But one variable which I didn't consider was that Vitor has changed training camps, and has restarted training seriously, with some of the top martial artists in the world. You see, when Vitor was only 19 years old, he concurred the light heavyweight division with ease, but due to many misshapennings in his personal life and career, he fell into depression and stopped training like he should of been thinking he had it all under his belt. For many years, his career just went downhill, and the young strong and lightning handed Vitor we used to know faded away. Unfortunately for “Ace”, the Vitor that showed up in the octagon that night appeared to be the young and feisty 19year old whom literally destroyed some of the most deadliest fighters in MMA history.

It brought a little smile to my face to read this student’s blog entry.  Personally, I do not know anything about UFC wrestling, and truthfully, it does not interest me; but you can tell from the tone of his essay that this student is passionate about UFC.  If I didn’t know any better, I would almost believe that he enjoyed writing and sharing his opinions.  I would wager, he enjoyed writing about UFC more than he would have enjoyed writing about they symbolism of the conch in “Lord of the Flies.”

Photo by deskounlmtd.net.