Back in October I shared a few of my favorite videos from Vimeo, and mused about allowing your students to use them as visual writing prompts. The idea was simple. Rather than just give students a piece of text, or some script with which to base their creative writing, why not pull inspiration from another form of creative expression; digital media. To my delight, I actually got a few people that tried it! Daniela left a comment on the...

I recently helped facilitate a video conference between two 2nd grade classrooms that used monsters as a vehicle for improving descriptive writing. It was actually a quite humorous connection, as the students presented their self-created monstrosities to the other class, and then asked them to guess the adjectives that were used to help give the creature it’s physical appearance. Adjective-enhanced physical features that were...

Pssst! Don’t tell anyone, but I’m secretly becoming addicted to Vimeo, and videos like this one don’t do anything to help me cope with it. I’m a HUGE fan of finding short media to help illustrate a concept, inspire students, or challenge learners to try something they may never have attempted before. It’s rare that I can find a video that does all three, but I believe I’ve found one in this incredibly...

Are you a teacher that doesn’t currently incorporate writing on a regular basis in the classroom? Are you “too busy” to add yet another piece of cross-curricular requirements to your already overflowing plate? Guess what? Bud Hunt (aka @budtheteacher) is calling you out, and he’s got a posse…in the form of the Common Core Standards. I’ve been giving the Common Core a look through in the past few weeks,...