Digital citizenship and responsibility: Real life application in the newsroom

Advising students that are working with an online publication opens up all of the issues discussed in week 4.  I struggle to make sure my students do not use any images especially that are not public domain.

One of the resources I have used with my class is below:
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/film-festival-digital-citizenship

I have attended many conventions and I marvel at the way that some school newspaper are using social media and teaching their students to be responsible with those tools.  These papers are teaching not only their staff members but all students how to be responsible citizens and to access information.  One school I have watched is below.  They have established an RSS feed and promote their paper on facebook

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/film-festival-digital-citizenship

There are many others that do a great job as well.

http://mvhsoracle.com/

Using formative assessment on the go

All English teachers struggle to teach grammar to students who are tuned out. One of the more difficult examples of this is verbals in the ninth grade curriculum.  As I struggle to get students to simply identify the verb of the sentence it is hard to move on to the next level where students are applying their understanding and using verbs in new ways.

I approached this concept differently this year and used formative assessments as I went.  The results made me very happy.  By the time we took a test on the concept most students got 100% or only missed one question.

Our Literacy Coaches provided us with a list similar to this but this list includes many of the activities I used as we spent three days on verbals and one day reviewing verbs.

I also used a pre-test to allow those students that could identify verbs to move on and complete a pre-unit activity that would lay the foundation for the concept of verbals.

http://www.isbe.net/common_core/pdf/da-form-asmt-chart.pdf