Lesson Plan: Writing a Diamante Poem

This handout is a great tool for teaching kids how to write a Diamante Poem.  Diamante poems are a great way to teach student about Synonyms and Antonyms and have a bit of fun in the process.  This lesson plan is suitable for students from years 3 - 10 and will easily fill one literacy session. 

You can download my handout here and also learn more about Diamante Poems at Readwritethink.org here.

Writing a Diamante Poem

Terrible math lessons Hollywood is teaching our kids

The two videos below take a look at the gross mathematical errors that are found in some of our biggest Hollywood Blockbusters. 

They might prove as a great starting point to a lesson by watching some of the sequences and then working through them as a class just to highlight how inaccurate some of these are.

If you know of any other great movies please let us know.

Bloom's iPad Taxonomy

Langwitches has recently just put together another taxonomy of the iPad.  It has some really great stuff in it.  For the full article click here.

Great tech support site for teachers and students

Tech Ease is a great resource for teachers and students to learn about computers and basic tech support.  It is is broken down into Mac, Windows, and accessibility uses.

Under each, there are subtopics such as using computers in the classroom, images, file sharing, chat, videos, email, hardware, the internet, and much more. There are ideas on using technology for accessibility with disabled students also.

Tech Ease is easy to navigate and has a huge amount of information available for educators. This is site you should definitely share with your colleagues and students.

Learn how to teach Palindrome's with 'Weird Al'

Weird Al is clearly my most cited musician in literacy classes, particularly when looking at poetry.  Last week our kids looked at using Palindromes in their poetry and Weird Al' delivered again with his rip off of Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues.

"Rats live on no evil Star"

Video to Teach about Personal Pronouns

This video does a great job teaching kids how to use personal pronouns by giving them a song that will really get stuck in their heads.  It is reallly quite effective with primary / elementary students but will be effective on students of all ages.

Everyday Maths for Grown-Ups

I very rarely promote books or products on Edgalaxy but I can personally and highly recommend this one by Kjartan Poskitt, after a parent in my grade gave me a copy to borrow.  As a result our school bought 10 to on sell in the office as it was just so practical.

Everyday Maths for Grown-ups is an excellent resource for teachers to give to parents to teach them how maths is taught in modern classrooms. And I recommend every school buying 10 or so copies to have in their office for parents to borrow or purchase.

Here is the speil from the publishers - but I can personallly say as a teacher it is a must have for confused parents.

Day-to-day life is full of scenarios where your skill with numbers is tested, whether it's dividing up your share of the restaurant bill, or working out whether you've been overcharged at the checkout. So many of us try to avoid these basic sums at all costs, waiting for someone else to step in with the answer; but "Everyday Maths for Grown-Ups" is the perfect solution! It includes chapters on: How to Check a Till Receipt Quickly; Long division; Multiplying and Dividing by 10, 100 or 1,000; Money and Percentages; Converting metres, Litres and Grams; and, Angles, Triangles and Trig. This book contains all the shortcuts, fun tricks and new approaches you need to tackle even complex calculations with confidence.

You can get it below via Amazon.  If you have any great recommendations we'd love to hear of them.

2 Solutions to writing lesson Plans on the iPad

Every week there seems to be some new teaching apps for mobile devices but not a great deal of them are aimed at writing lesson plans.  These two iOS apps aim to cover this area of the market.

GoClass

GoClass is a free iOS app and website that allows teachers to create lesson plans, annotate images, and more.  Also, the app interacts w/ the website to allow for student assessment while interacting w/ student devices in real-time.  Students can learn at their own pace w/ GoClass while interacting w/ the lessons and images.

iLesson Plans

Why carry lots of paper lesson plans around with when you can have all your notes on your iPad!

iLesson Plans not only allows you to create detailed Lesson Plans whilst on the move you can also:

•Keep a daily planner of which lesson are for which period
•Keep track of Classes
•Keep track of each Pupil
•Export your Lesson in PDF or Word Format
•Save your lesson plans to iTunes
•Save your Lesson Plans to Dropbox
•Send your Lesson Plans Via Email
•Add Hyperlinks to your Lesson Plans and open them on your iPad.
•Use Airplay to Mirror your lesson plans to the computer*
•App data backed up to iCloud (You can use multiple iPads)

iLesson Plans is suitable for any teacher from Primary to Universities.  Access it here.