As we discussed in our webinar on January 5, many schools in Maine are beginning to study and unpack the Common Core State Standards and are taking preliminary steps to align their curriculum. The English Language Arts standards are of particular interest to most teachers because they include literacy standards for other content areas. In the January 5 webinar we began a discussion of the reading standards, how the CCSS defines text complexity, and the prevalence of digital text in our MLTI classrooms where much of the reading students do is from a screen. We then explored ways teachers can find and evaluate online reading material and collect it into digital anthologies that will give students experiences with close reading of both literary and informational text. If you missed this webinar, you can find links to the recordings of the 3:15 and 7:15 sessions on our Webcasts Archives page.
CC BY-NC 2.0 by Ken-ichi (Flickr)
In this week’s webinar, we will begin to look at the CCSS for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects, Grades 6-12. We will start with the reading standards and take a close look at how our technology supports students in achieving those standards, and we will investigate some strategies students can use in close reading of digital text. We will explore and demonstrate how software tools on the MLTI devices and online tools can be used before, during, and after reading to help students connect with, interpret, and use the text they are reading. Some tools we will look at include online surveys for anticipation guides, markup tools in Preview and NoteShare for annotating text, OmniGraffle for creating graphic organizers, and much more.
I hope you can join us on Thursday, February 2 at 3:15 or 7:15. Please click on the Webcasts tab to register. We have upgraded to a new registration system, allowing you to register directly in Adobe Connect, making the whole webinar process smoother and easier! If you have any questions, please contact Juanita Dickson. Click on the time you wish to participate in and you will be directed to an online registration form. Please type your email address carefully as all information will be sent to that address. After registering you will receive a confirmation email with a log in link – please use that link to log into the webinar prior to the start time.
