Last week on the Free Technology for Teachers Facebook page I shared the twenty day blogging challenge created by Kelly Hines. I decided to share it here as well to give the challenge a little more attention. The challenge, which does not have to be completed in twenty consecutive days, contains twenty blog post prompts for teachers. To help teachers support each other in this challenge, Kelly created this form through which teachers can submit and share their blogs and Twitter IDs.
Applications for Education
As I've written in the past, most recently on my new blog Worms In the Fridge, the act of sitting down to write a blog post is a good exercise in thinking and reflecting on your practice. One of the obstacles to blogging that some people express to me is, "I don't know what to write about." Kelly's twenty day blogging challenge gives you plenty of ideas to run with.
Showing posts with label reflective writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reflective writing. Show all posts
Monday, January 6, 2014
Friday, February 10, 2012
Character Scrapbook - A Tool for Student Reflections on Stories
Scholastic's Character Scrapbook provides a nice template that elementary school students can use to write about and reflect on the characters in their favorite stories. The template is quite simple to use. Students enter the name of a story and the name of their favorite character on the first page. On the next pages students list ten attributes of the character. The Character Scrapbook also allows students to create pictures of their favorite characters.
As you can see in the image above, Scholastic's Character Scrapbook doesn't limit students to human characters. Students can write about and create images of animal characters too.
Applications for Education
Scholastic's Character Scrapbook could be a great tool for getting students to think about their favorite stories. The Character Scrapbook has an easy print option so that you can print and display all of your students' works in your classroom.
As you can see in the image above, Scholastic's Character Scrapbook doesn't limit students to human characters. Students can write about and create images of animal characters too.
Applications for Education
Scholastic's Character Scrapbook could be a great tool for getting students to think about their favorite stories. The Character Scrapbook has an easy print option so that you can print and display all of your students' works in your classroom.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Teachers Interviewing Teachers - Reflective Practice
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Image Credit: Rusty Sheriff |
Applications for Education
Teachers interviewing teachers would provide a forum that stimulates reflection on our classroom practices. This could be done as an exercise in a staff meeting or department meeting. Develop a set a interview questions, but feel free to go off-script as necessary, and have teachers actually conduct interviews with each other. The interview doesn't necessarily have to appear on the web to be a meaningful exercise. In fact, in some cases it might be best to not have it appear on the web because some teachers may be reluctant to share their true thoughts on the web.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Contribute to the National Gallery of Writing

Applications for Education
Creating a local gallery for your class to contribute to the National Gallery of Writing could be a good way provide your students with an authentic audience for their work.
Here are some related items that may be of interest to you:
Essay Map - Step by Step Help Constructing Essays
Writing Den - Writing Tips
Animated and Narrated Grammar Glossary
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Guess the Wordle and Summer Vacation Wordles
Wordle is a good tool for creating visual representations of the most commonly used words in a document or on a website. I've featured Wordle on this blog twice in the past. You can read those previous posts about Wordle here and here.
This morning I came across a new wiki called Guess the Wordle. Three times a week Guess the Wordle will post a new Wordle. Then based on the Wordle students can guess what the topic of the Wordle is. Guess the Wordle could be a fun warm-up activity to use with students.
While looking over Guess the Wordle I had a new (to me) thought about using Wordle in the classroom. Writing stories about summer vacation is an assignment that teachers commonly give at the beginning of the school year. This year, when you give that assignment have students create a Wordle when they are done writing their stories. The Wordles created from the stories could be used as a reflection tool by students and yourself to see what things from the summer vacation really stand out in a student's mind.
This morning I came across a new wiki called Guess the Wordle. Three times a week Guess the Wordle will post a new Wordle. Then based on the Wordle students can guess what the topic of the Wordle is. Guess the Wordle could be a fun warm-up activity to use with students.
While looking over Guess the Wordle I had a new (to me) thought about using Wordle in the classroom. Writing stories about summer vacation is an assignment that teachers commonly give at the beginning of the school year. This year, when you give that assignment have students create a Wordle when they are done writing their stories. The Wordles created from the stories could be used as a reflection tool by students and yourself to see what things from the summer vacation really stand out in a student's mind.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Language Arts Links You Might Have Missed
This is the sixth installment of my "Links You Might Have Missed" series. This set of links features Language Arts resources. The previous installments of this series featured links to resources in the areas of Math, Science, Geography, Digital Presentations, and Google Earth.
Two Sources of Writing Prompts
Three Reflective Journal Forms
The Imagination Prompt Generator
Writing Fix - Writing Prompts
Creative Writing Help
Hemingway Animated
The Grapes of Wrath - Free Full Length Movie
Save the Words, Adopt a Word
Ten Resources for Preventing and Detecting Plagiarism
Save 20% on all books & DVDs from National Geographic!
Two Sources of Writing Prompts
Three Reflective Journal Forms
The Imagination Prompt Generator
Writing Fix - Writing Prompts
Creative Writing Help
Hemingway Animated
The Grapes of Wrath - Free Full Length Movie
Save the Words, Adopt a Word
Ten Resources for Preventing and Detecting Plagiarism
Save 20% on all books & DVDs from National Geographic!
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Three Reflective Journal Forms Found on Docstoc

Reflective journal - Get more College Essays
Applications for Education
These forms vary in complexity with the one above being appropriate for elementary school and middle school use and the others being suited for older students.
Docstoc, as well as the similar Scribd service, is a good place to find a wide variety of outline and flow chart forms to be used as teaching materials.
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