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= LITERACY4ALL =

Purpose
It is my hope that you will find something here worthwhile or let me know if there is anything else that you would like me to work on for you.

General Resources
Below I listed some resources to help direct your focus in using the anchors.

** Anchor Powerpoint **
In this Powerpoint, I created an itnerface with which you can search the index for a specific anchor and eligible content to see what the PSSA questions for each anchor actually look like. It may be useful in helping us remain conscious of the language and focus of the test. I think you will be surprised by how much they just make sense and sound like the types of questions you want to ask anyway.

** Adopt an Anchor Spreadsheet **
I put this spreadsheet together to account for the anchors that each department seemed to be covering pretty consistently. They should be anchors that are a reasonable fit for you and what your content allows. I think the goal here has to be that, as we are looking at these, we realize that not all of our kids know how to do this stuff. This means that we are going to need to have some tools at our disposal to scaffold those deficiencies. If you look this over and check it against a report from Performance Tracker you will be able to tell which anchors need a little work in your classes. Next, I would take a look at the type of questions that fit those anchors (as found in the PPT above) and try to do some work in subtle ways (opening work, framing a homework question or a test question around them, etc.) If you are looking for something more explicit, look below or let me know.

Before you begin looking closely at strategies that are tailored to specific skill sets, I want to just suggest that you consider implementing before, during and after reading strategies surrounding your reading assignments. A small toolbox of these can go a long way and can do wonders to help focus students on what they are reading. Without them, many times students can feel confused or purposeless when they are reading which will make it harder for them to continue to do so. The websites below have a great set of resources and explanations for these type of strategies. Once in the site, just click on the name of any strategy or tool that interests you and most of them will take you to a page with further explanation and examples.

Before/During/After Reading Strategies

.[|Other Reading and Writing Tools]

By reading skill/topic
Main Idea/Supporting Details

Inferences/Drawing Conclusions

Text Organization

Fact/Opinion

Vocabulary

Purpose of Text

Summary

Text Connections (the ability to make connections between two or more separate texts)

Graphics and Charts

Symbolism

Tone

Departments
I set up spaces for each of the departments below where we can begin to compile resources that we find. I wrote these up to drop an idea out there for some of the anchors that each department indicated that they covered. I know it's not much now, but I think we can probably put a pretty great resource collection together with each other's help. You will also find a space to share great resources and ideas that you find.

English Social Studies Science Consumer Science Health and Physical Education Business Education Technology Education World Languages Art Music

Technology
As I find resources or they are passed on to me, I would like to include a link with a brief explanation of the functions and uses of the tools and resources out there.

[|Google Docs] The application, created by Google, offers the ability to create presentations, spreadsheets, or word processed documents on the Internet. It is easy to use and mirrors the appearance and functions of Microsoft Office Applications. In addition to the basic uses, it also allows for students and teachers to share the above applications and collaborate on their work, resulting in the completion of a single product. It offers great opportunities for collaborative assignments, peer reviewing and editing, and paperless monitoring of student work.

Wikispaces You are here. This site allows for an easy web publishing forum. Teachers can use this as a place for students to create a product that reflects their own learning that will provide for an audience and real world publishing situation. Students can also collaborate on creating shared information resources that are directly or indirectly related to the content within the class.

[|Edublog] This blogging site is directly intended to be used by teachers and students. There are an array of opportunities to take advantage of the loose definitions of blogging to allow students to reflect and comment of any variety of topics.

[|Teacher Tube] As many of us know, lots of great videos can be found on TeacherTube and YouTube. Another consideration is to have students create and generate effective short videos to teach understood content to a wide audience. Both sites monitor the number of times a video has been viewed, which is kind of exciting to see.