Online Cartoon Creator

This was my first time using Toondoo.  I used it for an assignment and had to play around with a little to figure out how it works.  It was fun and I really think my students would think so too.

Figurative Language Resources Slidecast

Here, I have used Slideshare and compiled resources to aid in teaching the following topics: metaphors, similes, hyperbole, personification, and idioms.  These resources are geared towards 8th grade, but could certainly used for others.  There are videos, interactives, games, lessons, worksheets and quizzes.  One stop shop for teaching Figurative language!
Katko's Figurative Language Slidecast

Propaganda Lessons~Middle School

Here is my first Wiki...it has propaganda lessons applied to internet use.
Propaganda in the Information Age

More resources

Some of these resources are linked earlier on this blog, but here is a Prezi with links to 10 great classroom tools:
http://prezi.com/63wghirniac7/katkos-10-best-uses-of-the-internet-in-the-classroom/

Diigo, anyone?

This is a GREAT way to network and share resources!
http://www.diigo.com/user/salynkatko

Mini-project

The 8th grade students in my co-teach class just finished reading The Outsiders.  I had never read it before and fell in love with it as I read it with my class.  However, we are in countdown to TCAP mode, so my co-teacher and I needed to hit as many birds as we could with the one stone we were holding.  Literature was the area we scored the lowest on per the latest assessment, so I thought about the way Penny Kittle weaved writing and reading together in her class.  I looked back in her book, Write Beside Them, for some strategies to put into place.  I determined what I needed to focus on and decided to implement quick writes to help accomplish the goal.
I looked at the learning objectives and created topics to satisfy the requirements.  This is how I organized the quick writes:
     
        Sub-category                  Quick write prompt

Strategies that work from ICL7304

I wanted to share a couple strategies I've gained from this class and used successfully.  The first is the "three stars and a wish".  This is such a simple way to have students provide feedback, and I didn't even have to pull any teeth to get them to participate fully!  The second is the "music in my heart" activity I learned from Kittle's book.  I did this activity in one class period, and learned that next time I will break it down into three days of mini-lessons.  The first day, I will have students create a list of approximately 10 songs that trigger an emotion for them.  The second day, I will have them draw their heart and fill it with the song titles and illustrations that go along with them.  The third day, I will have them write the story of a memory related to one of the songs in the heart.  Doing all of this in on class period with my 8th graders in a co-teach setting was difficult, but the students really had fun with it.  I think splitting it up would provide students more time to focus on the writing part of it.  Above is a picture of one of my student's hearts from class.