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Keyboarding skills online

From hanging around the computer lab at our school I've learned that my third grader is learning to use the home row when typing. No more hunt and peck for her! How times have changed. I learned the home row in high school, in business class, using an IBM Selectric.

Kids need keyboarding skills, and both my girls could use some extra practice. The recommendation for early elementary kids is 5-10 minutes a night of practice. I wanted to see what's out there to help develop skill in a fun way.

Dance Mat Typing, sponsored by the BBC, was the most fun site I found. The goat's accent (he's Scottish!) may be a little distracting, but overall this one is fun, and was presented without ads. This is pretty much what I hoped for out of my search.

Learn 2 Type for kids (requires free registration) starts with touch typing basics. I didn't like the interface of this program at all. Ads run on the right column, and it really isn't designed for kids. There were no step-by-step instructions, and even though I typed my home keys accurately, my only option was to 'Try again.' No thanks.

The Keyboard Playground includes some kids typing games like Alpha Drop and Dino Kids Trash Typer. Typing practice is interspersed with ads. Just okay.

Free Typing Game offers very drill-oriented lessons, nothing fancy about the presentation, and I think most of the lessons teach two keys at a time. Sort of boring.

Learning Games for Kids had some free games that were pretty fun, although not many directions on how to play the games. I'm sure kids would catch on more quickly than I did!

So, overall, a bit disappointing! I guess we'll be Dance Matting for awhile. Please share any sites you know of that I missed.

Share a Story Shape a Future 2010

Don't miss a day of this year's Share a Story — Shape a Future 2010 Blog Tour. This year the theme is "It takes a village to raise a reader." Each day you can start your "tour" from the homepage of the blog tour.

The tour runs from March 8 — 12, 2010.

The homepage of the blog tour outlines the schedule (excerpted below), and includes many links and read aloud resources. Enjoy!

Day 1 — The Many Faces of Reading
Topics of the day will encompass the relationship aspect of helping children learn to read: parent-child and teacher-parent partnerships, literacy outreach; and libraries, to name a few.

Day 2 — Literacy My Way/Literacy Your Way
Creative literacy in all its forms (writing, art, computers) will be the topic of the day.

Day 3 — Just the Facts: The Nonfiction Book Hook
This is the day for exploring the different genres of nonfiction (biography and memoir, science, nature, math, etc), as well as the use (or not) of historical fiction.

Day 4 — Reading Through the Ages: Old Faves & New Classics
Topics include "boy books" and "girl books," as well as newer titles that fit with some classics we loved as kids.

Day 5 — Reading for the Next Generation
Join us as we talk about how to approach reading when your interests and your child's don't match. It may be that you don't like to read but your child does, how to raise the reader you're not, and dealing with the "pressure" of feeling forced to read.

Homework blues

Do your kids ever feel this way? This was written by a 7 year old, a student facing many years of homework.

Homework has been around a long time, and has had its supporters and critics since the very beginning. Critics say homework cuts into quality family time and leaves students with no down time or time to pursue non-school interests. Proponents believe that homework teaches responsibility and provides important time to reinforce what is taught during the day.

The research on homework has produced mixed results, and it's clear that additional, carefully designed research is needed. The little research that has been done suggests this: homework doesn't help students who don't do it, but very likely does help students who actually complete their assignments. Not too surprising.

An article from Today's Parent suggests that the real homework issue is the quality of the homework, not the quantity (although many parents and students take issue with quantity too!)

I think the quality vs. quantity issue is it for me. It's the every day, yearlong slog "read and record the title" type of reading log and the "write 5 sentences a day" writing journal that really get to me. On both, there's little feedback from the teacher and little to no individualization of the assignment. Once assigned in September, the same assignment and expectations exist in May. I think homework like this causes kids to form negative attitudes about reading and writing that don't serve them well as learners.

I don't think homework should be abolished all together (as some do) but I do think it needs to be more carefully considered and planned. What do you think?

Teaching persuasive writing

Kids really know how to lobby for something they want. Teachers and parents can harness this talent and turn young kids into writers who can write to persuade.

The first step is to find something that is important to a child or a group. Is it recess? A dessert after dinner? A sleep over?

Once the important privilege is chosen, have the child (or class) start to list reasons why they should be allowed this privilege. "Just because," and "because I like it" quickly become hollow reasons. Students can work together to generate at least three good reasons to support an argument.

Then, have students do some research to gather facts or examples that support their reasons.

Finally, students can wrap up their persuasive argument by summarizing their position.

Need additional resources on the topic? Here are some good ones I found:

From Writing Fix, here's a lesson that uses the mentor text Otto Runs for President in conjunction with the RAFT strategy. In this other persuasive writing lesson, students assume to the role of a talking fruit or vegetable. Pretending that there's a "Fruit/Vegetable of the Year" election, the students will create a campaign speech that explains why their fruit/veggie is the best candidate for the job.

Here's a list of persuasive words and phrases to get your students started.

This lesson from ReadWriteThink uses the Beverly Cleary book Emily's Runaway Imagination as the springboard for kids to write letters to a librarian urging the addition of certain titles to the library. A Persuasion Map Planning Sheet guides students through steps similar to what I outlined above.

Sophisticated words in the classroom

The vocabulary section of the Reading Rockets site contains lots of great resources and information about vocabulary instruction. Thanks to good research, it's now clear that teachers can grow kids' vocabularies through (1) a careful selection of words to teach, and (2) instructional routines that provide practice with new words in multiple settings.

February 2010's Reading Teacher contains The Vocabulary-Rich Classroom: Modeling Sophisticated Word Use to Promote Word Consciousness and Vocabulary Growth (Lane and Allen). The authors describe elementary classrooms in which the teachers use several techniques to increase students' word knowledge through explicit and implicit strategies.

The authors describe how Ms. Barker (a kindergarten teacher) started with familiar words (e.g., the kids knew happy, so the teacher began using cheerful and delighted) and then moved to more classroom-specific terms (e.g., starting with "passing out the paper" to "distributing the paper"). Tables 1, 2, and 3 list sophisticated words related to specific content areas, and words teachers can use when discussing classroom behavior and during classroom routines. From Table 1, walking in line might provide an opportunity to use words like file, halt, linger, or swiftly. Group time might provide an opportunity to use words such as deliberate, express and verbalize.

Clearly, this type of incidental use of interesting words isn't sufficient for all vocabulary learning. Children also learn words through careful, explicit instruction built over time. And while the sophisticated word lists in the paper worked for that K teacher, other teachers may find that they need to create their own meaningful word lists based on the kids they teach.

Snow day sanity....not!

Here in Virginia, we're being absolutely pummeled by winter weather. Our area got 20 inches over the weekend, Tuesday night brought another 5, and today brings wind gusts of 30 miles per hour. The kids have missed 9 of the last 13 days of school, and we're all starting to lose it a little bit.

The whole East coast is dealing with the same weather. I think what we've gotten pales in comparison to what our friends in the Midwest deal with every year. But, sheesh! When you're not used to this, it's pretty tough! I've never been more grateful for power and my neighbor's four wheel drive truck.

We're sledded, snow-forted, and hot chocolated out. We've written (and got bored with) a draft of a newspaper, watched our media diary numbers soar to unknown proportions, and reread the third and fourth Harry Potter books.

Misery loves company, and I'm not alone blogging about being at home due to snow. Here are some blog posts and sites I thought you might enjoy. And with all this time on your hands, you may actually be able to read a few! Stay safe and warm! And, as a friend assured me this morning, there are daffodils and tulips budding under all this the snow.

• Staying sane during snow days, from Motherlode at The Washington Post


• Being snowed in with young kids tests parents' creativity also from The Washington Post


• Family Fun's ideas for a Snow Day Party


• Indoor Snow Day Activities including scarf jumping, a winter dressing relay, and indoor blanket forts!

Read all about it! We're writing a newspaper

My kids are home from school, again! We've had strange winter weather here in Virginia, with a huge snow fall in December (27 inches!), flash flooding that closed the schools in early January, and then another 9 inches of snow late last week. The kids have been home. A lot! And they're getting bored.

Yesterday they came up with the idea to write their own newspaper. Always willing to take on a literacy related project with neighborhood kids, we brainstormed various "news stories" to include.

They came up with the following list:

• A summary of the day's sledding down the neighborhood Big Hill
  
• Sledding do's and don'ts
  
• A recipe for hot chocolate (a surefire winner with marshmallows and whipped cream)
  
• A jokes and riddles section (guess whose idea that was?)
  
• A winter day word search (kids love a word search, but should teachers?)

It's turning into quite a project. Their current plan is to use ReadWriteThink's Printing Press to create the newspaper. Anna's working with Puzzlemaker to make the word search. The other cul-de-sac kids are off drafting their own columns.

Stay tuned! If the newspaper actually goes to "print," I'll post it here.