Literacy graffiti tool

If you had to print your work, scan it and then upload it to Flickr. I will provide examples of work posted to Flickr in the next few posts.

Each of your pictures on Flickr should be tagged either "literary graffiti activity Gatsby," literary graffiti activity Frost," or literary graffiti activity Sandburg" don't forget the quotation marks so that we can easily find one another's works online.

Posted by Lisa at PM. No comments:. Newer Post Home. Subscribe to: Post Comments Atom. But why do we develop habits? A habit is a behavior that we repeat over and over because we experience something positive from it. Reading logs do not develop lifelong readers. It is the act of reading itself — the entertainment to be had, the information gained, and the subsequent socialization we experience — that keeps us coming back for more. So how can we rethink this assessment tool, so that the accountability we place on students to become more regular readers augments instead of detracts from the experience?

Our 4th and 5th grade teachers all attended a one day workshop with Donalyn Miller last fall. Reading graffiti boards is an idea suggested by her. The teacher puts up black butcher paper. He or she then models how to write favorite lines from their book they are reading on the board.

Metallic markers make the writing pop out. During my regular walkthroughs, I enjoyed watching this graffiti board expand with student contributions. This tool for sharing led to students having more authentic peer conversations with each other about what they were reading. It also served well as a natural way to recommend titles. My son hated filling out his reading log as a first grader this past school year.

It was like pulling teeth, as they say. Because he liked technology just like his dad: , we tried blogging about his reading instead. We used KidBlog as our writing tool. Initially, it was still the same process of forcing him to respond to his reading. But once he started getting comments from family members, such as his grandmother, he became more motivated to share his reading life.

We hit pay dirt when one of his favorite authors, Johnathan Rand, posted a comment on his blog post about his book series Freddy Fernortner: Fearless First Grader.

After a discussion in the comments, including many questions from my son, I suggested hosting a Skype chat between the author and his classmates. Before the Skype chat, the classroom teacher had the students suggest several questions for Mr.

When they finally did connect with him, students had the opportunity to come up and speak with the author, each with a question in hand. This included one student who last semester was in Reading Recovery. In another one of our 4th grade classrooms, a teacher had discovered Educreations. This is a simple web-based screencasting tool that can be used on iPads and other mobile devices. Students in this classroom still had reading expectations, but they were to create a book trailer for a title they had recently read.

Book trailers are visual and audio summaries of titles, with the purpose of convincing someone else to read that book. The students in this classroom regularly shared their creations with their peers by mirroring the content onto the whiteboard.

I was told that one of the more challenging students in this classroom, who refused to do much of any other work, was highly motivated to create these book trailers. I realize my repeated question is rhetorical. The reactions, products, and feelings toward reading that I listed would not have occurred with the outdated practice of paper-based reading logs.

There needs to be an authentic audience for the responses students are asked to produce about their reading. This audience creates a more profound purpose for these types of assessments and accountability tasks. What is your opinion on reading logs? In what ways have you augmented how students respond to their independent reading? How do you know it is working, in that your students are becoming lifelong readers? Please share in the comments. Oscar Wilde! What was discovered corroborated with what we suspected: Engagement in the classroom was scored lower than other areas of instruction within the Danielson Framework for Teaching, our professional evaluation tool.

According to a reading profile survey administered this fall, students had less positive attitudes about talking and sharing about their reading lives in class, compared to the value they place on reading and how they view themselves as readers. In my regular instructional walks, group discussion and higher order questioning which leads to authentic student conversations was not observed as frequently as other tenets of literacy engagement, such as choice, authenticity, and feedback.

Starting Where We Began I often hear education described as a pendulum. Materials and Technology. Graffiti journal for each student Large sheet of butcher paper or newsprint for each group Crayons and markers Links to online writing labs with suggestions for ways to develop essays.

A few are suggested in the Websites section. Elements of Fiction. Prepare minilessons on the elements of fiction setting, plot, character, point of view, theme, symbol. This Elements of Fiction resource provides interactive examples of each element that students can refer to. The class should have chosen a novel and be well into it when this lesson is introduced.

Student Objectives. Students will indicate personal preferences by voting on a novel for class study from a teacher-provided list. Sessions 1—2: Reading and Journaling. Hand out the graffiti journal and the Graffiti Wall handout, and give students an overview of the project. Introduce the Literary Graffiti student interactive either through an LCD projector or at each of their computer stations if available. Allow them to practice doodling online if they have access to computers.

Review the elements of fiction with students. Give students approximately five class periods to read the novel and complete their graffiti journals and their work using the online interactive. Some reading will have to be done outside of class. Sessions 3—4: Constructing Group Graphics. When students have completed reading and journaling, have them meet in groups to construct their graffiti graphic.

Assign each group a different section of the novel. Students use their journals and printouts from the Literary Graffiti tool to discuss their section of the novel and decide which graphics, words, and quote will best explain their section of the novel. Each student must be represented on the graphic. Each element of fiction that is developed in their section must be covered on the graphic. Using butcher paper or newsprint, and crayons or markers, groups create their graffiti graphic.

Session 5: Publication and Summation.