Golden Apple
By Diana Knudson
The new Summer Institute is up on our website with a line-up of great classes where you can get renewal units or college credit. Our instructors work to align what they do to our Montana Standards for curriculum and instruction. Hope to see all of you this summer. If you have not taken a class and had the opportunity to meet other teachers in the coop and collaborate with them and your instructor, please try us on for size. We offer this huge event for you and work hard to find classes so that everyone has choices.
I am always looking for writing ideas that all teachers can use. An article in the April Ed Leadership journal has an article called “Capturing the Flash of Writing.” Students use digital cameras to capture their world and then write about it. Some examples included kindergarten students taking picture of animals on a field trip and then writing and sharing with their parents. Third graders took pictures of real-world examples of perimeter like the border of the playground and then used those images to write definitions of perimeter. 5th graders snapped images of people or things important to them. Then they wrote memoirs, narratives and rich descriptions of important people and places in their lives. Take a minutes and write down 5 ideas where students could use a digital camera to step into writing. Argument is a big focus in the writing standards. How could students use a digital camera to set up their issue to then support with a written argument? Let me know any ideas you might have or share if you have already done this.
Have a great spring. We all need an abundance of rays of sunshine to brighten up our outlook after this long winter.