the article of the week sounds good. i found something recently that i believe will be potentially useful for building background knowledge in class.
has anyone tired the daily edits from education world (educationworld.com)? what about factmonster.com? the daily edits consist of 4 sentences with 10 errors, spelling, punctuation, verb tense, etc. students can do this as a starter. but the neat thing about this is that the sentences actually provide students with factual information about history, science, technology, etc. it isn't just incorrect sentences. check it out at the website. i'm planning to try this in august. still in educationworld.com, type in fact monster. students have to find information within the fact monster encylopedia. what's really cool about this is that students learn how to search for information, look up key words, figure out the topic, and skim, many of the skills i try to teach while using informational texts. i'm going to give this a try as well. we'll see how it goes. has anyone done either of these two things? also, i'm still struggling with the vocabulary issue. like many of you, i enjoy working with words, and it's so good for the kids. but if students are reading different books, and the words need to be contextually based, then how do i come up with a list that will benefit everyone? i've tried getting students to generate thier own list from their own reading, but it just doesn't work out the way i want it to. any ideas on a good list to begin with for a daily word? one last word--all this "5 min. a day" stuff is really starting to take a bite out of my 50 minute reading class. caroline 7th grade reading dalton ga _______________________________________________ The Literacy Workshop ListServ http://www.literacyworkshop.org To unsubscribe or modify your membership please go to http://literacyworkshop.org/mailman/options/lit_literacyworkshop.org. Search the LIT archives at http://snipurl.com/LITArchive
