How can literacy harness energy and creativity

Be sure to build this into assessment rubrics. Discover personal opinions behind global issues. Started this year in high schools in the U. Students use the new perspectives they gained through online exchange to create collaborative productions and screen the media projects in their communities. Get started: Look for 'citizen journalist' reporters on the Internet.

They can often be found commenting on or breaking news about unfolding world events. Tap into global knowledge networks.

Participation in these networks enables students to develop cross-cultural understanding while addressing global issues, synthesizing information from multiple cultures and collaborating in global teams to responsibly build on existing knowledge as well as generate new knowledge. There are many online collaborative science projects leading the way.

Get started: Contact organizations that allow students to work together on global issues and projects. They offer pedagogical support for educators and engaging programming for students.

Engage a global audience through online publishing. These days, students should not only share their research and ideas through technology within a classroom or school, but also share their learning worldwide through online publishing tools and websites that reach a global audience.

To cover topics from global warming to the conflict in Iraq, CSI students are in constant dialogue—using a free blogging program—with student reporters in other countries, such as Bahrain, Belarus, Egypt, Poland, and Syria. They have also contributed to student newspapers around the world through the PEARL World Youth News Service, a partnership between iEARN and the Daniel Pearl Foundation that acts as an international wire service for publishing youth-produced news articles online and in student newspapers worldwide.

Get started: Publishing is as easy as starting a free blog using Blogger or WordPress and other similar programs. For a more structured—and more advanced—option, consider Oracle Foundation's ThinkQuest competition for students. Integrated global teams tackle world issues and publish research and recommendations for the world. Curriculum Enhancement: This project supports generating content for poems and sparking creativity and engagement. Media-Literacy Focus: Students learn adaptable digital production skills connected to literacy fundamentals.

They explore and build with an app, connect details in an image to generate text, and introduce elements of poetry. Takeaways: The backward plan from this project includes responsible use of classroom media, introduction to motor skills for operating the iPad, routines for working together, and basic operations through center time using academic apps.

Whole-class Padlet walls create stories of American history decade by decade using found news, commercials, political ads, and movies. Curriculum Enhancement: This project supports inquiry-driven historical research. Digital Skills : Students learn to find and embed media artifacts in a shared online space as they create screencast tours of the decades.

Media-Literacy Focus: Students learn how media messages affect the ways people see the real world as well as how they see themselves. Takeaways: Digital skills are in place, and students are analyzing the relationship between new and traditional media texts. They are also mindfully producing their own artifacts and reflecting on media bias, personal bias, and audience response. ELA students write a persuasive essay, then adapt it into documentary videos to express their perspective on community policing.

Screening the videos for police at a town hall can begin a face-to-face dialogue. Curriculum Enhancement: This project help students convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content. Digital Skills: Students learn to produce videos using iMovie , accessing found video and images connected to text.

Create class songs about topics they need to know, or use the music of singers like Hap Palmer and Jack Hartman. You might also borrow songs and games from coworkers. Songs are catchy, and children learn quickly from them.

When teaching about the properties of friction , use KS2 for interactive projects you can do in small groups or as a class using a smart board. You might ask your students slide down the hallway first in their socks, then barefoot, and have them journal about the different amounts of friction. When teaching phases of matter , drop some food coloring into beakers of cold and warm water and note the difference.

Then pour the contents of one beaker in a bag and put it in the freezer. The next day, compare the liquid bag with the solid chunk of ice and note differences. Use the ice from the above activity and talk about gravity. Stand on a chair and discuss what will happen if you drop the ice, and if it matters which way you drop it.

Let your students predict the possible outcomes. Survey your students at the beginning of the year. Get to know them and what they like. Then make a point of using their names, favorite foods, games, books, etc. People do better and learn more when working with things they like. As adults we know that we don't want to do something if it's not fun.

The same goes for kids. Have your students rely on each other as resources. For each table, pick a team leader to try answering his or her classmates' questions before they come to you for help. Pair your higher achievers with lower achievers to study sight words, letters or other skills. Have them read one another's writing to check for completion or suggest ideas before they come see you.

Use the Leap Frog Reader system. You can plug it into the computer to get student scores on activities, which will provide guidelines for what you need to work on. This is a great way to collect data! Have a "math problem of the day" journal to review skills in which your students scored low on assessments.

Put the problem on the board and have them copy it into their journals at the beginning of the day. You can take a minute or two after they have completed it to review the problem with the class. Check notebooks later for understanding. For those of you trying to figure out how you'll find the time to integrate all this into an already busy teaching day, here's some food for thought. It will take longer to teach a lesson three times than it will to teach it once using a little creativity.

Make time for creativity. Most of the above creative activities take only a few minutes to do. They also require very little prep time and cost very little money, if any. So go ahead -- be a risk taker and try at least one of these ideas this week.

I'm sure you won't regret it. As I said above, everyone has bad days, but overall my classroom is a happy place to be. It's like this because I use creativity to make learning fun. I live by these words that Dr. Ruth once said: "Live life every day like a turtle. So take risks every day.