Edubloggers: Playing In The Big Leagues Now

So, I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I found it a bit scary to reach out and talk with other teachers about our practice. I decided to take this opportunity to hopefully get some advice on my practice from the more seasoned professionals out there. The first blog I commented on was The Nerdy Book Club. I immediately was intrigued by the title of this blog for two reasons:

A. I'm Nerdy! and..
B. A book club is something that I'd like to make central to my practice

This blog was a great find. Recently this blog posted on the top 10 ways to get middle school students involved in reading. Here's my response:

"Thank you for the ideas to help students get involved in reading! I'm a new teacher, and one of my goals as a teacher is to hopefully get students to become passionate about reading for fun. Currently I'm working with 11th grade students, and I'm wondering if anyone has had success with using these strategies in a high school classroom? Also, which strategy was the most effective? As a newer teacher I want to incorporate independent reading into my classroom, but I'm not 100% sure how I want to encourage independent reading. I can see a lot of these tactics working well with high school students, but I wanted to see what has worked best with older students.
Thank you again for the tips! Your insight is appreciated!" 

While writing my response I thought my blog comment would be a great opportunity to talk with seasoned teachers and how they can incorporate reading into their classroom. As I stated before, I'm a new teacher, so I thought that asking for advice would be a good place to enter the conversation because I don't have the same amount of classroom experience as the blogger. Currently my post is awaiting approval from the moderator, but I'm really hoping this post will give me the chance to get some great ideas to help me incorporate independent reading into my classroom!

Feel free to check out the blog! It's a great read!
Nerdy Book Club

Padlet Has Won Me Over!

Now that we've completed our Tech Tools in Use presentations I have to say that Padlet was my favorite tool that I plan on using in my classroom. Prior to the presentation I had never heard of Padlet before. What I learned is that it is a fantastic space to collect material for students and it is also visually appealing. I immediately thought that this tool would be great for my students and I really enjoyed the examples that the presenters provided for us. I really liked the idea of using Padlet for creating timelines because it makes all the information visual for the students and also interactive because students can click on each event to access another Padlet that is more specific to that point on the timeline. I can see potential with using this style of Padlet to give an overview of styles of literature over time.

I'd like to try and create a Padlet in "real time" with students. I can also see potential with Padlet when my students read novels that include many different characters. I know I have trouble with reading novels that include many different characters, so I think Padlet may have value in making a visual organizer for the students. The ability to create a Padlet within a Padlet (a sort of Padlet Inception) where we can classify characters and then create individual descriptions for those characters to hopefully prevent confusion. I think there could be value in doing this with students as we read a novel. Then, because Padlet is so easy to use and share, I can easily post this Padlet in a space that is accessible for the students as they are reading at home. I hope using this tool can help us easily answer questions like "Who is this character?" and "Why are they important?" as we continue with reading texts. I also find merit in the fact that the students will be building the character maps along with me because the students have helped construct it. I'm thinking of creating a lesson around this idea, and I'm hoping Padlet will be successfully incorporated into my lesson!

Does anybody else have any plans for incorporating Padlet into lessons? I'm curious to know what you're planning to do!