#Digilit Sunday: Refresh
The year is winding down,
Data is accumulating,
Plans are being made,
How will you refresh?
Do you have a #TBR (To Be Read) stack of professional books?
Here’s my current stack of various stages from “want to read, to several chapters read, to must revisit the book.
Writers notebook,
A snippet here
A line there
Collecting ideas
Writing long
Developing some mentor texts.
What will you write?
One task of mine includes organizing and curating resources.
Still in development, this is a current draft.
Teaching,
Facilitating,
Learning,
and growing.
REFRESH!
What will you be doing?
I am currently in a Voxer book chat for Who’s Doing the Work, that is so incredibly amazing (as well as two other Voxer groups). I will be at TCRWP in June for the Writing and Reading Institute. I will continue to be part of #TWT, #TCRWP, and #G2Great chats. I hope to see you refreshing digitally in the Twitterverse, Blogosphere or VoxerWorld!
And, oh, yes, I will REFRESH with family . . .
my grandson’s birthday party to celebrate ONE year,
a nephew’s graduation, and
my daughter-in-law’s birthday!
#TheEdCollabGathering
This post is shared with Margaret Simon in DigiLit Sunday here at Margaret’s request to share our reflections on #TheEdCollabGathering.
It was a sunny golden April Saturday. Maybe a tad bit windy as winds up to 50 mph were reported in Des Moines. But no rain . . . no snow . . . perfect day for yard work, gardening or The Ed Collaborative Gathering. In Iowa it’s toooooo early for outside plants to escape frost so it was easy to log on to the computer for a free day of professional development provided by Chris Lehman and friends! Here’s the schedule.
What interests you?
Theme for the day:
Embrace your passion, your curiosity and your dreams
and let your students do the same!
Take Aways:
Opening session with Smokey Daniels
and Sara Ahmed
From Dr. Mary Howard – Session 3, # 11
and Linda Hoyt
“Be picky, picky, picky!”
“Be planful”
What this means?
The teacher needs to model passion, curiosity and the entire “quest to learn” EVERY DAY.
The student is the center of the learning. Not standards, not curriculum.
Students and teachers thrive on choices. (Consider the 10,000 hits on #TheEdCollabGathering yesterday. How many teachers were REQUIRED to be there?)
Learning is joyful when it involves passion and curiosity.
The depth of learning increases for students and teachers with choice in exploration, demonstration and inspiration.
The teacher needs to be thoughtful and have every action well planned. That doesn’t mean serendipitous learning doesn’t have a place. In fact, with the student as a focus, all learning will be totally relevant for the students. With a plan, the teacher will know exactly how much time can be freed up.
Did you attend?
What did you learn?
Sometimes learning takes thought and reflection. There were other ideas I heard yesterday that I need to continue to think about . . .
Other posts/resources about the day:
Writing About Reading: #WabtR
DigiLit Sunday
Tuesday night at 7:30 pm (EDT), you may want to check out the twitter chat Writing About Reading (#WabtR).
For the past week about 20 of “us” have been writing about reading. The text: A Handful of Stars but you can substitute any title and NO, you don’t have to have read the book to join the chat!
What: On-line Book Club
Organizer: Necessary! Ours wa Julieanne Harmatz!
Process: Google form to solicit members
Agreement: Read 4 chapters each day, respond to the chapters on google docs for each set of chapters, return to the documents to reread and respond to fellow readers, and participate in a chat at the end.
As a reader, I learned:
- That I hated to stop reading to jot notes or record ideas.
- That stopping to “record” meant that I had to reread to re-ground myself in the text.
- That stopping at pre-set chapter ends was not comfortable when it was in the middle of story action/conflict (the pageant).
- That I had many questions about how students responded to these same tasks/requests.
- That it was absolutely imperative that I have CHOICE in my purpose for reading.
- That when I “got behind” in reading and writing, I panicked and felt like I had let the entire group down.
- That I could not read the other comments until I had posted my own ideas.
- We all had many, many different tools that we used to process our thinking while reading.
- That I REALLY hated to stop reading to jot notes or record ideas and even resorted to recording voice messages so that I could continue to read.
- That I wondered about WHERE and WHEN I would do this work (Writing about Reading) out in the real world (Is it a transferable skill?)
- That rereading for a purpose was fun and something that I often do in real life.
As a writer, I learned:
- That I had to reread in order to write about the story, the characters, golden quotes or my thinking about reading,
- That I had to redraft my thoughts and that also required thinking time.
- That it was easy to comment on other’s thoughts, but I felt extremely vulnerable when sharing my own thoughts.
- That it was VERY, VERY, VERY easy to QUIT writing!
- That even adults respond differently to reading: Margaret – a poem below; Julieanne – a game “Capture the Quote”; many-writing long about a jot, written notes, and drawings; and me – a digital write around based on an image.
Resource - Full 