Teaching Speaking

One aspect of teaching Language Arts is teaching speech writing and rhetoric skills. When you're doing that, why not have your students learn from the best? This site has the audio to 100 of the most famous and popular speeches in American history, including Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, and JFK's Cuban Missle Crisis Address. Most speeches include the audio for the full speech- you can play these in your classroom to teach writing to elicit emotion, pace, inflection, and overall how to deliver a powerful speech. This can be a great way to merge history and language arts curriculum as well.

YouTube inspiration and instruction

Here are a couple of quick and fun links I wanted to share with you about the joys and benefits of YouTube in education...

This link sends you to a collection of some of the best YouTube videos for teachers. There are instructional videos to show your class, videos to instruct YOU on how to do various things with and for your class, as well as some videos that are just mean to inspire you or make you laugh :)

This article has a very easy to understand description of various Web 2.0 tools, including YouTube, and the benefits of using them in the classroom.

YouTube isn't as controlled as other sites such as TeacherTube so you obviously need to screen all videos before sharing with your students, and take into consideration if the video is violating any copyright laws. However, if you can get past both of those roadblocks, it can be a great way to engage your students!

Social Networking Sites

I came across a very interesting article by Stephanie Vie about social networking sites and their implications on the writing classroom. The article discusses the concept of the "Digital Divide" and how the technological gap between teachers and students is widening. While we as teachers are not and should not be required to participate in such social networking sites as www.Facebook.com and www.MySpace.com, we need to understand how they work, and how students are using these almost exclusively at times to write and communicate outside the classroom, at times changing the concept of "literacy" in the classroom. The article also mentions several larger social issues that can be discussed through using these social networking sites.

The article brings up some very interesting points. Students may complain about writing in the classroom, but they are writing constantly through text messaging, online instant messaging, through their own personal blogs, and on social networking sites. Teachers shouldn't ignore this- they should understand and embrace it!