Well, I started off my major project with looking for the best of the best ways to teach reading online for my students. What I found was an immense amount of quality resources. Website such as Diffit to adapt and differentiate resources for my classroom, to Read Theory to track and grow my students skills in literacy. I was finding that without having a ELA classroom to teach this semester, it was harder to track the direct impacts on my students growth. So I decided to flip gears and work on developing something new.
Instead, I am focusing on creating a curriculum design project and link media literacy and digital citizenship into the Grade 6 Health Curriculum as the main underlying theme is Identity. My plan is to continue to research different websites that aid in teaching media literacy and link to a flip grid classroom that I would introduce to my students for the next few weeks through lessons. The first website that I am having good success with is the Be Good People Curriculum. It has presentations on many applicable topics, and I find the situations it presents at the end of lessons great conversation starters for the students. It is also a great resource for all grades, as it splits the themes into four grade alike groupings. Check it out if you’re looking for a great Health Class resource.
Also, if you’d like to learn more about Read Theory, I created a blog post last year with some of my experiences with it. The other resource that I was looking into for ELA was Common Lit.
This sounds very intriguing, Graeme. Thank you for sharing the resources! I will definitely be looking more into the Be Good People Curriculum for my grade 8-10 Health courses.
Be a Good Human is a motto that I frequently use in my daily practice with my students. I hadn’t realized that I used it so much until a few years ago when my grade 7’s began saying it to one another and in class and informed me that I say it at least a few times a week. I often ask “what would a good human do in this situation?” and we discuss the fact that there are multiple answers and that this question can be used when challenged with difficult scenarios or tasks.
That is a great motto for students. Often times when I’m coaching, I use the wording “Be Better” in terms of improving with each rep at practice and plays in game. We can always be improving to be better citizens, athletes, students, and teachers for that matter. I find the Be Good Curriculum does a great job at giving and posing situations that we can discuss as a class based off of that daily lesson. Thanks for the post!
Hi Graeme! I love readtheory and diffit as well. Whne i had a grade 7/8 homeroom I used readtheory quite often. Thank you for sharing the Be Good People link I am excited to explore that more for my grade 7/8 Health classes I teach. I like how you integrated the Health outcomes with the digital aspects.
The Health outcomes lined up so well with this assignment, and with Be Good People Curriculum. I enjoy the conversation starters and questions they have built into the lessons to generate conversations with the students.