If there is anyone in the world of children's and young adult literature who could be described as a living legend, it's Walter Dean Myers. Tune in to hear how his own experiences as a reader have shaped his approach to storytelling, what he seeks to offer young people through his writing, and the thinking behind a select handful of his novels – books that incorporate concepts as varied as magical realism, the social contract, and oral histories with our nation's war veterans.
A Conversation with Walter Dean Myers
Using the RAFT Writing Strategy
This strategy guide introduces the RAFT technique and offers practical ideas for using this technique to teach students to experiment with various perspectives in their writing.
Socratic Seminars
This strategy guide explains Socratic seminars and offers practical methods for applying the approach in your classroom to help students investigate multiple perspectives in a text.
Assessing Student Interests and Strengths
In this Strategy Guide, you'll learn about a number of specific methods that can help you to gain a fuller picture of the interests of your students as well as what your students understand, know, and can demonstrate by doing.
Facilitating Participation with Silent Conversations
This guide introduces silent conversations, a collaborative learning technique that has students
thinking, sharing, and reflecting about important questions—but through writing rather than talk.
Conducting Inner-Outer Circle Discussions
This guide shares the steps to take to get more students talking by dividing the group into speaking and non-speaking circles.
Teaching with Zooming Slideshows through Prezi
Through Prezi, a web application, students create "zooming" presentations for various purposes, such as presenting research, defending an opinion, or sharing a digital story.
Bringing Lessons to Life with Animoto
Using Animoto, a free Web 2.0 tool, students can develop short digital videos that include music, photos, video clips, and text as well as share their creations electronically.
Speak to Me: Teaching with Voki
Through Voki, a Web 2.0 tool, students create customizable avatars for class presentations for various purposes, such as presenting biographical information, expressing an opinion, or reading a poem.
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education
This document is a code of best practices that helps educators using media literacy concepts and techniques to interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use.
Weekly Writer's Blogs: Building a Reflective Community of Support
Students explore the conventions of blog writing while using it to self-reflect on their writing and communicate with classmates about each other's reflections.
Connecting Past and Present: A Local Research Project
In this unit, students become active archivists, gathering photos, artifacts, and stories for a museum exhibit that highlights one decade in their school's history.
Creating a Persuasive Podcast
Students learn how to get their voice out on the web when they research issues important to them and compose a persuasive podcast to post online.