Character Scrapbook: Analyze Stories

Another post to share from Free Technology for Teachers site ....

Character Scrapbook Helps Students Analyze Stories

Scholastic's Character Scrapbook is an online activity that could help your students analyze the characters in the books that they read. The Character Scrapbook asks students to create a digital drawing of what they think a character from a book looks like. The Character Scrapbook allows students to create digital drawings of people or animals. After creating their drawings students then complete a list of ten things that they know about the character, ten words to describe the character, ten details about the character, ten challenges facing the character, and ten things about the character's personality. When students have completed each page of the Character Scrapbook the pages can be printed.

Applications for Education
Character Scrapbook isn't a revolutionary tool. In fact, you could do the same activity on paper. The one thing that I really like about Character Scrapbook is that digital drawing tool allows students who might not think of themselves as creative artists to create a visual representation of their favorite characters from the books that they read.

Educational Leadership article (April 2014; vol. 71, issue 7)

Another great article from ASCD's Educational Leader publication on argumentative writing.  We all know students have verbally argued a case, usually, but when it comes to putting pencil to paper, they tend to get lost and lose their focus.  Presenting an argumentative, persuasive, composition is a skill that is used across all disciplines, not just language arts.  I hope this article is helpful and informative.

Argument Writing Across the Content Areas

Heather Wolpert-Gawron

In the real world, argument is everywhere. It should be at home in all the content areas.

Let's put the Common Core State Standards aside for a second, as blasphemous as that might sound, considering the tone of the conversation these days. We don't teach something merely because it appears on a list of priorities somewhere. After all, lists change. In education, yesterday's priority often becomes today's fad. What never changes, however, is the fact that we educators must prepare our students today for their tomorrows.

Enter the art of argument. Not only do the Common Core standards emphasize this skill—it's also one that (Continue to article here)