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Archive for August 2010

Aug/10

28

post to blog weekly (weekly)

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Aug/10

21

post to blog weekly (weekly)

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Aug/10

21

My Search Story: Welcome to 315!

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Aug/10

21

Welcome to 315!

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Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

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Aug/10

18

Letter to Parents/Guardians

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September 2010

Dear Parents/Guardians,

Welcome to the 2010-11 school year! I hope you had a relaxing and fun summer. This year will be filled with exciting challenges and opportunities to excel in English. I understand that teaching your child is a privilege and a tremendous responsibility and I will do my best to ensure that my classroom is place where he/she can feel confident about approaching new tasks. In the ninth grade English class, we will mainly focus on literature in the variety of its form ranging from poems, short stories, plays and novels. Ninth grade is an excellent time to start building solid writing skills that are necessary for any college-bound student.

This year will be especially important for me and my students, as I will be pursing the National Board Certification – the highest certification that one can achieve as a teacher in the United States. It will no doubt push me and help me to grow as an educator. As part of this process, I will be recording my lessons and I am asking you to sign the permission letter attached to this letter.

I love teaching and my students. I also respect their families and their experiences outside of my classroom. My students come to me with knowledge of their own and I will respect this fact and strive to learn from them as they will learn from me this year. I respect your hard-work and effort to prepare your child for high school experience. I consider you an equal partner in my work and hope that we can work together to provide the best opportunities for future.

In order for the classroom setting to be a congenial environment where learning is the primary focus, I am going to have certain expectations for all of my students. I will expect all of my students to:

  • To come prepared to class (i.e. have notebooks, folders and textbooks with them.)
  • Respect other persons and their property
  • Be willing to share opinions in classroom discussions and even more importantly, be willing to listen and respect other students’ opinions and ideas
  • Be willing to learn something new everyday

I will do my best to provide the best learning environment for your son or daughter. I also want to welcome your feedback and concerns regarding your child’s performance in my class. I hope that we can build a partnership to best support our students’ success. Please feel free to contact me at ——- or via email at ——-  at any time. Periodically, I will be in touch with you regarding your son or daughter’s performance as well through phone calls, notes, letters, and emails. You can also follow our work on our class blog at: http://mrami.edublogs.org/.  Lastly, you may be wondering how you can get involved in our classroom community or support work, here are few ideas:

  • Complete the attached Parent survey to help me learn about your son/daughter
  • Volunteer in our class by presenting on a topic of your choice, chaperoning class field trips
  • Sign the permission slip for video taping in the classroom

Thank you for all that you will do this year and I am looking forward to working with you!

Sincerely,

M. Rami

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Aug/10

16

What I (re)learned from #engchat tonight

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As you know, I have the honor of moderating #engchat for English teachers, every Monday at 7 PM EST. Tonight’s #engchat would have gone more smoothly if Twitter had not failed right at the beginning of it. When many people, including me, could not follow the chat because of twitter issues, I quickly remembered using TodaysMeet for my classes and created a chat room for #engchat. Soon more people migrated there from Twitter and conversation continued. Eventually twitter issues were resolved and we went back to using it. Phew!

I guess the lesson here is always have a plan B and be able to think on your feet so to speak. I am glad users of #engchat did not give up and stayed around for the conversation. Sign of a committed group of people to learning and the community we are building via Twitter.

Thank you to all who participated tonight. See you next Monday at 7 PM EST! If you are interested in learning more about #engchat or checking out the archive, you can check our our wiki here.

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Aug/10

14

post to blog weekly (weekly)

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Aug/10

14

CI for PhilWP #nwp

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Aug/10

14

Twitter for Teachers @PhilWP #nwp

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Aug/10

12

Starting #engchat

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I originally wanted to write about tech integration in high school English classroom (a future post) as my first post on Schoology blog.  However, something amazing has happened over past few weeks and I would like to share this with the readers of this blog.  I have bee using Twitter for past year to connect with inspiring teachers around the world.  I have also sought out and attended free and paid conferences in Philadelphia area because I came across these opportunities through my presence and connections on Twitter.  One of those events that I attended New Teacher Camp which took place on July 24th  at Boys Latin Academy in Philadelphia PA.  It was a great day filled with thought-provoking sessions and time to connect face-to-face with many of my friends.  Over the day, we came to the realization that there are many subject area weekly chats on twitter but none for English teachers.  I started thinking that maybe I could start one and began to doubt myself.  Do I have the twitter clout to do something like that? What would we even talk about? How do you keep English teachers talking over Twitter with the 140 character limit?  Nonetheless, the day’s interactions nudged me to take a leap of faith and #engchat was created.  For the past three weeks, English teachers, at times hundreds of them have come together from all of the United States and beyond to discuss classroom strategies and their implications on student learning.  It has been an honor to have teachers on Twitter embrace this weekly discussion and share it with others.  I even asked Jim Burke, author of English Companion and creator of English Companion Ning to host the chat and he agreed!  He was able to draw many teachers to a discussion of the Element of Effective Instruction.

Social media tool like Twitter, when used thoughtfully and deliberately, it can aide in build community and increase collaboration among colleagues.  I am just amazed by the positive feedback and response for #engchat and hope to continue to grow as a learner and a teacher through the connection I make with others.

Thank you to all who participate weekly during #engchat and please join us, every Monday at 7 PM EST using the hashtag #engchat.

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National Writing Project I participated in National Writing Project through Philadelphia Writing Project in Summer of 2010.  If you are looking for an authentic way to grow as a teacher, I would recommend checking our your local writing project site. To learn more, check out NWP Site.
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