The website that I will be reviewing is called Hub For Teachers. The url for the site is "http://hubforteachers.discoveryeducation.com". The site was created by an American teacher, who had a brilliant career and after retirement thought of giving back to the community that she had been a part of through this wonderful website. Though the website is American and its implied readership consists of American teachers, I think some of the lessons can certainly be easily incorporated into Singapore classrooms.
There are five tabs that greets you when you stumble upon it (like I did). There are various resources catering for everybody from administrators to teachers to students and even parents. Of course, we are concerned with teaching resources, therefore, we will very quickly march on to the teachers tab, and click on our respective subjects, it being English for moi.
As Lit teachers the greatest debacle we face is in making our students interested in the story that they are reading and to think critically while they are at it. The website has a host of ways in which we can help our students develop the kind of skills that the MOE syllabus wants them to achieve.
Some of the interesting activities that I found on the site are listed below.
Story Mapping
url: http://hubforteachers.discoveryeducation.com/storytelling-in-classroom/pre-writing-k-2.cfm#title0
This section comes in handy in lower secondary classrooms while teaching the basics of analyzing a text. Each of these lessons comes with a lesson plan of sorts--it is not a proper lesson plan, each teacher needs to develop it according to their needs, but it does have a basic idea on what's going on, so that it helps novice teachers like me to get started. Though the website mentions that the story mapping lesson can be used as for a language arts class, I think we can very easily include it as an activity to introduce the idea of character, setting, plot in a lower secondary literature class.
The teacher uses props related to the story to explain that a story consists of a certain setting, plot, character. The teacher then mixes all this in a bag to show that when all the elements of a story are jumbled up then meaning is lost. A story needs to have all its parts arranged in a particular manner to make sense. The students are then asked to brainstorm and write the particulars of the story in the organizer that is provided.
This activity helps the students to organize data and use it for questioning answers relating to the story.
I do find some parts of the lesson unnecessary such as the bringing of maps in class, a story map is nothing like a real map and so, this unnecessary detail will only confuse the students.
The Five Ws
url: http://hubforteachers.discoveryeducation.com/storytelling-in-classroom/pre-writing-3-5.cfm#title1
The pre-writing section has another nice activity called The Five Ws. The five Ws consist of Who, What, When and Why. This is a good activity that helps the students fill out the details of the even in a linear manner. Again, the activity needs to be personalized according to the requirements of the lesson.
I like this website because it gives one great ideas that can be molded into individual lessons.
The website has another section for incorporating ICT in teaching literature.
http://hubforteachers.discoveryeducation.com/taking-it-digital/index.cfm
Though it does not have too many resources, but it provides a list of ICT tools that can be used to make film based projects.
There are five tabs that greets you when you stumble upon it (like I did). There are various resources catering for everybody from administrators to teachers to students and even parents. Of course, we are concerned with teaching resources, therefore, we will very quickly march on to the teachers tab, and click on our respective subjects, it being English for moi.
As Lit teachers the greatest debacle we face is in making our students interested in the story that they are reading and to think critically while they are at it. The website has a host of ways in which we can help our students develop the kind of skills that the MOE syllabus wants them to achieve.
Some of the interesting activities that I found on the site are listed below.
Story Mapping
url: http://hubforteachers.discoveryeducation.com/storytelling-in-classroom/pre-writing-k-2.cfm#title0
This section comes in handy in lower secondary classrooms while teaching the basics of analyzing a text. Each of these lessons comes with a lesson plan of sorts--it is not a proper lesson plan, each teacher needs to develop it according to their needs, but it does have a basic idea on what's going on, so that it helps novice teachers like me to get started. Though the website mentions that the story mapping lesson can be used as for a language arts class, I think we can very easily include it as an activity to introduce the idea of character, setting, plot in a lower secondary literature class.
The teacher uses props related to the story to explain that a story consists of a certain setting, plot, character. The teacher then mixes all this in a bag to show that when all the elements of a story are jumbled up then meaning is lost. A story needs to have all its parts arranged in a particular manner to make sense. The students are then asked to brainstorm and write the particulars of the story in the organizer that is provided.
This activity helps the students to organize data and use it for questioning answers relating to the story.
I do find some parts of the lesson unnecessary such as the bringing of maps in class, a story map is nothing like a real map and so, this unnecessary detail will only confuse the students.
The Five Ws
url: http://hubforteachers.discoveryeducation.com/storytelling-in-classroom/pre-writing-3-5.cfm#title1
The pre-writing section has another nice activity called The Five Ws. The five Ws consist of Who, What, When and Why. This is a good activity that helps the students fill out the details of the even in a linear manner. Again, the activity needs to be personalized according to the requirements of the lesson.
I like this website because it gives one great ideas that can be molded into individual lessons.
The website has another section for incorporating ICT in teaching literature.
http://hubforteachers.discoveryeducation.com/taking-it-digital/index.cfm
Though it does not have too many resources, but it provides a list of ICT tools that can be used to make film based projects.
Nice ideas about mapping a story which can be used both for lit and for EL, getting students to map their stories in preparation for writing about it.
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