"What's so Different About Peace, Love and Differentiation" North Dakota Council of Teachers of English - Bismark, ND

July 30, 2012

Hello Wonderful North Dakota English Teachers!

Thank you again for inviting me to share time with you at your summer event! It was an honor to work with such an energetic group of teachers so early in the morning.

Below you'll find links to EVERY PDF I shared and some bonus resources. Almost everything is downloadable as a free PDF or sometimes in WORD for remixing at the Making Curriculum Pop (MC POP) Ning*. Other links are to open websites or articles.

The MC POP Ning is a social network with over 7,000 teachers that is totally free. I have people sign-in to keep the network closed. That allows us to share some resources in good faith under educational fair use laws.

Because I'm traveling, I don't have WORD copies of some of the additional resources for the Album Cover Project I mentioned. That said, they are available for nominal fees through the Mindblue Store.

If you need help finding something please feel free to e-mail me: rrg75@iCloud.com.

*NOTE: Most of the PDFs are at the bottom of the blog entry @ MC POP. Just be sure to scroll down to download the PDF at the end of the blog. 

I. INTRO

• Tomlinson "Elements of Differentiation" Chart & Self-Assessment Tool 

• MI/DIFFERENTIATION CHECKLIST - Did not share this in our session but you'll dig it.

• PLAYLIST: Beyond Pair Sharing - Quadrant Partners - This is a blog about the tool with MS WORD Quad Partners that you can download for remixing. The "Beyond Reading and Writing Quad Partner" is HERE if you want that (not remixable) version. 

• Album Cover Game - explains variations of what we did a little bit of today, $1.99 at the MB Store

• Lit Term Game - a variation of the AC Game using lit terms, $1.99 at the MB Store

• Album Cover Project: The FULL project is available as a 26-page MS WORD file for $9.99. Because it is in WORD you you can totally edit and remix for your class any way you want to. It includes sample assignment sheets, rubrics, sample timelines, model bios etc. etc. If you want copies of the model student covers from the PPT today send me an e-mail and I'll send them your way. 

• SWEET BONUS: Download a presentation packet by my wife and her colleague from the 2011 national NCTE conference on creating social network profiles for literary characters HERE.

II. MULTIMODAL DI & MEDIA CIRCLES

• Some blogs (with video clips and visuals) about Napoleon and The 6th Day @ MC POP
#1. TEACHING: SCIENCE, ART OR CRAFT?
#2. LITERACY, SCIENCE & THE 4Ss
#3. VIEWING STRATEGIES: A CASE STUDY
• Here are the beta MEDIA CIRCLES with a blog, plus some funky remixes of lit circles at COOPERATIVE LEARNING I - LIT CIRCLE PT I. Again, these PDFs are at the bottom of the blogs - just click the little PDF icons to download. Fingers crossed the Media Circles book will come out in winter 2014.

• For elementary teachers, here is a really groovy Media Circles remix for a Pixar short by elementary teachers that participated in the "Pop Culture in the Classroom" course at Columbia. Videos included! 

III. MULTIMODAL RESPONSES TO TEXTS: This American Life Non-Fiction

• As I mentioned during the presentation, there are a lot of lighter and - perhaps - more engaging This American Life texts for you to check out. I just picked the climate change clip because it is topical, an important issue and "Hot in My Backyard" is a really interesting episode because it explores multiple viewpoints. You can stream the show at the link above or purchase the show for $.99 at iTunes. 

• For those of you that are not down with This American Life, I wrote a blog last fall about it for the School Library Journal with links to really cool sample episodes. FWIW, these were really fun to write / share:

Uncommon Literacies: Teaching ‘This American Life’ (1)

Uncommon Literacies: Teaching ‘This American Life’ (2)

• DID YOU READ QUIZ?" - CARTOON EDITION This was on the back of our agenda.

• PLAYLIST: Reading Reflections + Mathematical Expression Fun LEO© - K-College PDFs NOTE: there are multiple PDFs here as I have created versions for every grade band including college.

IV. CONNECT THE MINDS (CTM) or TEXT STRUCTURES w/ THE NEW YORK TIMES

• For those of you that did the CTM activity, this is written up in the Journal of Media Lit with a model for how you can remix with a series of questions for ANY topic / text: PLAYLIST: CONNECT THE MINDS (CTM) ACTIVITY + ARTICLE PDF!!!

• There is also a "mini" CTM activity you might dig: PLAYLIST: CONNECT THE MINDS (CTM) QUIZ - PDFs for College, HS, MS, and a try at Elementary

• The NYTimes activity has not been written up anywhere, but you know it is about text structures and transitions. Easy to replicate.

V. CONCLUSION

• The big thing there was I did not hand out the Media Circles resources PDF - it is interesting and available for download HERE @ MC POP.

• I share TONS of these PDFs at the MC POP Playlist - feel free to browse that collection for other free tools and resources.

Well, (takes deep breath) hopefully this braindump o' resources will be helpful to you. Again, if you have any questions or need any addl. resources please feel free to hit me up on the Internets!

Many Thanks and Good Vibes, 

Ryan

PS - Some asked if the "Get Lucky" track I played was the original. It is actually a jazzy cover of the summer Daft Punk hit by the LA-based band Stepkids. You can check it on YouTube and their SoundCloud account. From there, if you have a Mac you can use the app Soundcloud Downloader to rip the track and add it to your iTunes Library. 

PSS - if any of you are deep into integrating music into your classes there are some fun MB Differentiated Study Guides you can pick up at the MB store. I licensed a of the images and lyrics "back in the day" for some interesting artists and they are still for sale should you be interested in such things.