Day 11- Lino Brainstorm

For novice writers, looking at a blank white computer screen can be daunting. I want students to brainstorm ideas in a way that is flexible, easy, and colorful. That's why I have students use Lino (linoit.com) to brainstorm. Lino is an online corkboard application that hosts student-created sticky notes on a canvas. Stickies can be moves, organized, color-coded, and copied to other canvases, and students can work on Lino canvases in groups.

For our introductory Lino activity, I had students alternate brainstorming ideas to write about and sharing with their groups for 5 3-minute segments. This gave everyone an opportunity to gather possible writing ideas, post them to their Lino canvas, and hear the ideas of others in their group. Posting then sharing encourages students to listen to each other, share their ideas with their writing group(which can be hard for some students), and inspire each other with new thoughts.

I start be modeling how to sign up for Lino and create a new canvas. Then I show students how to brainstorm with Lino, posting new ideas different stickies and letting them pile up before spreading them out to cover the canvas. After alternating brainstorming and sharing, students begin to organize their ideas.

Day 10- Tackk (A of W)

Once students get a chance to see a model and create their own summaries of articles, they get to make their own websites for those articles. I use a free online tool called Tackk (www.tackk.com) that might be the simplest website creator I have ever used. I give students a demonstration on first the different pieces that they need to include in their website.

Tackk details: https://tackk.com/fhdv1t

1. The title of the article
2. Your opinion about the article's topic
3. An image from or about the topic
4. A summary of the main ideas and important details
5. Personal connections and additional resources

Next, I show an example Tackk site that I created using the article we read, annotated, and summarized together in class the previous day.

Tackk Article Example: https://tackk.com/n51u0w

Finally, I run through a quick demonstration of just how easy it is to create a Tackk site and give students time to work in their groups creating their own Tackk site. They use the information they generated the day before and add resources and an image. I encourage them to divide the responsibility into roles:

• leader: organizes the group, helps out wherever needed, and keeps the group on-task
• visual designer:finds great images and organizes the visual layout of the website
• resource finder: finds supplementary resources that add to the essence of their story, including websites, online articles, or maps
• summarizer: finalizes and proofs the written text

During this week's bonus period, I also demonstrate for students how to use the paint tool to copy and edit images found online.

Day 9- Article of the Week

Articles of the Week

• Every week, your group will read and annotate an article in one of the two online magazines.
• Your group will create a well-organized and visually pleasing website with the following information:

1. The title of the article
2. Your opinion about the article's topic
3. An image from or about the topic
4. A summary of the main ideas and important details
5. Three additional resources

My school subscribes to Junior Scholastic and Upfront magazines from Scholastic for $8-10 per issue per year. In addition to the physical magazine copies, Scholastic does online versions which students can access from home or school computers. The online versions have some annotation capabilities so students can highlight important information from the articles. In addition, the online magazines have links and videos embedded for expanded study and quizzes.

junior.scholastic.com
upfrontmagazine.com


We did a model reading and summary together, highlighting important information and combining main ideas with important details for a summary in our own words. We came up with a good title and formed an opinion which turned into our tagline. Next, each group will choose a different article and repeat the process of reading, highlighting, and summarizing for their chosen article.