Kelly's Curriculum Corner

  The graph above shows an amazingly consistent pattern regarding the reading achievement of girls (top line) and boys (bottom line). While this graph highlights the longitudinal data of 13 year olds, the picture for 9 and 17 year olds looks remarkably the same. Basically girls out score boys and have for 30 years across all age groups according to the National Test of Educational Progress (NAEP.) Michael W. Smith & Jeff Wilhelm summarize the findings on boys and literacy in their book Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys (2002) pages 10&11 :   Achievement: Boys take longer to read than girls. Boys read less than girls. Girls tend to comprehend text significantly better than boys. Boys tend to do better with information retrieval & work-related literacy tasks than girls. Attitude: Boys generally provide a lower estimate of their reading abilities than girls do. Boys value reading as an activity less than girls do. Bo...

All the school districts in my region and many others across Pennsylvania have access to Discovery Education , probably best known for streaming video. When I searched for streaming videos 116,458 results came up which can be further refined by grade level, subject area, type of media etc... Folks most often think of video clips or even full length videos and they would be right…. but there is much, much more. Discovery also has: Songs (466) – Multiplication raps, ABCs, Homophone Blues, Tornados & Hurricanes to name a few… Audio files (48) – speeches, historical events, and more Images (20,828) – historical events, historical figures, places, animals etc.. Writing prompts (603) – still pictures combined with a writing prompts historical people/events, careers & a large number for literary analysis. Prompts can be copied and/or edited to customize for teacher needs. Clip art (1184) –Most of the collection is for the elementary grades Sound effects (3...

Windows Live Writer is an awesome  tool for blogging! I use Live Writer to create all my blog posts. It provides more features and flexibility to make my blog more attractive and efficient. I can work on drafts without an internet connection, preview the post to see how it will look on the live blog, and I can even set the date for the blog to automatically publish. It’s a free download that is compatible with the major blog services e.g. Blogger, TypePad, Wordpress and more….  My favorite feature is how easy it is to resize, align, and caption photos. Live Writer also allows you to add borders and effects to photos! Just insert a photo and a tool bar will appear as shown here. The default is inline, but a drop down box allows for you to set the picture to the Right or Left and wrap text. The next drop down box is Margins. The default is no margins, which often leads to your text running right up against the photo and ruining the appearance of the blog. Select Cust...

I was gathering resources for writing across the curriculum in preparation for a meeting with one of my districts and rediscovered an old favorite, PBS channel 39 Write Now! video prompts. The series was developed by WLTV with teachers from the Lehigh Valley. Each prompt begins with a short video and then segues to a writing prompt. Check out my favorite Nose Ring .