Teen Literacy Tips

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A lipogram is a type of word play whereby an author creates a piece of writing with a missing letter.  One of the most famous lipograms is Ernest Vincent Wright’s 50,000 word story, Gadsby, which omits the letter E.

For a fun way to engage students in writing and help them with the trait of word choice, challenge them to write their own lipgrams.  When they’re done they can exchange the lipograms and try to guess the missing letter.

Another interesting exercise in word choice might be to imitate Mary Godolphin’s one-syllable adaptations.  Godolphin (Lucy Aikin) wrote one-syllable versions of Pilgrim’s Progress and Robinson Crusoe.  Students could adapt short stories or they could make up their own.

Because I’ve noticed a huge vacuum when it comes to Catholic education resources on the Internet, I’ve begun a new site, Catholic School Chronicles. The mission of Catholic School Chronicles is to be a source of news, resources and community sharing for those who teach in Catholic schools and those who have an interest in Catholic education.

Catholic School Chronicles will feature timely articles, classroom resources, podcasts, and much more, all specifically directed at the unique challenges of teaching in Catholic Schools.

As a new site, it is still in its infancy, but will continue to grow only if others visit, subscribe and leave comments. Please help get the word out to all your colleagues and friends who may be interested in this endeavor. If you know of any resources for Catholic teachers, I would love hearing about them so I can share them with others.

And don’t worry, Teen Literacy Tips isn’t going anywhere.

You can visit Catholic School Chronicles at www.nicksenger.com/csc and you can subscribe to it with this RSS feed.

Digital whiteboards like the ones made by Smartboard can be very handy in a classroom, but they’re also heavy on the budget, costing well over $2000. If you already have access to an LCD projector, Johnny Chung Lee shows you how to make your own interactive whiteboard for under $60 using a Wii remote and a few inexpensive parts from Radio Shack. Everything you need to know is in this amazing video: [Read more →]

I just got myself a new Blackberry phone to help keep myself more organized, and I made some wallpaper images that I thought others might enjoy. Some are literary, and some are album covers, but all are images that I thought looked pretty cool. All images are 240×260 for the Blackberry Pearl: [Read more →]

It’s true, I love diagramming sentences, and I teach students how to diagram sentences–which is probably enough to get me kicked out of most professional English teacher organizations–if I belonged to any (which I don’t).

But for you rebels out there who subservisely sneak diagramming into your curriculum between studying for state and national tests, here are some resources from the Diagramming Sentences page at the Guide to Grammar and Writing sponsored by the Capital Community College Foundation: [Read more →]