How Fake Facebook Profiles Support Reading Instruction and More!

Teaching author's perspective, author's purpose, tone and mood, characterization and other literary elements are some of the most difficult reading skills for students to untangle. Because of time constraints, teachers often ignore discussing an author's life experiences as part of front-loading a text to be read. I have always been a proponent of less is more, so I make the time to let kids learn aboout a writer's life before we read his/her book, and we research the historical period in which the book was written. Both the author's life experiences and the historical period provide an invaluable insight that helps readers understand themes, allusions, plot events, characterizations, conflicts and other literary elements. Of course, now more than ever technology can facilitate teaching all of these reading concepts.

Using myfakewall.com, students can create a fake profile page `a la Facebook to explore the life of an author, a character, a historical figure, an idea, a process, an animal or anything students would like to personify. 

Using Myfakewall to teach Author's Purpose
Teachers can assign students to create Myfakewall.com profiles and posts that reveal the author's purpose, i.e., why the author wrote a piece: to entertain, inform or teach, persuade or convince. Students can add "friends" such as other writers or people who influenced the writer to write a particular piece, or even characters, and have those influential "friends" post questions or comments on the writer's wall so the posts and the writer's responses to the posts reveal the author's purpose for writing.

Using Myfakewall to teach Author's Perspective
The concept of author's perspective can also be taught in the same manner by having students write posts revealing the writer's feelings or beliefs and how these views prompted the writer to create a particular piece of writing.  High order skills are at work because students apply what they learned after reading a biography or autobiography about the author's life. To write thought-provoking posts and comments on the Myfakewall.com page, students must analyze and evaluate the author's life circumstances, choices, and beliefs and synthesize a post using texutal examples to reveal how and why an author incorporated his/her life views in his/her writing.    

Using Myfakewall to teach Characterization, Historical Events, Tone and Mood, Connotation and more

• Of course, Myfakewalls do not have to be just about a writer's life. Students can create fakewalls about characters to learn characterization. Posts could feature the characterization strategy S.T.E.A.L., which focuses on analyzing a character's Speech, Thoughts, Effect on Others, Actions and Looks. 
• Other fakewalls to challenge students to use critical thinking skills and textual support would be profiles for historical figures with posts that explore a famous or infamous decision, its repercussions, and the historical figure's controversial thoughts and conversations with his/her associates, friends or family.  Imagine how primary and secondary sources could also be used to incorporate textual support on all of these pseudo profile pages.
• As difficult as it is for students to identify the tone and mood of a piece, myfakewall.com can support teaching this concept if students are asked to create a profile using particular textual examples that reflect a specific negative or positive tone while comments could show reader's positive or negative mood after reading these text examples. Myfakewall.com could even be used to reinforce connotation if students create fake posts using negative connotations sharing them with fake users to see the effect words have on other readers and writers.  

Myfakewall.com supports so many different critical thinking activities that allow students to step inside the mind of notable figures, use textual examples, primary and secondary sources, and their own creativity.

Whether students create fake pages that are serious or funny, they will be engaged in creating original content.

I would love to see what Myfakewall.com profiles students could create to explore the minds and lives of scientists, mathematicians, artists, and other noteworthy individuals or ideas. 

Please check out these Myfakewall page profiles!

It's A Black Tie Affair With Tagxedo: List 5 Tech Terms All Teachers Should Know!

Smarten up with http:/tagxedo.com, and turn vocabulary lessons into a special occasion!  

Tagxedo.com is not your ordinary cloud generator. Students can upload websites, blogs, or any type of text, then choose the shape of their word clouds. There are over a hundred shapes to choose, and dozens of color schemes, fonts, and layouts.   Primp your vocabulary with Tagxedo.com's stunning visuals that turn words into works of art! Tagxedo.com imitates art! Word clouds can be saved as JPG or PNGs, and shared on Twitter and Facebook.

Again, I used wordstash.com to create List Five to maintain consistency with the way the lists look and can be accessed.  What vocabulary tech tools do you know about? Let's chat to compare teaching experiences with these tools.

Click on the link to see List Five or email or tweet me at fearlesstech4teachers@gmail.com, and @trendingteacher, and I'll send you lists directly.

http://wordstash.com/lists/39085-tech-terms-every-teacher-should-know-list-five

Here are my own works of "word art" using List 5 of Tech Terms All Teachers Should Know! 

List 5 Tech Terms All Teachers Should Know!

Tagxedo.com Word Cloud I created adding my Twitter feed @trendingteacher!

 Vocabulary Lessons Are Special Occasions With Tagxedo!
A Few Ideas for Using Tagxedo Word Clouds!

• Teach annotation. Add a significant passage from a particular text being studied, and choose an appropriate shape revealing text's meaning. Use another web 2.0 tool to add music to the word cloud suggesting text's theme.
• Teach tone and mood. Add text, and choose colors and shapes that reveal the text's tone and mood. Use another web 2.0 tool to add music revealing tone and mood of word cloud.
• Teach synonyms, antonyms, homonyms. Choose one key word and create word clouds featuring synonyms, antonyms of that word. Create homonym clouds too listing words that sound the same but are spelled differently.
• Teach connotation. Choose one word or phrase and create a word cloud with the word or phrase's multiple connotations.
• Emphasize connotation of words by creating positive, negative and neutral words clouds. Choose colors and shapes suggesting each effect. 
• Teach literary terms, figures of speech, or idioms by creating word clouds containing definitions and examples.
• Summarize a text. Have students write a summary, upload the summary and choose appropriate color and shapes to match text's meaning.   

Tagxedo's opportunities to dress-up language arts lessons will make-over your vocabulary instruction, making it versatile and memorable! 

Fuzzynyms: The Lexicon of Learning Connotation Using Lexipedia!

Regardless of the grade or subject, all teachers teach vocabulary, but how often do students struggle with learning the lexicon of a particular subject or with just understanding what words to use to express themselves more precisely and succinctly in speech and writing.

All of the vocabulary web tools I will be sharing in the next couple of posts support different aspects of vocabulary instruction. 

While wordstash.com offers digital flashcards, and practice games and quizzes, Lexipedia.com provides color coded word webs connecting the word to its definition(s), part(s) of speech, synonym(s), antonym(s), and its fuzzynym(s) or word slightly related in meaning. This concept of Fuzzynym can be difficult for students to understand. However, fuzzynyms, (I guess a word coined by Lexipedia) are an important lexical component of vocabulary building so students learn the connotation or nuance words carry. When I teach vocabulary, I not only teach the basics, but I also teach the positive, negative or neutral effect of words. Students benefit from learning these so called fuzzynyms so they can learn about the importance of semantics (meaning), and how meaning can change drastically for better or worse if a writer or speaker carelessly chooses his/her words. Mean what you say, but say what you mean by choosing your words carefully is what I tell my students!

When students learn about the connotation of words by analyzing written and non-written texts, "Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me", takes on an entirely different meaning. Students begin to realize the power words have to suggest, influence, and persuade us, and they become more conscious about their own word choices. 

In our world of 140 characters or less, understanding the connotation of words through Lexipedia's "fuzzynyms" offers a way for students to discover the importance of semantics and the power of our words to express and grasp meaning.