Action Research

Dear WTWL Readers,  8 Let me lay a truth bomb on you. I didn’t write this as a blog post. I write a lot. But, […]

John Wolfe with Rita Platt “Culturally responsive teaching” or “culturally relevant instructional practices” are hot topics in ESL teaching. We value this and applaud the many […]

By Rita Platt & John Wolfe Today in almost every elementary school in America, teachers are required (or at least highly encouraged) to use curriculum based […]

By Rita Platt Students love to talk.  With a new emphasis on speaking and listening ushered in by the Common Core State Standards, teachers must […]

By Rita Platt Today in almost every elementary school in every state in America, teachers are required (or at least highly encouraged) to use curriculum […]

By Rita Platt “I did it!” “Come watch me!” “I’ll never learn how to do it!” “Will you show me one more time?” “Can I […]

By Stacey Belisle A Saint C.A.R.E.S.! That’s what we say at Saint Croix Falls Elementary School. C.A.R.E.S. stands for Cooperation, Assertion, Responsibility, Empathy, and Self […]

By Rita Platt Looking for a fresh, fun way to quickly and easily assess your students’ progress? Try having them   “Tap Out!” Step 1: […]

There is a movement to teach children to read at a younger age and it may help to incorporate short periods of intentional training every day in the area of rhyming in order to move along the continuum of learning in a reasonable, developmentally appropriate manner. The focus and goal of this action research project was to increase students’ understanding and use of rhyming words as a pre-literacy skill.

This article is the 2nd in a series, based on action research I collected while studying for my M.Ed, explores the impact digital technology can have on how our students learn, and how we, as educators, can leverage that impact for the good of our students. Before I was introduced to wikis in April 2008, I never would have envisioned how much my teaching could use these new technologies. More importantly, my students could not be more ready to take their education to a new level that I sincerely hope will better connect them to the world and prepare them to participate in a digital world. The time is now, and while students have been hungry for this opportunity, the reinforcing research is thorough enough to justify using wikis,blogs, podcasts, Flickr, Moodle, and online writing technologies that I feel can significantly improve students’ writing, and perhaps more importantly, prepare them for digital citizenship.