2/23 Blog Post

1. Inspiration is definitely something I would invest in for my classroom. 10 great classroom uses for it are:

• Show the groups of pilgrims described in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, sorted by the different types of stories (the marriage group, the corrupt clergy, etc.)
• Create a web showing different literary movements and what sort of changes they entailed.
• Focus on the Enlightenment and show the different aspects of culture it affected.
• Focus on symbols within a Shakespeare play and connect to each symbol instances of that symbol in the play.
• Create a flow chart for how to teach a Shakespeare play; connect related ideas, include allusions, symbols, etc. Print out and keep with me while teaching to make sure I don't forget any important details.
• When assigning projects to a group, make the groups' physical layouts on Inspiration. Include a bubble describing their assignment, and if applicable who is responsible for what part of the assignment.
• When introducing symbolism as a concept, write a word and have students fill in the ideas which are related to that word or image.
• To teach Robert Frost's "The Road Less Traveled," create two "roads" with a series of events to show how one decision can affect your entire life.
• Create a diagram of the parts of speech and how they work in a sentence.
• Along the same lines, create a sentence with spaces for the inclusion of nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs depending on the unit, and have the students come up to the board and move around the parts of speech to have the sentence make sense.

2. So far, the most interesting web resources I've seen in class are United Streaming and ethemes. I think I would use United Streaming the most in my class because, to be honest, not a whole lot of people enjoy literature. People do like watching videos. If I can find a video biography of, say, Mark Twain, I think my students would be more apt to pay attention than if I had them read his biography instead. The videos can also be used as a reinforcing tool once a work has been read. There is a series on US of Edgar Allan Poe's poetry which breaks down the major themes and moods of the poems. This would be great to use after reading his work to really drive home the points he's trying to make.