Michelle+Bishop

Michelle was born in Santa Clara, California, but has spent most of her life in Boise. She has been teaching for 14 years and currently teaches seventh grade reading at North Junior High. She has taught English at an alternative high school, sixth grade, and special education, but says that junior high is one of her favorites because she loves the energy and sense of humor of the students.

Michelle graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in English teaching and a minor in Special Education. She originally minored in Spanish, but after an experience watching a special education teacher intereact with her students during a field trip, she decided to change her minor. BYU didn't offer a minor in special ed at the time, so she convinced them to create one, and was the first one to go through the program. Michelle taught special education for a few years and then moved to a sixth grade classroom, so she attended BSU to add and elementary certification. A few years later she went back to BSU to get her M.A. in Literacy. She continues to take classes so she has been going to college for more than nine years.

Michelle always knew that she wanted to be a teacher and follow in her mother's footsteps. She even married a teacher, but her husband switched careers after a few years to help pay the bills. He now works for Microsoft, which pays much better.

Her greatest inspiration was her eighth grade English teacher who would write along with the students and share her writing. Michelle wrote an essay about how this teacher inspired her and won a writing scholarship to BSU. After winning the essay, Michelle's greatest fear was having the teacher know that she wrote about her Birkenstocks and mismatched socks!

=**__Portfolio__**=

Cool Sites:
picnik vimeo jaycut storybird schooltube teachertube image chef

freeplay (free music) media type="youtube" key="8dAujuqCo7s" width="149" height="107"Not on the Test by Tom Chapin

(Dianne's powerpoint)

See Sonja's page for identity project ideas, also sneak peeks

Dianne's evaluating websites assignment =__**Gaming in Education**__=

media type="youtube" key="JU3pwCD-ey0" height="104" width="124" James Paul Gee on Grading with Games:

media type="custom" key="10219207" width="70" height="70" Tom Chatfield shares 7 ways that video games reward the brain. Some of the ideas that I find most intriguing are the use of experience bars to measure progress and using multiple long and short term aims that use a variety of ways to show learning, finding website examples, collaborating with others, comments, etc. One of the ones that I am constantly trying to improve is rapid, frequent, and clear feedback. Sigh!

I was intrigued by the percentages he gave in how often games reward certain behaviors and how to design games so that the student is motivated to continue. The science behind gaming theory is fascinating to me.

[|Gamifying Education]Great ideas on using XP points as part of grading, connecting disparate subjects using links, and motivation students.

Poetry Ideas (Quarter 3):
poet reading poetry (Thanks, Maura, for the site!)

Lesson idea using __picnik__: Students will use picnik to create a poster/image to teach a poetic device. See my example for teaching //simile//.

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[|poetry pairings]--pair a poem with an article, picture, or song and explain the connection use [|wordle] to create images for both a poem and a song with a similar theme and compare/contrast

media type="custom" key="8501818" (spell with [|flickr])

multimedia poetry project idea

Taylor Mali podcast with multimedia poem

powerpoint for introducing [|poetry and mood](slideshare)
 * uses pictures and segments of poetry to have students generate words for mood

The Highwayman music and videomedia type="custom" key="8762980"

Projects
class wiki for 7th grade reading class book trailers
 * Note: Have students create projects on their own computers but come to one computer to save to wiki. Otherwise projects are lost if you multiple people editing (saving) at same time.
 * I would have everyone sign up to join wiki at the same time. My students thought they joined, but they had only created an account, so I had to keep going back and accepting members while they were trying to save their projects.
 * Sheila had a good idea for keeping track of students' login names and passwords. She gave each student an index card and had them write down someone they admired. That was their user name or password. She collected them and had them if students forgot.

[|image chef]

eduglogster sample (with great education links)

Robert E. Lee embedded in glogster
This I Believe Story Corps

podbean

Have students record themselves reading poems for multiple voices (like //Joyful Noise//)

digital stories

Mythology, Fables, Tall Tales, and Legends (Quarter 4)
(Dianne's powerpoint on mythology) Greek mythology video ideas

media type="custom" key="8763076" width="80" height="80" media type="custom" key="8762100" width="80" height="80" Japan Relief
 * Student video on mythology stories