Many children and adults will tell you that writing is quite literally out of their grasp. They can’t wrap their hands around it, and since this is how they learn best, writing remains beyond their reach. Many writers need to move, and they need their writing to move as well. They need to write out of their seats and on their feet, spreading their ideas across whiteboards and tables, lifting pieces of them up with…
These are my first and favorite conversations with writers at the start of a new year. Before we crack into our new notebooks, before the first genre studies begin, we take some time to talk about what it means to be a writer and what it means to live a writer’s life. Teachers often ask me how I manage to write every day, and I always say that this depends on what people think it…
Let’s call her Nadia. I’ve been working with her one on one for a little over a year now. “I suck at reading,” she told me bluntly, when she approached me for help toward the end of her sophomore year. “I do too sometimes,” I admitted, inviting her to sit with me a while so that I could learn more. We’ve learned a lot together, Nadia and I. It all started with frank conversations like…
“The sticky note is one of the most useful tools for knowledge work because it allows you to break any complex topic into small, moveable artifacts—knowledge atoms or nodes—that you can distribute into physical space by attaching them to your desk, walls, doors, and so on without wreaking total havoc. This allows learners to quickly and easily explore all kinds of relationships between and among the atoms and to keep these various alternatives within your…
At the risk of beating a dead horse, I’ll admit: I agree with those who suggest that close reading isn’t a strategy, and I’m grateful to them for sustaining this particular conversation, even as some are beginning to grow weary with it. It’s an important one. If we fail to understand and honor the intention behind the call for close reading, we’ll likely fail to accomplish what is most critical: distinguishing readers who are strategic…
In my last post, I mentioned how some of the best conversations that I’ve had about close reading were steeped in stories that teachers shared about their own encounters with it. I recalled one of the first times I read a text closely, remembering how the experience drew me closer to my classmates and my teacher and not merely the text. Here’s the thing: when it’s working, close reading helps us savor delectable texts, and…
Image by Gris M. via flickr Four years ago, as teachers began digging into the Common Core Learning Standards and making sense of the six shifts that underpin them, questions about close reading began bubbling to the surface of nearly every discussion I was included in: What was it? How would we teach it? How would it be assessed? How would we know if we were doing it correctly? What would happen if we didn’t?…
Earlier this week, I recounted my first day of performance based assessment design with a new group of teachers and administrators. If you happened to read, you might remember that someone in the room that day shared a beautiful question, and the exchange that followed altered our design approach in significant ways. In essence, the question challenged us to consider how we might craft a performance based assessment that could help teachers develop closer relationships…
Over the last several years, I’ve spent a good deal of time facilitating performance based assessment design with quite a few teachers in quite a few different places. This is challenging but very rewarding work, particularly when we’re able to replace tests with assessments that inspire kids to do things that matter for audiences that value their efforts and the products that emerge from them. I typically begin these sessions by asking teachers to reflect…
I’ve been working with the English Department at Starpoint Middle School for ten years, and those who know me well appreciate the high regard that I maintain for this particular group of teachers (and their colleagues at the K-5 level). Very few educators have the opportunity, talent, or tenacity to accomplish what this department has over the last decade, slowly and with very careful intention. I’ve watched them design (and redesign and map) their own curricula, sharpen their…