It used to be that I spent Sunday mornings with a cup of tea and the newspaper. Now, I’m typically catching up with the posts that are in my reader and enjoying leisurely conversations online around all matter of things. Yesterday, a number of people were tweeting and blogging about grades, grading, and report cards. Then I went to a Christening for my friend’s baby and bumped into a former colleague of mine. She’s in the midst…
I work with many teachers whose students do not have access to computers outside of the classroom. I work with some whose students do not have access to computers inside of the classroom. And I know that at least ONE school in the area just received it’s first shipment of desktop computers LAST YEAR. Teachers in this school were still writing report cards by hand. Not happily, I might add, but that’s their reality. We…
Teachers ask for alternatives to traditional book reporting because they know that if there is anything worse than writing and reading a four paragraph text summary to a classroom full of your peers, it would be assuming the position of audience member AND evaluator. I know that there are more than a few WNY teachers in Florida this week, lounging by pools with stacks of papers next to them, waiting to be graded. That’s one…
Six-Word Memoir book preview from SMITHmag on Vimeo. My six words? Could work well for book-reporting!
Shakespeare On Facebook Published at Scribd A few years ago, Sue Rooney, a teacher at Cleveland Hill High School shared her Facebook literature project with me. The resulting products were very similar to the example above, and I was really impressed by the fact that she was willing to offer up the use of this tool as an alternative to a pen and paper project, even though Facebook was (of course) blocked in her building.…
We’re enjoying winter break in Western New York this week, and I’m glad to have some extra time to myself to catch up on all sorts of fun things like laundry, tax preparation, and car maintenance. Did I mention the dentist? I have to schedule that appointment too. At times, I’m a huge procrastinator, and there is no better way to stall than logging on to Twitter and asking for some help from my friends…
My daughter Laura skipped four days of school this week. So did Noah. They were accompanied by dozens of other kids from all over the globe who met in Boise, Idaho to participate in the Special Olympics World Games Global Youth Summit. I know that Laura and Noah are grateful to their teachers for supporting them on this one. Laura did her homework on the plane, and Noah shared his accomplishments with his classmates upon…
Some of the teachers that I am working with are excited by the quality of work emerging from their newly launched cooperative learning and literature circles groups. Most of them began by defining specific roles and guiding group discussion, but some are eager to begin supporting students in their creation of own quality questions. The role cards and job assignments that are sometimes used early in this work are only intended as a temporary scaffold. Some teachers prefer…
A comment from Steve Shann on my last post: I strongly agree with what you say about the link between real learning and standards. And scores too? Would that depend on whether the scores were really linked to the standards? Is there any research about this that you know about? (I’ve just come from a teacher meeting that was all about scores and not at all about learning and standards. Ugh.) Can you say some…
When we invite students into literature circles, we commit to teaching processes and skills rather than hyperfocusing on the surface features of any one title. Literature circle work provides teachers the opportunity to discover and leverage so much about their individual students and the strengths that they bring to the table. There is space to discover how we can help kids grow as learners too. This happens through effective formative assessment practices. Formative assessment is…