Just this week…… Larry Ferlazzo shared the link to this series of posts about blogging over twitter. Sean Nash caught my request for examples of Ning in the classroom and sent this link and this link my way. Steve Shann shared his examples as well, and he connected me to James Miscavish who directed to me to this ning and this one. Dean Groom direct-messaged me, pointing out that Ning tends to work best with…
“You know, I used to think that a successful session meant everyone left feeling happy and smiling. Now, I’m realizing that a successful session might leave people feeling a little uncomfortable and questioning what they thought was certain.” This reminded me of a conversation I recently had with my daughter around the whole notion of discomfort and learning. She was tackling some tough homework, and it was frustrating her quite a bit. “This is too…
Meredith Stewart recently began a conversation on the English Companion Ning about setting meaningful professional goals, and this thought of hers really struck me: “Based on the goals that I have seen from others, it seems the trend is to write very nebulous or very easily achievable goals. I would like at least one of my goals to be something at which it’d be possible to fail.” This is a compelling consideration, isn’t it? Goals…
This just made my day last week. My friend Monika and I were chatting about writing and kids over coffee last week when she shared some concerns about her own little boy, whose name is Luke, and his disinterest in the whole process. Our conversation wasn’t long, but she picked my brain a bit about how to engage him as a writer, and I tossed out a couple of ideas. Mostly, I just suggested that…
I realize that I may be the last person on earth who will finally own her very own Flip Video Camera, and I’ll bet none of you are suprised that the only reason I ordered it is because someone tweeted about a sweet deal that Woot was running earlier this week. Thanks, Kevin! So, here’s the icing on the cake: my daughter Laura had enough money saved up from her bottle-returning efforts all winter to buy one as…
Who is ignoring you? Who or what are you ignoring? Thanks to Susan Morgan for giving me much to think about.
Okay okay okay! So, we’re going to play a little game with ELA standards for a minute. I don’t care whose standards they are. Could be the ones from my state or your state or whoever’s state. Now, I’m wondering what would happen if we took the real work of kids, the work that they do outside of school, on their own time (because they love doing it) and we introduced them to the standards and asked…
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…
My daughter Laura invited me to tag along with her on her trip to Idaho this week for the Special Olympics World Games. She’ll be blogging about her experiences here and all that she is learning, but I wanted to introduce the readers who follow me here to Noah Gray. Laura got to hang out with him last night because both of them were asked to speak at a dinner for the Global Youth Activation…
Most of the teachers that I work with have inherited students who are not yet accustomed to the cooperative learning structures and processes that drive effective literature circles. As a result, the honeymoon is often over far too soon as teachers begin confronting the reality of this learning environment: it’s a bit messier than what happens when we seat kids in rows, ply them with paper, and direct them to keep quiet unless they raise…