After much contemplation, I am closing down this blog. I will continue to write at the newsletter and elsewhere, so this is more of a transition than anything. Why? For the past eight years, I (along with colleagues the last four years) have posted about our work: our challenges, our hopes, our successes, all in …
Screeners. Interventions. Supervision and evaluation. None of these parts of our education system have gone away, yet to ask our teachers to engage in these initiatives right now is difficult with all of our challenges. For tonight’s discussion on the newsletter, we respond to the question: Join us for the slow chat this evening, starting …
Tonight’s Discussion: How do we maintain the system when educators are stressed out? Read More »
This is an excerpt from a four-session course titled “Create Your Ideal Curriculum“, available to newsletter subscribers. Join today! The messiness that comes with performance tasks is a reason why they are not implemented more in the curriculum. Yet this messiness also has two upsides: space to be creative with how students can show what …
Place-based Learning vs. Project-based Learning: Two Approaches for Authentic Assessment Read More »
This week, in between Zoom chats and preparation for the fall, I have been slowly weeding my professional library. I’m using the process recommended by Marie Kondo and Scott Sonenshein in their book Joy at Work. With each book, I look it over, check the inside for highlights, and ask myself if it still is …
Three questions to isolate, understand, and apply information
As I shared earlier this week, we may be fortunate to have discovered more time in our lives. Yet experiencing success with new tasks doesn’t happen without some strategies. Next are five approaches I utilize when reading professionally, such as during the recent book study. 1. Define your purpose for reading We won’t remember everything …
Five Strategies for Reading Professional Resources Read More »
I am co-teaching a 4th grade summer school course online. We meet once a day on Zoom to read aloud a picture book, discuss how the people in the story demonstrate perseverance or flexible thinking (our central concept is “growth mindset”), and then relate these ideas to a personal learning project each student has selected. …
Engaging Literate Minds: It Takes Time #engaginglitminds Read More »
I believe student choice and engagement are inextricably linked. In Chapter 16 of Engaging Literate Minds, “Apprenticing Humanity”, the authors write about the connection between engagement and being a “lifelong learner” (p 270). This leads me to connect choice and lifelong learning. It makes sense. I’ve consciously included choice in my lessons, and I can …
Choice and Engagement During a Pandemic #engaginglitminds Read More »
This week I have had the privilege of working with first grade teachers as a presenter at our district’s Writing Institute. Engaging young writers has been an overwhelming theme throughout the sessions. We have discussed many ways to evaluate a student’s engagement in all the components of writing instruction. Much of the discussion focuses on …
– Review of Educational Research, March 2007, Vol. 77, No. 1, pp. 81-112 I speak for myself (and maybe you) when I say that I have to be VERY careful with my own past educational experiences informing my current work. So much research has been done since I was a student in a classroom that …
