Teachers of Significance

DURING READING STRATEGIES In his book, Subjects Matter, Harvey “Smokey” Daniels identifies a couple of dozen reading strategies to boost metacognition. Here is a short list of some of the during-reading strategies he mentions, and each has a strong research base. Think Aloud Reading Aloud (Pairs) Dramatic Role Play Post-it Response Notes Annotating Text Coding Text Sketching my way through the text Where do you stand? EXAMPLE POST-IT NOTES This week, I chose to use the post-it note activity with the novel, The Things They Carried. Students identified key nouns/objects from the chapter.  In LARGE letters. Students wrote associated feelings with each, noting the importance for the text: around the key objects, they wrote associated connotations. What associations can be made with each? What are the connotations concerned? Students then posted these on the board, and a group of students sorted them and explained what each group has in common (list-group-label) a

Pundits abound with promises that technology can "replace the middleman" in education.  Although I grate against the idea that a thoughtful, concerned, reflective, intelligent, passionate, caring adult--a teacher!--is the equivalent to a business owner who marks up merchandise for profit, the metaphor of the middleman forced me to think about just what, exactly, does the teacher add in a cloud-based, post-2007 , MOOC world, where a myriad of apps and sites (e.g. Khan Academy) can tailor feedback and where content has gotten so cheap (e.g. MIT's free courses, or sites like Coursera --featuring coursework from Stanford, UPenn, and Johns Hopkins--or nifty-looking courses like "Analytics in Course Design" through Dartmouth via Canvas ). Surely, teachers are not simply haggling with students for a better price on learning!  But just the same, I am asking myself what is the value-added I am bringing to my students that cannot be replaced. But if teachers are middle

Book Review If this book is filled with so much common sense--offer choice, give students a voice in their learning-- then why do I find myself invigorated by the potential of my students as I read it? We want to offer answers, students want questions. We offer safety, they love risk. We want them to play the role of the dutiful student, and they want to play a socially important role, an expert or daring personality. Basically, Armstrong drives home the point that the intense neuroplasticity of adolescent brains makes teaching teens a bit of wild fun, but it's not a game whose rules we, as adults, often fully understand or remember. For example, one chapter focuses on peer learning communities. In my experience, and through my home school district, we have focused consistently on Cooperative Learning modalities which are informed by the research of David and Roger Johnson at the University of Minnesota. They remind us that cooperative learning is not an activity to do,

Lesson Hooks-- Cultivating an intention-rich classroom. Cognitive scientists point out the massively effective habit of recruiting and maintaining focus in the learning process.  For learners--be they adults, children, or teens in between--the challenges of staying focused in our "intention - deficit" society can create real challenges to meaning making.  In schools, we throw unending stimuli, ideas, facts, and figures at our students and wonder why they have trouble retaining.  The point of starting a lesson in an interesting, purposeful way is to set the course of intention forward. One potential issue arises from the importance of setting the stage for students to become vested in what they are learning .  Why are they being asked to learn a given topic?  Why is it significant or important?  Of course, drawing on their prior learning through discussion can create important bridges of learning as students connect old understandings and new content and concepts.

Nudging groups toward becoming high-functioning teams. We want our students to invest in their classroom relationships. Veteran teachers have often seen groups that “gel” in that special way to become a team that is highly functional and synergistic--and fun! Students leave these groups feeling fed by the social interaction, and the work that they produce is often much stronger than it would have been if the student were acting solo. Positive Interdependence. The question remains, though, about how to get students (and adults, for that matter!) to invest in their groups and to have high expectations for the group. How do we get students to care? According to the research of David and Roger Johnson, there are at least 5-6 factors that can move a group toward synergy. The most overlooked, in my experience as a teacher and instructional coach, is that of Positive Interdependence . Some examples:  Positive Goal Interdependence  Positive Resource Interdependence  Positive Rol

Synthesis Writing involving The Role of Women & The Scarlet Letter Conflicting Sources. What does it mean to have students write meaningfully about sources that conflict? In this attached writing prompt, students evaluate Hester Prynne, a character whom Nathaniel Hawthorne posits as strong, capable and independent in chapters 12-15 of the novel. The question is whether or not the students think that she is a strong female character by today's standards. Embedded in this prompt is a problem or controversy that the students have had some interest in addressing, even though the documents are challenging. Charting an Inquiry. Prior to today's class, students have examined other synthesis prompts together, charting how the sources conflict and setting up how each of them would proceed through them. Today, they were ready to address the prompt independently, so they wrote alone, creating a mock outline of their essays, and we reviewed these together as a group. The impo