Teachers of Significance

Tell Me Why You Think That! Do students learn better when they aim to agree or when they debate an issue?  It's a trick question, as David and Roger Johnson point out in their meta-analysis of discussion modes: it turns out that guiding students to engage in controversy in constructive ways leads to greater cognitive and affective gains than either of the typically practiced models of concurrence or debate. Academic Controversy. Is a discussion format in which students switch roles after arguing their points.  Seeing the issue from another's perspective can be truly enlightening, and it helps students to engage in active listening--good for their interpersonal relationships in class and for increasingly the level of complexity with which they see a given topic.   Tough Talk is a recent book on the topic which has challenged my thinking. Role-Playing leads students to have both the dramatic immediacy of arguing in role and the perspective of a broad view that they constr

Conceptual Inquiry Project It's year-long! As part of a yearlong research project, juniors at MEHS research a thematic topic of importance such as Truth, Beauty, Justice, Honor, Same/Other, etc. This month, they continue their inquiry by finding one book-length reading of non-fiction to fuel their knowledge and also listen to two radio documentaries on the topic. We offer them this list of sources: Multi-modal Inquiry PRX: http://www.prx.org/ NPR: http://www.npr.org/ Radio Lab: http://www.radiolab.org/ Re: sound: http://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/library This American Life: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/ Ideas: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/ The Next Big Thing: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/tnbt/2006/jan/ Fresh Air: http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/ Snap Judgment: http://www.snapjudgment.org/ I am so excited to see how the students' understandings of their topics--understandings that have been building of the course of the whole school year--will grow and develo

What is Learning of Significance? By helping students to make their own connections and understandings, these awesome teachers of significance have helped students to find meanings that will resonate with them. How to do it? connect with real issues right-size the learning task (and then make it even more challenging) problematize texts use multimodal prompts and texts show students how experts make meaning What does it look like? English -- a student researchers the war in Afghanistan with a partner and presents his findings about the Soviet invasion, the Taliban, and the U.S. involvement following 9/11.   These same students connect this powerful new knowledge to The Kite Runner .  In turn, the complex events leading up to and following 9/11 help focus the reading of the novel and vice versa ; as meanings become connected, webs of understanding reinforce significant knowledge. Science -- a teacher challenges his students to read a textbook excerpt describing cellular

Significant Learning: Expressing Voice The homogenizing forces in education seem to abound these days, with standardized testing, teacher evaluation, and politics involved.  I find that my soul sings as a teacher when I find something worthwhile for my particular students and polishing and prepare it for them in particular, adjusting, tinkering and making it real for them.  In this act of curricular creation, I am expressing my voice as a teacher (albeit filtered through Common Core standards and common assessments). In turn, we need to create the space to allow students to voice their own ideas and concerns and to take the ideas seriously enough that they can be of consequence.  For example, rather than simply an academic study of poetry, students at my high school learn to perform in through poetryoutloud.org .  Such a shift pushes the learning target away from knowledge exclusively toward product, which represents a shift in the ways of knowing and the configuration of the asses

Question Formulation Technique: "IT IS POSSIBLE TO PERFORM WITH VOICE and TO WRITE WITH VOICE, LIKE WALT WHITMAN" After a brief introduction to the rules of QFT from the book Make Just One Change (Rothstein & Santana, 2013), my students were ready to form questions in pairs (steps 1 and 2); they then vetted the questions in small groups (4 students) and we posted them on the board below. The quality of the questions and range of participation was off the charts!  We are studying Walt Whitman right now, so the idea of writing with voice and reading with voice coincides well with their work to perform a piece of poetry from memory ( Poetryoutloud.org )  I can envision using QFT (Question Formulation Technique) in  broad range of contexts.  It was hard not to launch into an answer to the question or to discuss it; just ask the questions and use them a s focal points throughout the unit.