Teachers of Significance

I was a high school English and Reading teacher. I got thrown into teaching reading classes in a new job based on coming from a school district that had a reputation for providing “Content Area Reading” training. I taught reading classes for nine years. I was a high school reading specialist whose job was to provide job-embedded professional development to teachers who were trying to increase the effectiveness of their literacy instruction. Now I am a PK-12 curriculum coordinator working in a school district that is gradually implementing a reading workshop approach in middle and high school. If you have read Mosaic of Thought , In the Middle,    The Book Whisperer , or Book Love and if you have already implemented reading / writing workshop in your middle and high school class this blog-post might be a simplistic rehash of what much more experience teachers have to say. Or it might validate your thinking. If you are skeptical or curious about independent reading for s...

Sample Exit Slips Here are three areas to draw from, with a range of samples to stir your thinking!  I use exits slips 2-3 times per week at the high school level of teaching. Examples of Cognitive-Skills Type Exit Slips: Task Analysis What are the three most important details in this chapter, task, lab, activity? Predict What do you predict will happen when we … mix the compounds together.. find out about Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks…learn about carcinogens…? Ask! Write a question about an aspect of the material that confuses you. Write a question about the material that you think would be a good short answer/essay question on tomorrow’s test. Write a question about the material/lab/activity in how it relates to your life? Picture It! Draw a diagram or picture of the reading/lab/activity.  Make the important aspects or details more prominent. Examples of Affective-Type Exit Slips: Enjoyment H...

Declan T. FitzPatrick I've been lucky to be around some of the most amazing mentor teachers and colleagues any teacher could ever hope for. Unfortunately one side effect of being exposed to extraordinary teaching is feeling the gap: the gap being what I should be doing and what I know how to do. Recently I've been working with middle and high school ELA teachers to implement reading and writing workshop. The end goal is clear to us. We know we want to build highly engaged classrooms where "learning floats on a sea of talk," where students read and talk in small groups and write for each other and for real audiences in authentic forms. Our struggle comes with what to do first. Here's what I'm currently thinking: Response Writing The simplest and most significant change I ever made in my classroom was to focus on student response writing. In the spring of my first year of teaching, I was out of ideas and exhausted from daily planning. I asked my stu...

Here, Declan explores text complexity. What is so highly significant about his insights here is that they help students to make meaning when they interact with texts. If we want to have a significant impact on students, we need to set the stage for them to find meaning.   Thank you for your thoughtful post, Declan!   -- Teachers of Significance Task Complexity Deserves Attention By Declan Fitzpatrick I’m a curriculum coordinator which means most people don’t know what I do with my time. Luckily I get to spend a lot of time working with teachers developing units, lessons, and assessments. We decide what units go into a course, what books go with which units, and how students will demonstrate their increasing mastery of important literacy skills. It is my job to make the case to the school board that we know what we’re teaching, and we really are teaching the right things. In my professional ...