Teachers of Significance

Read 4000 Read 4000 is an attempt to capture the simple idea that in order to grow in reading achievement, starting at 4 th grade, children need to read about 800,000 words per year. That’s just to keep up with the 50 th %ile of reading achievement. Students in the top 10% of reading achievement are reading on average 2.3 million words per year. For a point of reference the complete series of 7 Harry Potter books contains about 1 million words. A Simple Number Trying to communicate reading volume in terms of words per year doesn’t go well. Most people have resorted to setting goals based on a number of books per year. The Southern Regional Education Board, Making Middle Grades Work, and High Schools that Work recommend setting a goal of 25 books per year. Donalyn Miller, author of The Book Whisperer and Reading in the Wild , recommends 40 books per year. In all cases they recommend finding a way to allow/account for longer books, short boo

Art and Controversy (in AP English Language).   Students learn best when constructive controversy is engaged (Johnson and Johnson, 2009), and the art of Barbara Kruger gets us to rethink assumptions by introducing controversy. Here, a floating hand holds up an ID-card sized sign that offers a disturbing message, and  Kruger gets viewers to stand outside of their typical understandings.  In formulating these ideas and in making these juxtapositions, Kruger destabilizes accepted connotations of certain words such as "friend" or "belong," or in this case, a philosophical phrase.  Literacy researcher Rebecca Trites calls this "critical literacy" ( Disturbing the Universe, 2004), and it is the type of read-think-write move that causes us to question and push back against ideologies and patterns that form our assumptions.   It's important to incorporate texts, images, ideas that set the stage for students to question in a substantial way. Enjoy th