Skip to main content

The Significance of Low-stakes writing

A post about the significance of response writing:
http://tomakeaprairie.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/writing-meaningfully-about-meaningful-reading-part-1-a-look-at-low-stakes-writing/

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Classroom Controversy

Constructive Controversy     I want to draw my students into a supportive classroom environment that normalizes struggle and controversy. Argument does not have to be a winner-take-call debate or (on the other extreme) a series of head nods to a commonly agreed-upon platitude.  Democracy takes  more work than that.  The empathy and rationality of rich humanism requires greater depth and search, as well.   Even after 21 years of teaching, I am still learning so much about how to set the stage for respectful and engaged discussion.  What about you? Praise, Pressure, and Performance This short unit focuses on setting the norms of inquiry and engagement that will lead to constructive controversy.  Please check out any of the lessons, or the whole unit!  I taught this in the 2013-14 school year in grade 9, but it could easily run in grades 8-11.   This topic is so compelling, I think, because it will help students...

Affective Learning

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...