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/

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Conceptual Inquiry Project

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...

Learning with Significance

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...

How can we read and write with voice? My students will ask you!

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.

Teachers of Significance

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