all a teacher can
do – is work with students to create a classroom culture, a climate, a
curriculum that will nourish and sustain the fundamental inclinations that
everyone starts out with: to make sense of oneself and the world, to become
increasingly competent at tasks that are regarded as consequential, to
connect with (and express oneself to) other people.
I
once sat in on several classes taught by Keith Grove at Dover-Sherborn High
School near Boston and noticed that such meetings were critical to his
teaching; he had come to realize that the feeling of community (and active
participation) they produced made whatever time remained for the explicit
curriculum far more productive than devoting the whole period to talking at
rows of silent kids. Together the students decided whether to review the homework
in small groups or as a whole class. Together they decided when it made
sense to schedule their next test. (After all, what’s the point of
assessment – to have students show you what they know when they’re ready to
do so, or to play “gotcha”?) Interestingly, Grove says that his classes are
quite structured even though they’re unusually democratic, and he sees his
job as being “in control of putting students in control.”
The first
is that deeper learning and enthusiasm require us to let students generate
possibilities rather than just choosing items from our menu; construction is
more important than selection.
Fall 2010 article by Alfie Kohn about things that don't work, and things that do for encouraging a real LOVE of reading. Includes some challenging comments about motivation and traditional methods for teaching reading.
The school’s success suggests that perhaps certain instructional fundamentals—fundamentals that schools have devalued or forgotten—need to be rediscovered, updated, and reintroduced. And if that can be done correctly, traditional instruction delivered by the teachers already in classrooms may turn out to be the most powerful lever we have for improving school performance after all.
Research has shown that thinking, speaking, and reading comprehension are interconnected and reinforced through good writing instruction
So wait, is Coleman the architect of New Dorp's success? No.
Students’ inability to translate thoughts into coherent, well-argued sentences, paragraphs, and essays was severely impeding intellectual growth in many subjects
teaching the basics of analytic writing, every day
DeAngelis
roughly 40 percent of students are poor, a third are Hispanic, and 12 percent are black
Her decision in 2008 to focus on how teachers supported writing inside each classroom was not popular.
A website that has a compilation of well written sentences/ excerpts from novels and short stories that could be used as mentor texts in a language arts/ English classroom.
Chicago Shakespeare Theater has printable handbooks for many of Shakespeare's plays. "Each of our entirely original teacher handbooks includes active, engaging teaching activities, 400 years of critical thinking, synopses, and much more. Teaching activities-all aligned with the Common Core State Standards-are designed to draw upon some of the same practices and techniques that actors use in the rehearsal process to break open Shakespeare's challenging language."
"Each of our entirely original teacher handbooks includes active, engaging teaching activities, 400 years of critical thinking, synopses, and much more. Teaching activities-all aligned with the Common Core State Standards-are designed to draw upon some of the same practices and techniques that actors use in the rehearsal process to break open Shakespeare's challenging language. "