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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 Three Stages Of Reading strategy involves teaching students to delve into text. The Before Reading stage provides a scaffold for new concepts and vocabulary, promotes engagement and provides a means for prediction. The second stage, During Reading, allows students to integrate the knowledge and information they bring to the text with ‘new’ information in the text. The last stage, After Reading, allows students to articulate and process their understanding of what they have read and to think critically about the validity of the text.

Before Reading Stage

One of the purposes of Before Reading is to acknowledge the different experiences and background knowledge that students bring to a text, influencing how they will read and learn from a particular text. By knowing what students bring to a text the teacher can provide students with appropriate scaffolds to make links between what is already known and new information presented in a text.

“Who could have known that, unless someone taught them?”

Some writing experts caution that championing expository and analytic writing at the expense of creative expression is shortsighted.

formulaic instruction

teaching the basics of analytic writing, every day, in virtually every class.

a coherent, well-turned paragraph

the essay questions were just too difficult. Many would simply write a sentence or two and shut the test booklet.