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Stanford History Education Group website for close reading of primary sources

A great list of recommended reading compiled by Expeditionary Learning, a site committed to developing schools which focus on student driven learning experiences.

"if we want students to improve their reading comprehension and critical thinking skills- and truly fall in love with literature-we need to bring a genre that makes adults want to dress up as their favorite superhero into the classroom."

Reading Online is a freely available, online-only publication of the International Reading Association (IRA), a professional organization of literacy educators. Its focus is literacy practice and research in classrooms serving students aged 5 to 18.

Copyright "rights for the user" champion and author, Cory Doctorow, reports on efforts to guarantee rights for the blind and others with reading disabilities to gain access to the printed word. It's happening at the UN's World Organization for Intellectual Property, and it's the first time they are working on rights for copyright USERS in addition to copyright HOLDERS. Read about how U.S. negotiators have opposed this protection for disabled. It's an important issue for educators worldwide, but especially for those in the U.S., whose copyright law has been written to strongly favor corporate interests.

A fun flowchart, for teachers and students, to keep up the reading during the summer and even the school year. Targeted to high school students, but advanced middle school readers could use it as well.

This article describes a new book, Reality Hunger, which is essentially a mashup of quotes from other sources. The article discusses how are culture of short-form writing and reading is changing literature and reading. The book reminds me of elements of a Humument, which also took the work of another and then augmented that work into a new story and art form.

Children who read on grade level by the end of third grade are more successful in school, work, and in life. This KIDS COUNT special report affirms a commitment by the Casey Foundation to help ensure that all students are proficient in reading by the end of third grade and help narrow the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children.

Reading Eggs makes learning to read interesting and engaging for kids, with great online reading games and activities.

Recently I have been diving into the world of Assessment, seeking to better understand how we might design effective processes around this essential phase of the learning cycle. In doing so I have found a wealth of resources and quality reads that offer insights and strategies to be applied into our classrooms. Here then is a sampling of what I have been reading. 

"To cognitive neuroscientists, Handscombe's experience is the subject of great fascination and growing alarm. Humans, they warn, seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online. This alternative way of reading is competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia."

Washington Post article on how the internet is impacting our ability to read and concentrate.

"Education is catastrophically deficient in trust. Pro-accountability education reformers presume that, absent carrots and sticks, classrooms would be overrun with lazy and incapable teachers. Traditional instructors presume that, absent carrots and sticks, classrooms would be overrun with lazy and incapable students. Both viewpoints emerge from a noble desire to make classrooms high-performance spaces, but in actuality they suppress excellence."

An excellent article - must read! via @Edutopia

Cathy Davidson

In general, I agree. However, novelists and poets don't need college?? And perhaps less so to artists and musicians? Perhaps... but what better way to learn the history and analysis of their Art, in order to place their own work in context?

I could not agree more with you Maureen. As a long time middle school teacher in Oakland and Mpls I am thoroughly convinced that our nation and our states are nuts to have cut all of the tech and arts classes out of elementary, middle and high schools. EVERY student should learn a trade/skill set in high school. The hs drop out rate is horrifying and no surprise that the crime rate follows. We have a nation of under achieving teens because the adults have not kept up with funding the myriad of opportunities that would capture and harness their interests and creativity. I look forward to reading your book Maureen and to following you on here.

Asa Spencer of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute writes in the Education Gadfly Weekly: "Traditionalists cringe, tech buffs rejoice: This latest NAEP writing assessment for grades eight and twelve marks the first computer-based appraisal (by the "nation's report card") of student proficiency in this subject. It evaluates students' writing skills (what NAEP calls both academic and workplace writing) based on three criteria: idea development, organization, and language facility and conventions. Results were predictably bad: Just twenty-four percent of eighth graders and 27 percent of twelfth graders scored proficient or above. Boys performed particularly poorly; half as many eighth-grade males reached proficiency as their female counterparts. The use of computers adds a level of complexity to these analyses: The software allows those being tested to use a thesaurus (which 29 percent of eighth graders exploited), text-to-speech software (71 percent of eighth graders used), spell check (three-quarters of twelfth graders), and kindred functions. It is unclear whether use of these crutches affected a student's "language facility" scores, though it sure seems likely. While this new mechanism for assessing kids' writing prowess makes it impossible to track trend data, one can make (disheartening) comparisons across subjects. About a third of eighth graders hit the NAEP proficiency benchmark in the latest science, math, and reading assessments, compared to a quarter for writing. So where to go from here? The report also notes that twelfth-grade students who write four to five pages a week score ten points higher than those who write just one page a week. Encouraging students to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) is a start."

"Nobelprize.org's educational section consists of 46 productions. Of these, 29 are interactive learning games of various sorts and degrees of difficulties. Most of them also includes a "Read more" about the subject. Enjoy learning!"

Interesting read on teacher education reform. I'm not sure if I agree with everything, but the author makes some great points and had some strong suggestions to aid reform.