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Here is an article from the IRA with great mentor text suggestions for Writer's Workshop.

I love this topic. I have always believed that using picture books beyond elementary school is a great idea. Mitali Perkins will be our visiting author this May. Her latest book Open Mic: Riffs on Life Between Cultures in Ten Voices might be another useful resource for teachers interested in working with short texts. I believe she only edited the stories that were picked. I have not read it yet, but I just copied and pasted the information from Mitali's website for you to look over. The public library will be ordering mulitple copies and the middle school will hopefully do the same. Though we lack a funding source, it might be a consideration for some type of all school (middle school) read. "Listen in as ten YA authors-some familiar, some new-use their own brand of humor to share their stories about growing up between cultures. Edited by Mitali Perkins, this collection of fiction and nonfiction embraces a mix of stayles as diverse as their authors, from laugh-out-loud funny to wry, ironic, or poignant, in prose, poetry, and comic form. With contributions by Cherry Cheva, Varian Johnson, Naomi Shihab Nye, Mitali Perkins, Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, Debby Rigaud, Francisco X. Stork, Gene Luen Yang, and David Yoo."

I'm glad that I'm not the only one looking for quality mentor texts, and am also glad that others found the information from the IRA helpful. Thank you for adding information of your own. It's all so informative. There are some great resources out there!

eSchoolNews is a monthly publication that comes to me via email (I'm sure many of you receive it) that is chock full of articles about technology in education. September's issue covered many topics but one in particular stood out to me, Does Research Support Flipped Learning?, intrigued me because the sub title suggests that it might work and improve student learning. A few key points include "Students are actively involved in their own learning.." and in many cases this method "..maximizes time with the instructor and increases the focus on higher-order thinking skills." WOW! Those are two of my favorite skills for students to master. The article also points out four essential elements of a flipped classroom - cleverly calling them the "four pillars of F-L-I-P" (Flexible Environment, Learning Culture, Intentional Content, Professional Educators.) A short article that does a good job of highlights the trend of a flipped classroom.

I flipped my intro to library. I really loved the format of Monday night's class and immediately flipped my intro to library to Advisory Research Challenge: Locating and Evaluating Information. Six research challenges, one that everyone had to do and the rest in pairs. The focus was on RMHS and RPL resources for RMHS students, which are many and varied and very sophisticated. Total fun. Time flew. Kids had to dive in, do the research and then present. It was so apparent to discern what needed to be clarified and/or emphasized. Thanks G-Dawg1

It seems as if Ohio has come up with a creative solution to snow days, or as they call them, "Calamity Days." It seems like something we could do very easily to preserve the school calendar.

It seems like the Flipped Classroom model could be very beneficial for something like this. Teachers could post lessons and and an assignment for students to complete at home. The obvious challenge would be accessibility, especially when child care arrangements are made.

New Hampshire uses blizzard bags. SNHU is also using a flipped model when their classes are cancelled. They post assignments to Blackboard for students to watch, etc. and complete classwork as well.

I loved this commentary posted on Education Week. It talks about the importance of giving students unstructured time on a regular basis, and expanding recess or time for physical activity. As the author states, "Kids are built to move. Having more time for unstructured outdoor play is like handing them a reset button." This author also spent six weeks in Finland studying their education system. They seem to be achieving greater success with less class time, and more built in natural breaks. This is worth reading.

I wish we had more down time and outside time as well during the day. We barely get it all in as it is with one recess, but maybe going outside or having downtime will help them retain more day to day.

I'm so glad you posted this article, Julie. I think it is so important to continue examining not just what we teach, but how we teach it. My son shifted this January to the Waldorf school in Lexington, in part because he is a very physical learner, who is interested in the arts, music, and practical arts, but also because he was just sitting too much of the day, focusing almost exclusively on reading and math skills. In his new school, they practice counting and multiplication tables while jumping rope on teams, for example. It's not recess, but it is physical activity, it's fun, and it really reinforces and connects the math skill they are working on. I hear many examples like this from him each week, and it has really inspired me to try to incorporate similar approaches, even (or maybe especially?) with my 9th graders.

This is a great article about brain health and how diets that include large quantities of gluten have been linked to maladies such as Alzheimer's, anxiety, depression, chronic headaches, ADHD and others. The book, Grain Brain: The surprising truth about wheat, carbs, and sugar; your brain's silent killers has been on the best seller list since September. It's being published in 15 countries. The New England Journal of Medicine has also conducted numerous studies and supports some of the claims of the book, though there are differing opinions in the medical field and at the end of the article, the author is not convinced that gluten is dangerous to most people. We see a tremendous numbers of students in our schools that suffer from some of these ailments. The article is suggesting that nutrition is absolutely linked to our neurological health. A few years ago our food services changed the menus in our schools. Children in middle school can no longer eat 6 cookies and 2 ice creams for lunch. Though lunch duty isn't my favorite responsibility, it gives me the opportunity to see the changes happening in our cafeteria. In my observation, kids are actually ordering and eating the healthier options that they are offered. I recently experimented with changing my diet to be gluten free and I've never felt better. I didn't lose weight, but I lost my craving for carbohydrates after a few days and my focus on everything else seemed to be a little keener. It lasted about 6 weeks and I only fell off the wagon with my mother's bread stuffing at Thanksgiving. I instantly felt cravings for all things with flour. If I try it again I will pay more attention to see if I can tell if my diet really does effect my brain.

This is very interesting. I saw Dr. Perlmutter on the Dr. Oz show last week. Dr. Perlmutter suggests that we need to stay away from most carbs including many fruits, grains, rice and root vegetables. He talks about how our low fat, high carb diets are actually shrinking our brains causing more instances of alzeheimer, dementia and ADHD. Simple life style changes of going to a higher fat, low carb diet will reverse this trend. We have to be careful that people don't translate this recommendation of adding fat to our diets into raiding the cookie aisle and super sizing at MacDonald's!!

Wow! Thanks for the helpful info. on gluten and other foods that can impact our brain health.

This article describes how a school district enables teachers to teach colleagues the intricacies of certain aspects of technology as part of a professional development plan that calls for "flipped" methodology.

I agree with most of what this mother has to say. I like to think that I will feel the same way when I have kids. I'm curious what other parents think...

I definitely agree with the core of what this mother says. I feel that the time that our kids are with us, now, is their training ground for when I'm not there, and it's not fair for me to protect them from taking any "lumps". Sometimes that can mean leaving my 12 year old to manage a situation with her teacher on her own, or resisting making a call or email to the teacher to ask about an assignment that seems too difficult or confusing - this is not anyone in 7th grade! ;) It takes discipline on my part not to jump in to help her, and to let her feel the discomfort of doing something the wrong way or messing up a test because she was so sure that she had studied enough even though I was pretty sure she hadn't. My kids are the center of my world in that I am constantly aware of what's going on for them and constantly monitoring them to make sure all is well; the difference is that most of the time they don't know that I'm paying that kind of attention, because my husband and I work really hard to choose good situations for them where we feel confident to let our kids loose to sort it out (in school, activities, etc.) without jumping in to "save" them all the time.

Wow this was an interesting article. I totally want to share it out on facebook but I try not to be too controversial out there. I had a friend one time that talked about the feminization (if that's a word) of today's male. I guess I'm wondering if kids are not allowed to play rough how will that impact our society later. Will it impact our military.

Kathy Favazza sent this site out to our staff at Parker. This is the email message: At the PARCC and CCSS trainings that I attended in Chicago I learned of an amazing tool. It's called Newsela. It is a website that takes articles in various topics: War & Peace, Money, Kids, Science and Law and links them to the anchor literacy standards that we all need to address in our subjects. You can set up classes and assign articles for students to read. Some articles have text based follow up questions (those with a small anchor in the top right) that you can assign to students. The coolest feature however is that you can adjust the reading level of the articles!!!!

I've played with this site and it is awesome. You can adjust the reading level of the texts. It has built in assessments like main idea. I highly recommend this resource for grades 4 through middle school.