HC English Department

"The national myth of happiness pursued and won has always been contested in fiction - and its promise seems almost extinct in some contemporary novels"

"Educator Mia MacMeekin has put together a clear infographic highlighting some of the ways teachers design "personalized" curriculum."

"Here are the four reading lists, along with my original text that appears in the library bookshop window, followed by some production photos to give you an idea of the incredible love and energy Kelli and her team poured into bringing this to life."

"The Scholastic Kids & Family Reading ReportTM: Fifth Edition is out and offers a snapshot of where young people are when it comes to reading independently. Here are some of the findings of a nationally representative survey conducted last fall by Scholastic in conjunction with YouGov. Some of the results are surprising, including the fact that kids prefer to read books in print. Following the findings is an analysis of what they mean for parents and teachers:"

"What do students learn from the experience? "They enjoy it so much that they don't realize they're learning at the highest level," says Alexa Schlechter, a 10th-grade English teacher at Norwalk High School in Connecticut, who had never used a podcast in class before trying "Serial." Listening to and engaging with "Serial" helps many students address one of the main challenges in developing their analytical skills: getting beyond simple explanations of what happened, and figuring out how and why an event occurred, she says. Poring over text of the transcripts in class to uncover answers, students also develop their critical reading skills, she says. (See how students answered questions about discrepancies between the cell phone records and Jay's testimony at Schlechter's blog.) Students publicly debated Syed's guilt or innocence in Godsey's classes, addressing a Common Core standard to improve speaking skills, and worked together with other students to create their own podcasts or present mock closing arguments."

"Kaizena voice feedback. To be clear, this isn't a Google project, but rather an app that integrate with Google Drive to work its magic. But what (simple) magic it allows: cloud-based, tablet-friendly voice feedback and commenting for documents, allowing you to provide thorough feedback and guidance for writers without making endless notes in tiny margins on papers that can get misinterpreted or lost."

"The Gallup Student Poll is an online poll made up of 20 well-researched questions designed to assess the hope, engagement, and wellbeing of students in the U.S. The poll takes eight to ten minutes to complete, and is entirely free to any public or private school in the United States. After your students complete the poll, you will receive a detailed report on the engagement level at your school. This report can be monumental in discovering elements of your school community that can be improved upon to increase student engagement. The act of administering the Gallup Student Poll, or any poll designed to research student engagement, is also an excellent opportunity to connect with your students. Explain to them why you're asking them to complete the poll and let them know that their school cares about their wellbeing. Reassure your students that you are listening to their feedback and that the results will be studied carefully and acted upon. Once you have a good idea of how engaged your students are, you can start to create activities and programs to increase their engagement."

"The real question we should be asking is, "What do we believe should happen after the end of the school day to help ensure that students retain what they have learned and are primed to learn more?" Any answer with the word, "work" in its name, as in "homework," is not typically going to be met with eagerness or enthusiasm by students. Ideally, we want children to understand that they are always learners. In school, we refer to them as "students" but outside of school, as children, they are still learners. So it makes no sense to even advertise a "no homework" policy in a school. It sends the wrong message. The policy should be, "No time-wasting, rote, repetitive tasks will be assigned that lack clear instructional or learning purposes.""

"If PBL is to become a powerful, accepted model of instruction in the future, a vocabulary change may be in order - preferably to the term project based inquiry. It's time to not only address the flaws in PBL, but to reinvent it in a way that leads to deeper learning, creative inquiry, and a better fit with a collaborative world in which doing and knowing are one thing. Here are thoughts about five areas in which PBL needs to move forward."

"Voice is perhaps one of writer's most important traits and also one of the hardest to discover. Because you already have a unique voice, you just have to nail it down on the page. Record yourself telling a story. There are details you use, the way you move your body (or don't), your facial expressions, the way you move your hands (or don't), all of that is specific to you. It's part of your voice and getting that down on the page is so very important to you as a writer. The only way to uncover your voice is to write and read a lot, then write and read some more. Record yourself telling your stories and transcribe them. Consider the stories that matter to you and why and how that shapes how you tell them. Consider what's more powerful, the way you tell a story to your friends or when you write it down? Why? Who told you that there was only one way to write and real writers, established writers, writers who mean anything, write this way?"

"When mistakes become learning opportunities, everything changes. Students take more risks, think in new ways, cheat less, and solve mysteries that had previously eluded them. Here are some things that we can do in the classroom to change this defeating way of thinking, including both formal and informal evaluation processes:"

"Ingersoll studies teacher turnover and retention at the University of Pennsylvania. One of the reasons teachers quit, he says, is that they feel they have no say in decisions that ultimately affect their teaching. In fact, this lack of classroom autonomy is now the biggest source of frustration for math teachers nationally. I spoke with Ingersoll to ask him about his research and what schools can do to fix the problem."

"In addition to making it clear to students what learning goals will be covered and required of them through the rubric or performance framework, students need constructive feedback in order to improve. But feedback isn't always appropriate; there are times when it's very effective and other times when it can be a waste of precious energy. "Assessment is really time consuming and exhausting," Staff said. "So when I do it, and give a lot of meaningful feedback, I want to do it at a time that it will help them to improve." Students don't want to know how they could have done better after they've already turned in the project. Peer assessment is another way for students to gain valuable input on how they can iterate on an idea or project, helping to push towards another, better version."

"I had tried everything from the traditional book report style assessment to more creative movie trailers, but I didn't feel like they accomplished what I wanted from a silent sustained reading assessment. It wasn't until I went to a book club meeting with some friends that inspiration struck. At our book club meetings we ate food, drank wine, and talked about literature for hours. Why couldn't our SSR assessment be more like that? (Sans the wine, of course.) I thought about what inspired me to read my book club books and the answer was that I really enjoyed that evening of food, conversation, and friends. So, I decided to design a book club style chat assessment for our silent sustained reading. The goal was to get my students having conversations about their various books. Ultimately, I hoped they would turn each other on to titles they had read and enjoyed. Below is a brief overview of the assignment. I've also included a link to a Google document with a detailed explanation of the assignment for any teacher interested in using it!"

"Two years ago, Zak Malamed and a few friends held their first Twitter chat for students who were feeling frustrated about how little say they had in the school reform debates going on all around them. At the time, Malamed and two other friends were still in high school, and one friend was in college. But when they formed Student Voice, the group that rose out of that first chat, they agreed that "Revolutionizing education through the voices and actions of students," in whatever form that would take, would be their mission. "Students want to achieve in school. They want to find purpose being in school." said Malamed. "They want to discover their talents. Without students having a voice, we cannot collectively ensure that this will all happen for every student.""

Check this out Penny Wintermute: "Her students would draw on the skills they learned while listening to and studying Serial. They would work in groups (imagine Koenig, Dana Chivvis, Julie Snyder, the engineer who came up with their theme song, Ira Glass). Students would create a series of podcasts told from the point of view of a memoirist they'd read earlier in the year, such as Alice Sebold."

"If PBL is to become a powerful, accepted model of instruction in the future, a vocabulary change may be in order - preferably to the term project based inquiry. It's time to not only address the flaws in PBL, but to reinvent it in a way that leads to deeper learning, creative inquiry, and a better fit with a collaborative world in which doing and knowing are one thing. Here are thoughts about five areas in which PBL needs to move forward."

"The Internet, print and other forms of media are full of bias in all its forms. Before you believe everything you see or hear, it helps to be able to detect bias and evaluate whether it is worth paying attention to or not."

"From the "I have a dream" speech to Steve Jobs' iPhone launch, many great talks have a common structure that helps their message resonate with listeners. In this talk, presentation expert Nancy Duarte shares practical lessons on how to make a powerful call-to-action."