Group items tagged

"Press the play button below to watch the war unfold over time. Drag the scrubber or click on the months and years to change the date range. Roll over the circles for more information on each battle. Casualties are defined as killed, wounded, missing and captured." Cool visualization of all Civil War battles. A couple questions that couple be useful when students view this timeline: - Using the available data, explain the Union strategy during the war - Using the available data, explain the Confederate strategy during the war. - Using the available data, explain what event/series of events represents the turning point of the war.

A friend shared this with me and it's a good read. It also summarizes the way that many of our teachers think, and could be an interesting article to share with a teacher and have a discussion about. Ultimate, I have a huge problem with the assumptions and conclusions that are being made here: "Now I'm not calling for abuse; I'd be the first to complain if a teacher called my kids names. But the latest evidence backs up my modest proposal. Studies have now shown, among other things, the benefits of moderate childhood stress; how praise kills kids' self-esteem; and why grit is a better predictor of success than SAT scores. All of which flies in the face of the kinder, gentler philosophy that has dominated American education over the past few decades. The conventional wisdom holds that teachers are supposed to tease knowledge out of students, rather than pound it into their heads. Projects and collaborative learning are applauded; traditional methods like lecturing and memorization-derided as "drill and kill"-are frowned upon, dismissed as a surefire way to suck young minds dry of creativity and motivation. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. And the following eight principles-a manifesto if you will, a battle cry inspired by my old teacher and buttressed by new research-explain why." Why are these seen as two completely different and opposing philosophies of education? That's my question. From my experience, teasing knowledge and understanding out of children stresses the hell out of them. They struggle to give you an answer initially, but when when you are unwilling to spoon feed them or provide them with a "drill and kill" answer, they finally make a connection. In doing so you show the students that their grit and determination has helped them gather a better understanding of the material and become a better student and learner in process.

I may write a decent response to this. She plays just about every false argument card in the book. It needs this treatment - http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/10/huntsville_teacher_common_core.html

This take down of Gladwell's dyslexia chapter http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=8123 makes for a similar parallel.

"Are you an aspiring rap lyricist? Have I got the tool for you! RapPad is a site where you can compose your raps with the help of rhyme lookups, syllable counters, and a library of beats. It also puts you in touch with a community for discussion, feedback, and online rap battles. But even if you're not planning on writing raps, it offers a unique kind of linguistic fun. With the "Generate Line" feature, you can give RapPad a line, and it will write the next line for you by pulling from a library of successful rap songs. I entered a bunch of famous first lines from literature, and got RapPad to give me back some gems. Are they literature? Are they rap? Let's call it raperature. Or maybe literatrap? Anyway, here are 18 literary first lines paired with rap lyrics." I don't know what the lesson is exactly, but there's some sort of lesson on creativity, writing, vocabulary, etc. waiting to be created here...

"We're following the Civil War, chapter by chapter. Click on the boxes below for installments in our series, view videos and photo galleries, find a Civil War battlefield, and much more. " Washington Post series that focuses on the Civil War. Contains a variety of primary documents, videos, and interactives.