Group items tagged

"what students say is the best assignment they have had this year. "

Blog post on using Mindmap for prewriting organization of blogs, essays, or any writing assignment.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the challenge we face as educators when well-intentioned learners make incorrect, inscrutable, thoughtless, or otherwise off-the-mark comments. It's a crucial moment in teaching: how do you respond to an unhelpful remark in a way that 1) dignifies the attempt while 2) making sure that no one leaves thinking that the remark is true or useful? Summer is a great time to think about the challenge of developing new routines and habits in class, and this is a vital issue that gets precious little attention in training and staff development. Here is a famous Saturday Night Live skit, with Jerry Seinfeld as a HS history teacher, that painfully demonstrates the challenge and a less than exemplary response. Don't misunderstand me: I am not saying that we are always correct in our judgment about participant remarks. Sometimes a seemingly dumb comment turns out to be quite insightful. Nor am I talking about merely inchoate or poorly-worded contributions. That is a separate teaching challenge: how to unpack or invite others to unpack a potentially-useful but poorly articulated idea. No, I am talking about those comments that are just clunkers in some way; seemingly dead-end offerings that tempt us to drop our jaws or make some snarky remark back. My favorite example of the challenge and how to meet it comes from watching my old mentor Ted Sizer in action in front of 360 educators in Louisville 25 years ago. We had travelled as the staff of the Coalition of Essential Schools from Providence to Louisville to pitch the emerging Coalition reform effort locally. Ted gave a rousing speech about the need to transform the American high school. After a long round of applause, Ted took questions. The first questioner asked, and I quote: "Mr Sizer, what do you think about these girls and their skimpy halter tops in school?" (You have to also imagine the voice: very good-ol'-boy). Without missing a beat or making a face, Ted said "Deco

"Copying the "scribe post blog" idea from Darren Kuroptawa, we've used a Blogger site this semester as a shared learning blog / scribe blog. Students were randomly assigned a partner at the start of term and a week to summarize, and worked together to post a thorough recap of their week's topic and learning points. In week 13 we discussed Pecha Kutcha presentations as well as phonecasting, and the student summary for the week was excellent. This summary was good, in part, because it included multiple hyperlinks to relevant resources."

comprehensive three-volume curriculum created by Renee Hobbs is available online. This is the 18-unit curriculum developed for Maryland State Department of Education and Discovery Communications, Inc. You can download the PDF files with lesson plans and reproducibles for each unit and use the videos to teach media literacy in conjunction with social studies, language arts and health education.

"The assignment is simply to post a brief summary of what happened in class each day. A different student is responsible for the daily scribe post and they end their post by choosing the next scribe. The first scribe is a volunteer. The teacher's daily involvement is limited to updating a post called The Scribe List which is at the top of the links list in the sidebar of the class's blog."

Learn about Scribe Posts

Spring Branch ISD is now working with MangaHigh. They are uploading student rosters for teachers so that SBISD teachers can assign challenges to their students. It's a great motivational tool to which our teachers and students have access.

for any teacher who wants to use it?

Middle schools and high schools definitely have access to this program. Check with Karen Justl to find out whether or not all schools have access.

"The growing access to knowledge, information, people, and tools that our students are getting demands a shift in how we think about the work they do in school."