Group items tagged

Teach rhetoric and banish the classics from HS English classes? What do you think?

This is the Expository Reading and Writing Course that many of us are adopting. It actually doesn't have to be an either/or. Yes there is less literature and more expository writing; however, most of us also incorporate some literature. I teach Things Fall Apart in a Socratic Seminar format, Macbeth in a more traditional format, and some poetry. The modules from the Expository Reading and Writing Binder are open-ended and need some updating, but they give students an excellent variety of college-like readings and writing instruction. Students learn to critically read passages and interpret their own thinking in writing. The writing instruction is key and not as well defined as the reading instruction in the modules. Teachers need to creatively design the lessons to prepare students to write argument with ease.

Interesting exploration of what standards should do and why writing them on the board is antithetical to student learning.

Publishing "I Am From" Poems--technology integration

"Sean Reardon and Michal Kurlaender summarize the findings from a study investigating the impact of the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) on California's lowest performing students. [...] They found that the CAHSEE requirement has had no positive efects on students' academic skills" (quoted from the abstract).

It was very interesting. I am writing mine on CAHSEE as well; maybe you and I can get together and discuss what we find. I was expecting to find positive articles for the CAHSEE possibly explaining why it is necessary, but I mostly found articles that rebut the CAHSEE.

Yeah, same here. I just posted a website that shows the stats of the CAHSEE and how students have been doing on them since 2004. For every ethnicity, percentages have gone up every year since 04. Though it doesn't have anything to do with how effective the CAHSEE is in regard to literacy, it's still interesting to see. I'm sure there's a relationship with the improving scores and how the curriculum keeps changing in classrooms in order to focus on getting higher CAHSEE scores.

Book review of a book produced by the San Joaquin Valley Writing Project.

Expert on content area literacy

Assignment which encourages writing and reflection on blogging.

Great site to create a word cloud, a visual representation of the most used words in pieces of student writing.

Great resources and lessons for teaching English Language Arts.

Writing project that uses technology--link to an illuminated text inspired by a Hemingway short story.

My book review of Bruce Penniman's Building the English Classroom

A group research writing assignment using a wiki.

Discussion of copyright