TEMS520

Mike Schmoker's "Focus" is a tremendous commentary on the elements of good instruction and the current state of education and teaching.

This reference text is divided into two sections: "What we teach, How we teach, and Literacy" and "Curriculum, Instruction, and Literacy in the Content areas." If one was to read this book, you would not necessarily need to read it "cover to cover." I believe that Section I is important for all teachers or those who have a hand in education. Section II, because of the way it is divided, could be read based on interests. There are specific discussions about how to integrate literacy into content areas. I felt that the discussion of literacy in mathematics and science was extremely interesting. Mike Schmoker's message was calling educators "back to the basics." As I read, I found myself scribbling in the margins, because the comments being made were so true they were almost "taboo." Schmoker contradicts the current "educational bandwagons" that so many administrators and districts may jump on. He quotes Pfeffer and Sutton, saying "leaders resist simplicity; they are often irrationally enamored by novelty and complexity" (p 16). It was refreshing to read such a strong argument for "pure, effective teaching." Regardless of the technology or other tools in the classroom, without a firm grasp on the ways to provide clear instruction, students will not learn. I have already used sections from this text in my building's PLC time. Though I have not used a specific strategy, I opened the dialogue about what should "be in a good lesson." Schmoker encourages the "five minute limit" where lectures cannot span longer than that before students are given a moment to talk or write. Formative assessments need to be used throughout daily lessons in order for the teacher to be guided into the next portion of the lesson. I have started to integrate more of these checks for understanding into my teaching, and I have found that I catch more misconceptions sooner than I would have normally. I also see that sections I felt required more time were grasped at a faster rate than anticipated

"Teachers of English need to reach the tough guys out there, and they are probably not going to do it by prescribing another go at The Sound and the Fury. The problem is not so much that tough guys lack the brainpower to read: they simply do not want to." I like the suggestions given for books to motivate adolescent male readers given in this article. I appreciate how Lawrence Baines has collected information over the years to share with us as teachers.

I always try to do an interest inventory with students and find books that fall into these interests to offer for independent reading time. I also love informational books that center around sports and life oddities, such as Ripley's or Guiness Book of World Records. Boys seem to like these types of books. I have used Sports Illustrated for Kids also as an offer for reading. For class books, I have used "The Air Down Here" by Gil Alicea, a teenage boy from the Bronx. It is written in journal format and tells about his life in his own words. I used this with 8th graders and the boys especially seemed to "grudgingly" get interested and want to read more! I also found that books about aliens, Big Foot, Sasquatch and those types of informational books were interesting to them as well!

When I was a media center teacher, I could not keep the Guinness or Ripley books on the shelf! I think besides the "ew" factor, another draw is (of course) the pictures, and small chunks of text.

The author presents a convincing argument for emulating instructional design found in "Angry Birds."

"This article describes dictogloss, an integrated skills technique for language learning in which students work together to create a reconstructed version of a text read to them by their teacher."

Sixth-grade language arts teacher Donalyn Miller joins other teachers and education bloggers who are including reading goals and challenges as part of their New Year's resolutions. Miller, who asks her students to reflect on the reading they did last year, encourages educators to participate and share goals of their own and their students for reading in 2012.

As reading teachers (and every teacher is a teacher of reading!) it is important for us to think about, and let students see, ourselves as readers. What are your personal reading goals?

I just wanted to mention that I read the Book Whisperer and loved it! I also had the opportunity (along with Elvisa) to listen to Donalyn Miller speak at the MRA conference last year in Grand Rapids. She is inspiring! I hope to read 2 books during Mid-Winter break AND Spring break. It is hard to read for pleasure with work, college and the other endless commitments!

This site is full of excellent links for teachers. Hope this is helpful

Thank you for sharing this site! :)

I really enjoyed this book, and it gave me great insights into how students are wired. How do they take in information and how do students use that information. There are four styles of students. The book goes into different ways of working with students and talks about how students concentrate, remember, and understand information. I liked the book because it provided useful information and tips on how to interact with students. I realize that learning styles have gotten a bad rap by some educators. Now having said that learning styles do present an interesting piece of the puzzle to how students learn. It is important to note that a learning style is a preference rather than an ability to learn. Individuals have a tendency to like information or processing to be done a certain way because there is a familiarity and comfort level. The awareness of a learning style can assist educators in setting students up for success by phrasing information in certain ways or pointing out that this information may be more uncomfortable for individuals to learn because of the way it is presented. The book is organized by learning style category and then by subject areas like concentration, understanding and remembering. The first six chapters focus on learning styles, and the remaining six chapters delve into specific topic areas as each relates to learning styles. The main topics of the book are learning styles, and three central topic areas related to learning. The topic areas are concentration, remembering, and understanding. The overall message of the book is that every person may have a dominant learning style, however each person has a certain amount of each learning styles' characteristics. Moreover as students, parents, and teachers become aware of their learning style it is meant to help them achieve and adapt to others who are not wired that way, not to be used as an excuse for poor performance or I can not do something.

You raise some important points, LeAnn. I think also it is important to help students (and ourselves?) learn to tap into other styles to further develop them.

This is a great website for students and teachers of any grade level. It's great for students in a jam and needing help or a more permanent system for helping students progress in multiple areas. Topics include math, science, humanities, finance, and economics ranging from basic to highly complex lessons. Students can track their individual progress; parents and teachers can target and monitor the progress of their children/students. It's free, easily accessible and a great tool for learning. Take a minute if you don't know about this website, it's really quite amazing.

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A nice printable teacher guide to plagiarism.

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This is such a cool way to close a lesson, a unit, or a school day!  

As I was looking for sources for my research paper, I came across this website that I think is excellent so I wanted to share it with everyone. I know people have posted information from this website but when I was looking through course book notes, I didn't find this specific section of the website posted so I thought I would post it. This site provides roughly 50 reading strategies and explains what they are and how to use them. The one cool thing I like about the site is that it breaks each strategy into three phases: Before Reading, During Reading, and After Reading. For each strategy, it tells you in which phase should you implement the strategy. I hope this is helpful to everyone!

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A plethora of before, during, and after reading, hands-on activities.

Warren Woods Middle School - March 22, 23, 2012

Thank you for sharing! I will pass this along to my collegues too :)

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Free online concept map maker.

This wiki has lots of resources including teaching ideas as well as links to online GO creators.

"Thinking Maps, developed by Dr. David Hyerle, are visual teaching tools that foster and encourage lifelong learning. They are based on a simple yet profound insight: The one common instructional thread that binds together all teachers, from pre-kindergarten through postgraduate, is that they all teach the same thought processes."

Graphic organizers is our topic for Monday, March 12.

This article provides five strategies for improving adolescent literacy. The first stragegy is to help students with explicit vocabulary instructions, and then on to comprehension strategies like being careful about what text you select and showing them the strategies to use for that type of text. The third strategy was providing extended forum for discussing vocabulary and text, and that is something that I need to work on with my ninth graders. One of the goals of this article is to improve adolescent literacy and the strategy is to increase student motivation and engagement, which I latched on to right away. One of the ways this article suggest doing it is by making "literacy experiences more relevant to student interests, everyday life, or important current events." I am using this technique in my Ninth-Grade Civics class this semester. Students are learning that the way you read a newspaper is different than reading a textbook. Each week they must select a current event related to Civics and write a brief report about it. Three students are randomly selected to give information on their current event each week. I use a form to help guide them through current event articles, and focus on textual evidence in articles. In other words, what statistics and facts are the writers using to make his/her point? Also, what adjectives, adverbs, nouns, and verbs does the writer use to convey a message or tone of the article? The students' vocabulary and reading are increasing, and they are becoming more informed citizens. It brings Civics alive for them and into the present day.

I read this article with the idea that I would do a graphic organizer, except once I got started I realized that this held some important information, but I kept getting confused with the layout of the article - i.e. finding what were the big points and the sub points. So, I decided to use Livebinders.com to find a way to organize it, visually, for myself and anyone else who wanted to take a peek. This is the website for the original article: http://www.prel.org/products/re_/ES0419.htm This is the website for my livebinder: http://www.livebinders.com/play/play_or_edit?id=322029

This is a great site that has tons of information about why reading aloud is important. The site also has some great printable brochures to share with parents about reading with their children.

thanks for sharing Lori. Always looking for information to send home with my students

Reading is more than looking at the words on a page. Critical reading involves re-reading text to "dentify patterns of elements -- information, values, assumptions, and language usage-- throughout the discussion. These elements are tied together in an interpretation, an assertion of an underlying meaning of the text as a whole."