TEMS520

I heard this on my way to school and was fascinated. The statistics about the drop out rate of students with dyslexia was scary, but I also think that knowing the advantages that students with dyslexia have are important as well.

Christine Cziko, a former high school English teacher, writes about a year-long undertaking that she was a part of that sought to transform students into capable readers.  Her desire to do something about the lack of reading ability that her students exhibited came out of her concern about her students' apparent inability to read independently or to understand what they read.   I was greatly impacted by this whole idea.  I would LOVE to do something like this at my school.  I have taught high school English at a private school where many common issues don't exist and I still had students not doing the reading or not understanding what they read.  However, once we read CS Lewis' The Great Divorce (which is written at a very high level) they were engaged and devoured the difficult text.  We would then come together and ask questions, discuss, and analyze the text.  I didn't have to beg my students to read it, they WANTED to.  One of the big differences was that I talked it up and let them know that it was going to be very difficult but that people would be impressed to know that they had read it in high school.  They were so proud to have read, analyzed, and understood this difficult text. 

This year my students read "The Westing Game" by Ellen Raskin. They absolutely loved the book and I had to beg them not to go ahead because doing so would spoil the ending. Teaching reading (or any subject matter) is so much more fun when the students are engaged. I wish we had these same experiences in everything we taught!

I am so addicted to pinterest, and can't belive how many awesome ideas are out there. I always do green eggs and ham with my first graders and many other activities to celebrate Dr. Seuss, but found some new ideas!

Herbert , Thomas P., and Alexander P. Pagnani. "Engaging Gifted Boys in New Literacies ." Gifted Child Today . 33.3 (2010): 36-45. Print. This article discussed the issue of the achievement gap between boys and girls reading abilities and habits. Girls have reading habits that are recognized and rewarded in schools, while boys read more nonfiction, science fiction, and action novels that are not valued as much. The article discusses how boys do not find dialogue, character interaction, and other literary devices as interesting as girls, and prefer to read for the sake of gaining information, and have plots that are action driven rather than character driven. Although the achievement gap between boys and girls with reading comprehension and leisurely reading is well known, the article points out that less attention is given to this achievement gap than the one that occurs in math. Herbert and Pagnani discuss how high quality new literature is out there for boys to read, and can be incorporated in the classroom. This approach can lead to boys having a higher reading, writing, and comprehension level. I found this article helpful for several reasons. First, I think it is imperative that teachers change their thinking about what is considered quality literature. You can hook boys with things that interest them, and then guide them slowly into literature that is considered part of the literary cannon later on when you have built up their confidence level and academic abilities. The reasoning behind boys literature preferences needs to be not only understood but respected by educators in order to teach them effectively. Secondly, my English classes are ten to one girls, and this scares me as I read this article. As many already know, people tend to teach the same way that they learn. If women and girls have the same reading preferences and appreciate the same things about literature, than many boys will be left to the wayside in English classrooms. I hope to learn more

"The mission of the Michigan Assessment Consortium is to improve student learning and achievement through a system of coherent curriculum, balanced assessment and effective instruction. We do this by collaboratively Promoting assessment knowledge and practice.Providing professional development.Producing and sharing assessment tools and products." Includes resources and archived videoconferences

This is actually 2 articles from American Educator Spring 2011 -Putting Students on the Path to Learning: The Case for Fully Guided Instruction -Principles of Instruction: Research-Based Strategies That All Teachers Should Know The first article asserts that "teachers are more effective when they provide explicit guidance accompanied by practice, not when they require students to discover many aspects of what they must learn." The second article presents 10 research-based principles of instruction, along with suggestions for classroom practice.

This article caught my attention because it was focused on something we just discussed last night: teaching to standardized tests. I like this schools way of thinking: they do not obsess about teaching to the test, but rather look at it as one section to teach for the whole year, like a poetry unit. Teachers cannot be ruled by standardized tests, but must take it into consideration when they are teaching students.

Here is our group project on the roaring twenties! Enjoy!

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Found this website during our TEMS314 class. It is a great site that students can use to help them create persuasive websites. They log in using a specific teacher code, and their work is saved on the site, allowing the teacher to check it as the students work. It seems pretty neat, and I'd love to try it someday in my own classroom.

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This article gives several ideas of activities that can be used to help increase reading comprehension with special education students, but they are designed for different learning styles and, I think, would work well with all students! The article is structured as a simple number for each activity so it's very easy to follow. Ideas suggested here fall into the Bloom's Taxonomy of questions and can be used with picture books, short stories, novels or individualized reading for students of all ages. Many ideas do not involve written answers which work best with students with learning difficulties. The activities listed promote comprehension.

American Revolution - Primary Sources Lessons

Anti-bullying website for elementary students 

Bullying is a topic I am also passionate about. I really liked how your group compared bullying to the holocaust. This was an excellent prentation.

This is a rubric on the T4 strategy. It discusses what T4 is, how to use it as an assessment tool, what concepts teachers' should model, and gives a rubric for assessing the strategy. Very helpful if you are interested in teaching your students this strategy.

Opening the Door: Teaching Students to Use Visualization to Improve Comprehension

This site gives instruction on how to set up a scientific paper and how to read one. Students very often don't understand how to set up a scientific paper and this gives a breakdown of exactly how to do it. It also gives instruction on how to interpret results, and how to decide if all of the criteria that need to be in a scientific paper have been met. Students very often don't understand how all of this can be accomplished. This would be of use for students who were having trouble writing a scientific paper.

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Also very useful for how to read a scholarly article in any discipline, not just science! I'm going to tag this one to use with future classes. Thanks!

Teaching prohibition & organized crime with The Great Gatsby and the attached resources is a BREEZE! (:

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The ideas about engagement and motivation and their place in encouraging at-risk students to read was incredibly interesting to me.  I wonder in which district in Michigan the study was done.

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This news story seemed particularly important to me because it can seriously affect students relationship towards their education. Many states are thinking of holding back third graders that are not reading at grade level, and giving them more time to catch up with their peer. The article brought up studies of students that are held back having lower self esteem and are socially stigmatized. On the other side of this issue, many students in Florida that have been held back have shown enormous gains once tested in the fourth grade. The strongest point that I saw made in the story was that students who are held back for another year are costing the state an extra 10,000 dollars, so why is can't this be spend on reading programs that may give them the more individualized attention they might need in the future, and let them go ahead to the fourth grade with their peers?

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Although different opinions grumbled both sides in this article, I think it had a large nugget of truth attached to it.  For the last three years, a pilot program in NYC were taught to read using this Core Knowledge program.  Although a bit more complicated than this explanation, the Core Knowledge Program means that students primarily read non fiction books of their choosing in schools while teachers would conference from desk to desk with the students.  The study said it was most pronounced in kindergarten, where students that were apart of the study scored five times higher than those peers who were not apart of the study.  Note: it did not say what was on this brief reading test given to both parties.

This New York Times article focuses on students reading non-fiction, especially in content areas other than English. The studies show that students gain reading achievements higher than students who did not have this program in place. I think that nonfiction reading has taken a back seat, and students should learn how to read informational text. Newspapers, lab preps, and the like need to be expanded upon and used more in the classroom. Nonfiction reading is another great way to get boys interested in becoming active and engaged readers. Not to pigeon hold boys as total nonfiction readers, but I feel that many boys become tired of just reading fiction book in the English classroom, and content area reading is a great way to strengthen male students reading skills and attitudes.

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This is an activity to help with writing skills for middle schoolers. It's a great way to have fun while learning. It can be used in the classroom or at home.