Group items tagged

Without the models I cannot be sure what, precisely and specifically, each of the key criteria – well-developed, strong ideas, clearly-evident organizational plan, engages the reader, etc. – really mean.  I may now know the criteria, but without the models I don’t really know the performance standard; I don’t know how “strong” is strong enough, nor do I know if my ideas are “inappropriate.: There is no way I can know without examples of strong vs. not strong  and appropriate vs. inappropriate (with similar contrasts needed for each key criterion.)

This is why the most effective teachers not only purvey models but ask students to study and contrast them so as to better understand the performance standards and criteria in the concrete. In effect, by studying the models, the student simulates the original anchoring process and stands a far better chance of internalizing and thus independently meeting the standard.

We talk about inferences. We make inferences all the time. We tell kids to make inferences. When pushed, we can even define inferences… [Yet] the problem with comprehension, it appeared was that kids could not make inferences…

They would not connect an ethics reading to their own lives; they could not follow the argument the author was making; they had great difficulty seeing that two authors were addressing the same issue from different points of view. Like young Beers, I had naively assumed that if the students engaged with the text that they would make the inferences needed to grapple with the ideas in the text.

They often wrongly assume their students know how to think about what they are learning

Since I believe it is time for a better word and a better concept to drive American education, I recommend “vigor.” Here my dictionary says, “active physical or mental force or strength, healthy growth; intensity, force or energy.” And my mental association is to all the Latin-based words related to life.

Now, more than ever, “rigor” is being used to promote the idea that American students need advanced course work, complex texts, stricter grading, and longer school days and years in order to be ready for college or the workplace.