When I go out to eat, I often eavesdrop on the conversations of my fellow diners. Not long ago, I listened in on a particularly interesting discussion that involved two teachers. They were discussing a familiar quandary among English teachers: What are the virtues of teaching classical literature to a generation who just doesn’t get […]
Literacy
Posted inFeatured, From the Front Lines, Instruction & Curriculum, Literacy, Opinion
What Are We Accelerating in the Classroom?
As teachers we know how important it is to encourage reading in our classrooms, no matter what subject we teach. We equate reading success to lifelong success all around. As teachers we also know how incredibly busy our days are and how difficult it can be to meet children’s needs who either need daily remediation […]
Posted inCommon Core, Featured, From the Front Lines, High School, Instruction & Curriculum, Literacy, Social Studies
Informational Text for Social Studies or English: “The Perils of Indifference” by Elie Wiesel
By my calculations, at the mid-point of the school year, many World History classes are studying World War II. Should these classes want to increase their use of an informational text in English or Social Studies curriculum, I suggest Elie Wiesel’s noteworthy speech The Perils of Indifference. Wiesel delivered this speech to Congress on April 12, […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum, Literacy
Guided Reading–Pick Any (Fiction) Book
Guided reading is a teaching strategy that has gained attention and popularity over the past ten years for good reason. This method of teaching reading (to elementary students) groups them according to their instructional text reading level. It incorporates skills, comprehension strategies, writing, and text decoding. There are many companies with canned programs and resources […]
Posted inFeatured, From the Front Lines, How to Fix Education, Instruction & Curriculum, Literacy, Uncategorized
The Emperor’s New Clothes: There’s No Magic Answer in Reading
Let us face it- in education many of us are waiting for some fairy reading tales to come true. For instance, we may be hoping to meet Prince Charming and live in his magnificent castle. However, nobody wants to walk down the street without clothes, even in our nightmares. I contend that most commercial reading […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
12th-Grade Inquiry Papers on the Topic of Heroes and Monsters
The association of midterm exams with freezing is both literal (I teach in the Northeast) and figurative (many students “freeze up” during an exam), so at the end of this semester, I took one of the writing standards from the Common Core State Standards hoping at the very least to stop the “freeze” in the […]
Posted inFeatured, Instruction & Curriculum, Literacy
Reading Comprehension Strategies For Elementary Teachers
One of the most crucial skills that all students need to be able to steadily advance in school is reading comprehension. So many skills are dependent on how well a student can not only read, but comprehend what they are reading. Everyday we continually expose students to math word problems, graphs, science and social studies […]
Posted inFrom the Front Lines, Literacy, Uncategorized
Whit's Tips on Mentoring to Provide Individual Learning Opportunities
How should schools provide individual learning opportunities and motivation to accelerate learning while following standardized curricula goals aligned with the Common Core? One on one mentoring might be an answer. Whether schools can put together teams of five or a hundred mentors, giving students a half hour of undivided attention makes all the difference in […]