About four years ago my wife called me at school and told me that our oldest daughter had gotten off the school bus crying. Walking up our 100 feet of driveway between the road and our door, she had her report card in one hand and was clearly trying to gather herself before getting to […]
Instruction & Curriculum
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Report Finds Students Cannot Google and Reason at the Same Time
If you Google the explorer John Cabot, you could get a web page from the website All About Explorers that states: “In 1484, the explorerJohn Cabot moved back to England with his wife and eleven sons. He developed his own website and became quite famous for his charts and maps depicting a new route to the Far […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
An Alternative to Book Reports: Assessing Independent Reading
I am a huge advocate for student choice when it comes to reading, but one thing that people repeatedly ask me is: How do you assess and grade students’ independent reading if they are all reading different books? I’ve written before about how I don’t use Reading Logs, but rather Response Notebooks. I use response […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
[Podcast] What’s Best for Children: An Interview with Susan Ochshorn
During this episode, Franchesca Warren talks with Susan Ochshorn who for nearly two decades, has worked in a broad range of settings at the local, state, and national levels to bridge research, policy, and practice, to integrate ECE into the larger education reform conversation, and to catalyze social change. We started with a basic question- […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Book Review: ‘Play Like A Pirate’
I recently met teacher and author Quinn Rollins at the National Council for the Social Studies Conference earlier this month, and the session he led was on incorporating graphic novels into the classroom (you can read more about it in the link above). I’d be interested in teaching with graphic novels since Jeff Kinney’s first Diary of […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Rethinking the Literary Canon
There have been countless discussions launched about the need to teach the historically accepted literary pieces included in the canon. Just as controversial as the discussions engendered about the canon, so too is the definition. The “canon” is defined by dictionary.com as “a collection or list of sacred books accepted as genuine.” The very definition […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Teaching Survival Skills for Dystopia: Love
In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, it has become increasingly clear that we are entering an abnormal era of American history. The xenophobia, religious intolerance, and white supremacy, aren’t new to life in America. But, Donald Trump’s presidency has made many of us feel that the “moral arc of the universe” is bending away from […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Math Education: Why U.S. Students Fall Behind
The failure of math education in the United States has several reasons. After looking at the results of two international tests that we participate in, I can suggest some of the reasons for this problem. The PISA (The Programme for International Student Assessment) and TIMSS (Third International Mathematics and Science Study) are international tests that […]