I just got back from a fascinating conference about the state of STEM in U.S. schools, sponsored by U.S. News and World Report. I was compelled by the idea of making STEM matter in schools; as a middle school teacher, I know this is the prime time to hook kids into STEM. This is the […]
CCSS
The STEM Revolution in Higher Education
I just got back from a fascinating conference about the state of STEM in U.S. schools, sponsored by U.S. News and World Report! I was compelled by the idea of a STEM revolution in higher education; as a middle school teacher, it really didn’t occur to me that colleges would be reacting in a similar […]
The State of STEM in U.S. Schools
I just got back from an exciting conference about the state of STEM in U.S. schools, sponsored by U.S. News and World Report! As an AVID teacher and coordinator, I was invited to San Diego to learn more about how to include STEM into AVID’s college and career readiness program. STEM is an acronym representing […]
Teaching Writing With Hyperdocs
If you’re looking for a new approach to teaching writing, you’ve got to try teaching with hyperdocs. What are hyperdocs? According to their creators, Lisa Highfill, Kelly Hilton and Sarah Landis, hyperdocs are “a transformative, interactive, personalized engaging too to help facilitate student creativity and collaboration” (The Hyperdoc Handbook). And I can testify that hyperdocs […]
Have You Tried Socratic Seminars Yet?
Have you jumped into Socratic Seminars in your classroom yet? If not, I’ve got a few easy tips to help you get started – including a ‘real life’ demo video! If you’re already using Socratic Seminar, maybe I’ve got a way you can snazz yours up and take your students’ thinking a little bit deeper. […]
Text Evidence in the Common Core: There Are Such Things as Facts
The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) were released in 2009. They are now seven years old. I will admit that I was not initially enthusiastic about the English Language Arts literacy standards. I felt they were heavy in non-fiction…(no, wait.. heavy in “informational texts”). The CCSS suggested a typical student should have a reading diet filled with informational texts […]
Have You Been To A #GAFE Summit?
I’ve been teaching for 26 years – English, AVID, Yearbook, Reading, History and any sort of intervention class that gets thrown my way. I’ve been through whole language and back. I’ve survived NCLB. I’ve been trained in teaching the Gifted and Talented, the At-Risk and 21st-century students. And last weekend, I went to my first […]
The NAEP Chicken and the Common Core Nonfiction Egg
What came first…the NAEP Chicken or the CCSS Egg? In 2009, there were revisions to the reading content in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the “largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America’s students know and can do in various subject areas.” The revisions increased nonfiction reading. In 2009, the development of the the Common […]