April 2013 Blog Posts (38)

I just finished reading Michael Fullan's, Stratosphere.  In this book,  he outlines how: "the ideas embedded in the new technology, the new pedagogy, and the new change knowledge are converging to transform education for all" (p. 3).  Fullan's book resonates with a driving question I have grappled with…

My School--Clayton Ridge Community School District has a lazer focus for our Professional Development of increasing reading scores.  We have an early out every Wednesday at 2:20 and we work in our Professional Learning Communities on how to increase reading proficiency until 4:00.

My Professional Learning Community is Teacher Driven Professional Learning!~~Awesome!  Teachers decide what we need to learn and invite experts…

The collaborative classroom has 4 main characteristics, which are characteristics I hope to keep in mind when establishing my classroom environment:

- Shared knowledge among teachers and students, where teachers can share their vital knowledge and experiences about content with students while also valuing and building upon the previous knowledge, experience, language, strategies, and culture of her own students. 

- Shared authority among teachers and students, where a…

This article provides teachers with an abundance of easy-to-implement strategies for promoting creativity in their classroom. I tried to pull out some of the best strategies that I would like to use in my own classroom.

1. Use emotional connections. Research shows that the best creativity instruction ties into the emotions of the learner. For example, giving students a project that ties into solving an issue within their community (ex: homelessness) can help sprout creativity…

By seventh hour of the school day I have expended a considerable amount of energy–always engaged, in the moment, “on”–greeting, coaching, moving around the classroom, explaining, preparing for the next class period, exchanging, collecting, organizing, and reorganizing. Does any of this sound familiar? If not, you are clearly not an educator.

After teaching five classes and supervising a study hall, I finally get a few moments…

www.waldorf.ca/index.cfm?pagepath=Waldorf_Works_%2FA_Greener_Education&id=48572

Something awesome is happening on a new channel in YouTube. Ben Wilkoff has gathered together a few everyday educators who are sharing weekly vlogs about education, a direct result of ETMOOC.

This week we're…

During my content exploration I found an interesting article that provides readers with a great deal of information on how to create effective assessments for 21st century students. Within the article, I found a helpful chart that provided assessment strategies for each of the different perspectives on learning. 

1. Associative - an assessment where concepts and competencies are frequently assessed at a micro level and in combination through macro-level tasks.

2.…

I found a great pin on Pinterest that provides teachers with specific structured questions that can be used in any lesson plan to incorporate critical thinking skills. The link provides a table that is broken down into each of the critical thinking areas- knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Within each section is a variety of questions and key terms that teachers can use in their individual lesson plans to engage students in that specific critical…

 …

...or, it's difficult to defend the media, part deux...

Leave it to the creatives to come up with a graphics that put yesterday's events completely in to an easily understood form:

If that's too difficult to read, you can go …

Many of you know that I teach Mass Media and Communications -- Journalism is encompassed within this broad title -- and have done so now for 11 years. As a person who has read the newspaper for as long as I can remember, I must say that, while it can certainly be a challenge at times to teach this subject, it can also be very rewarding. As an aside, when I first interviewed at GS, I was informed that the person who got the position would have to teach the Journalism classes -- it was said to…

I truly LOVE discussing books, movies, songs, life in general with people. I LOVE it even more when I don't agree with somebody on the topic we're discussing -- not necessarily because I love to argue with people, but because the argument tends to challenge my own thinking and forces me to see things from another perspective.

And I had one of those conversations this morning with our school's librarian, Carrie. Now, you should know that we've got the greatest librarian on the face of…

Man, it pained me to even create that headline above. I can't stand ANY of those expressions -- they completely drive me up a wall. Why have we gotten to the point in our society that we are unable to state our opinions freely -- especially when asked? Why do I have to wrap my thoughts up in bubble wrap in order to soften the blow? Why can't I just be blunt and say what I want to say?

So let's tear these apart...

• To be honest with you... Oh, so what you're…

I hate when people say "old teacher," and "senior teacher" is just a little better -- I definitely prefer "seasoned teacher," personally -- but also know that it can all be a matter of semantics to some. I like to look at myself as being reflective -- and also highly critical of the way that I've done things throughout the years. I was recently looking back at a list of my classroom rules from my first year of teaching -- wow is about all I can say!

I definitely went in with a do…

So if you read yesterday's post, you would have noticed that bullying has been on my mind lately. I'd like to thank Shane Koyczan for that -- sincerely. After seeing his work and also after seeing some friends who posted about watching the film Bully with their kids (Thanks, Di and Ryan), I decided that I needed to check out the documentary for myself.…

I've spoken to my students on occasion about what has to be the greatest feeling in the world. Many times I get some pretty shallow answers, while at others they give me a response that just blows my socks off. Admittedly, I've typically gone with a stock answer: to be a musician who has a crowd of thousands in the palm of his hand, all singing the words to the song he's written. I've felt this way since the mid 1980s when Live Aid took place. I hadn't really seen big concerts like this --…

Here is an educational policy riddle: How much background knowledge does a student need to read a historical text?

According to New York Engage website: None.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are being implemented state by state, and there is an emphasis from teaching students background knowledge to teaching students skills, specifically the skill of close…

I really liked this article because it provided numerous ideas and suggestions for how teachers can monitor and collect evidence of student understanding in her classroom. 

For example, the article provides suggestions for small products students can create to demonstrate how they can apply what they have learned in the lesson. This includes:

- Read it, Write it, Draw it

- Find the Lie

- Graffiti Wall

- Exit Pass

The writer also…