Teacher, author and adolescent literacy consultant Cris Tovani guides us through her 6Ts (Topic, Target, Task, Text, Time, and Tending) as she tells the story of her first virtual literacy workshop – with 7th graders who are studying the Sahara Desert. Engagement? CYA!
In Metacognition: The Neglected Skill Set, Robin Fogarty and Brian Pete offer 30 grab-and-go strategies to help students create a new habit of mind, writes middle school director Jeny Randall. Along with tools for teaching, they invite us to hone our own metacognitive skills.
Over the life of our nation, history has been recorded from a singularly white perspective. Pablo Wolfe, Mary Ehrenworth and Marc Todd suggest ways we can create truth-seeking communities in our schools and “inoculate our students against the viral spread of falsehood.”
Assessments that aren’t designed with language learners in mind perpetuate an equity gap, writes teacher Tan Huynh. When language specialists co-assess with subject area colleagues they can ensure the right balance of challenge and support for each student. Here’s how!
Argument Writing / Create Compose Connect
by Jeremy Hyler · Published 02/03/2021 · Last modified 02/14/2024
Using sentence starters as part of the argument writing process has jump-started many of Jeremy Hyler’s middle grades students who did not know how to begin. Hyler walks us through their process of evidence gathering and argument analysis and shares examples of their work.
The pandemic distances between teacher and student require us to monitor the individual progress of learning even more closely. Teacher educator Curtis Chandler offers a crash course for doing just that – including tips on new apps and tools for summative assessment.
How can we make sure our classrooms are places that welcome risk-taking in the name of learning, and expect and celebrate inevitable mistakes? Author and innovation leader Colleen Cruz shares five things teachers can do to create a culture where students risk, fail and rise.
Instead of continuing our 130 years of running every public school student through the system in the same way at the same time, Alex Valencic believes we need to shift our efforts to acknowledging individuality, independence, and innovation through mastery learning.
Close Reading the Media / Internet Literacy
by Frank Baker · Published 01/26/2021 · Last modified 02/13/2021
New studies continue to reveal that many students cannot evaluate internet information for truthfulness, writes media literacy expert Frank W Baker. “It has become a crisis in American education,” he says, as disinformation becomes industrialized and “truth decay” spreads.
For five years Marilyn Pryle has begun every class with 10 minutes of choice reading, inside a Book Club model. Would in work in a hybrid classroom? Yes! Her experience this year “reinforces the truths I already know.” Students want to read. Escaping into a story feels good.
