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The Carnival of Education #180 is hosted this week by SteveSpangler.com.  Check out my entry if you haven’t already, and enjoy the parade!

OK, normally, I would reflect on one of the presenters at the UCIWP with my own spin-off thoughts and musings. Not so today.  Here are some Golden Lines from today’s presentation with Sheridan Blau, award-winning educator, past president of NCTE, professor at Teachers College in New York and author of The Literature Workshop: Teaching Texts and their Readers.  Whether you are hit in the head with only one concept or feel slapped around by the awesomeness that is all of them, feel free to pass them on.  I certainly can’t say it better then he can.

…On the Importance of Questioning

“Honor confusion.”

“Confusion represents an advanced stage of understanding.”

“Teachers shouldn’t avoid confusion, but produce it.”

“Quality of reading is evident in the questions.”

“Questions are the key to drive learning.”

…On the Reading Process

“There is a messiness in reading…You revise your reading as you read.”

“Reading is a process of text constructions, just like writing.”

“Reading is a social activity that needs to happen in conversation.”

…On Difficulty in Reading

“The world is a difficult text and all of the strategies we bring to literary texts can be applied to the lives and the world in which they [students] live.”

“We often need to be completely lost before we can find our way.”

“Art defamiliarizes [makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar] so that we pay attention…it needs to be difficult to make us stop and pay attention.”

“It’s the lines in the poem that make the least sense that give us the greatest understanding.”

Hope you got something out of it.  Enjoy.

Kelly Gallagher, educator and author of Teaching Adolescent Writers, came and spoke to the UCI Writing Project on Friday and his focus of the presentation was a Golden Line: The Goal in Education is “Everybody Improves.”  

Duh, you say, isn’t improvement always the goal of education?  Actually, no. When you consider AYP scores, for instance, the goal is to hit a benchmark, not the level of improvement you made to hit it.  

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Is this happening in a school near you?

He said, “Let’s go see a movie.”

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He went, “Let’s go see a movie.”

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He was all, “Let’s go see a movie.”

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He’s like, “Let’s go see a movie.”

The Carnival of Education has rolled on in and my article, “Collaboration…Blocked By A Firewall Near You” is an active participant this week.  

Thank you to Schiess Weekly for the inclusion.

Enjoy!

I commented on Joanne Jacobs article, “Stop Facilitating and Start Teaching,” based on Fred Strine’s article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.  Strine indicates that more student-centered teaching is somehow less taught and, consequently, less learned.  Jacobs paraphrases that the “’sage on the stage’ is more effective than the ‘guide on the side,’” that students of today lack the discipline that they had in his day, as if handing over the ownership to the class is handing over the reins entirely. (more…)

You know, sometimes I wonder if I’m not a huge pain in the ass to present for, especially if I love what’s going on.  I’m one of those audience members who has to verbally digest and implement what I am learning as it’s happening.  I have to barble and pop as my Eureka moments are going on, and while it’s amazingly exciting for me, it must be hugely annoying to my presenter.  I was in rare form this morning at the UCI Writers Project, for Doug Fisher, co-author of such works as Language Learners in the English Classroom, was in the house. (more…)

An (aspiring) Educator is hosting this week’s Carnival of Education #178.  I’ve tweaked my How to Take Control of Your Teaching list and although it’s still in an evolving state, you can read it here.  Enjoy the Carnival and the post.

I went into Frank Beddor’s The Looking Glass Wars with some trepidation.  I’ve never been one for the Alice in Wonderland universe.  I find playing cards quite personality-less and grinning cats are somewhat less than charming.  But it’s more then that.  Even as a child, I could not enjoy books with children in peril, no adult protection, and lost in realms where there were no rules outlining how they could survive themselves. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is another book that freaked me out.  When I initially read Holes, that too was lost on me (I’ve since come around to the glory of that one, however). (more…)