Every year my nemesis rears its ugly head: the epic paragraph.  Epic paragraphs are those essays comprised entirely of one mega-paragraph with no indentations to indicate transition from thought thought.

I bet you thought your kids were the only ones doing it, eh?  But the fact is that tons of students are recruited into its child army.  It’s like the swine flu of writing: tons of kids catch it, and authorities freak out when they see it.  And it’s our job as educators to battle this plague on our educational houses.

At the beginning of every year, there is a percentage of kids who have had severe cases of knowledge leakage, and we rail at their prior teachers as if they hadn’t noticed the problem, or had chosen not to tackle it.  (Don’t pretend you don’t blame the last teacher sometimes.  It’s our default reaction when we see silly errors. But fight this urge, because we know this isn’t true).

What is true is that the students sometimes loose the lessons.  Sometimes this happens over the summer, sometimes over a mere weekend.  And this phenomenon results in the loss of every rule of writing, even something we consider as simple as paragraphing.  Which begs the question: maybe paragraphing isn’t so simple.(...)
Read the rest of How to Battle Epic Paragraphing (882 words)

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 100% accountability, 6 traits, ELA, grammar, Think Aloud, TLN, UCI, Writers Project

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We all know there are many problems in education and not one bullet to solve any one of them.  We as teachers can’t do a lot about many of the factors that have huge influence on student success: parental involvement, health care, funding.  But there are a few steps we as educators can make in protecting our professional reputation, advancing student achievement, and making our day-to-day lives a little less challenging.(...)
Read the rest of 5 Things Teachers can do to Improve Teaching (996 words)

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Post tags: collaborate, Curriculum, Ed Tech, merit pay, middle school, performance pay, Title I, TLN, tween, writing project

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Thanks to Scott McLeod for Twittering the following article from The Washington Post.  It describes a terrible ordeal that an administrator went through battling charges of ”failure to report suspected child abuse” and potential child pornography after students were caught sexting on their cell phones.  

Long story short, due to the premature lynching of the sheriff’s department and the over-eager condemnation of the media, an earnest educator lost time, money, and a dose of educational enthusiasm before being released and dropped of all charges.  

But there are a few points this article brings up that are also of concern, perhaps not to the administrator who is breathing a sigh of relief, but possibly to those of us who must reflect on these incidences and learn from them.

There were a few beats in the article, for instance, that seemed to follow the theme of “educator who was behind the tech times.”  Like this excerpt:(...)
Read the rest of Students, Sexting, and the threat to Ed Tech (625 words)

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ed Tech, middle school, teaching, technology, TLN, Washington Post, Writers Project

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OK, don’t tell my husband, but I have a fictional crush.  That is, I have a crush based on a fictitious character.  I think I’ve always had one, but the object of my literary love has always changed with my own chapter in life. (...)
Read the rest of Fictional Crushes (543 words)

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Post tags: achievement gap, blog, book review, classroom library, ELA, k-12, k12, middle school, TLN, tween, UCI, Writers Project

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Post tags: Title I, TLN, tween, UCI, Writers Project

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Yes, there are many problems in education.  But many of them boil down to the fact that we are a cadre of professionals who are taken advantage of as part of the job requirement.(...)
Read the rest of The mythical superhuman teacher (981 words)

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Post tags: evaluations, Excellence, life long learners, merit pay, metacognition, middle school, performance pay, professional development, TLN, UCI, Writers Project

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I can’t wait to show my 8th Grade Honors class this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq6b9bMBXpg.

It’s a great display of the act of spreading the arts publicly and on a huge scale.  

My students have been working all year on their “Spontaneous Shakespeare” scenes. (Cue “Mission Impossible” music) Their goal: to spontaneously appear in a public place and perform a scene from Shakespeare, spreading the works of The Bard as they go.

It all started with a shadow puppet Shakespeare show that I presented to them as a project-based learning opportunity.  The kids took it and ran.  With their enthusiasm leading the way, it soon morphed into this public explosion of learning.(...)
Read the rest of Spontaneous Public Displays of Art (280 words)

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Curriculum, curriculum design, curriculum development, Ed Tech, life long learners, metacognition, technology, TLN, UCI, Writers Project

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There’s a really interesting discussion thread going on at the Interactive Whiteboard Revolution ning.  It all began with my post recapping Robert Marzano’s position on the influence of IWB technology when he presented at the CUE conference this year.  You can read the thread here.    

One of the most interesting arguments going on is in the importance of whether or not Marzano is sponsored by Promethean (he is) and whether or not this somehow corrupts his findings (it shouldn’t).  As Peter Kent points out, “Corporate sponsorship is common practice. The MIT Media Lab (created by Papet and highly reputable) and currently including Mitch Resnik of Scratch fame has over 60 corporate sponsors including the possibility to having an employee of a sponsor work in the Media Lab. There is also the opportunity for a sponsor to work closely with a principal investigator and a graduate student in a specific area.  My point is that corporate sponsorship of educational research is both common and necessary.”

I’ve written on this topic before when I’ve said that I think there is a future in education as a privately sponsored entity.  In my earlier post, “Walmart Presents: (insert some president’s name) Middle School,” I previously wrote, (...)
Read the rest of Marzano con’t & Corporate Sponsorship in Education (318 words)

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Post tags: assessments, collaboration, Ed Tech, education, fundraising, interactive whiteboards, ning, TED, Title I, TLN, VLC

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It’s Step 1 of my Top Secret New Teacher Handbook.  Hope it creates some shortcuts, a machete even, through the education jungle.

-Tweenteacher

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Post tags: achievement gap, blog, classroom library, classroom management, collaboration, common language, critical thinking, Curriculum, curriculum design, curriculum development, differentiation, Ed Tech, education, ELA, employment, free, fundraising, internet literacy, jobs, k-12, k12, Language Arts, learning, life long learners, merit pay, metacognition, middle school, NCLB, new teachers, peer teaching, performance pay, professional development, technology, test prep, Think Aloud, Title I, TLN, top 10, tween, UCI, Writers Project

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I mean, I know that reading online takes the form of any other genre depending on its content, but the format is unique: headers, sidebars, ads, flash, menu bars, etc…

So doesn’t reading online specifically take different skills then reading any other genre?  Isn’t it a combination of genres, combined with a social genre of sorts?  Isn’t the fact that it is a 2-way read justifiable in identifying it as its own category of literature?  

And if we were to identify it as a category of literature, would not more teachers see the imperative need to teach to that genre?  

Thoughts?

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ed Tech, internet literacy, TLN, Writers Project

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Post tags: classroom library, Curriculum, curriculum design, curriculum development, k-12, k12, middle school, theme, TLN, Writers Project, writing

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But why is it that only the worst of the worst appears in the news, as if this level of inappropriateness was a common disease facing education today?

I was corresponding with Teacher Leader Network all-around-awesome-guy John Norton, and we stumbled on an interesting point which relates to this issue of highly publicized educational indecency.  And it kinda got me thinking.

Sure, I’m frustrated by the ease in which the news reports the horrible, inbred cousins of education.  Sure I tire of the publicity behind those YouTube worthy rants, those rare abuses in schools made seemingly frequent, as if they were a chronic problem along with the achievement gap and childhood obesity.

But I feel that we as teachers in the trenches have a duty to battle this poor publicity.

Teachers of yore were quite isolated, closing their door and teaching in their solitary rooms.  Some still do, but the job has changed.  Collaboration has become a key to our survival.  Teaching with transparency and an open-door policy has become necessity, evidence of our ability.  Some of why this is necessary is because test scores and observations have become the go-to way to evaluate a teacher (but that’s for another post).  Another reason is that our challenges and our horrors have become far more public than our glories.

Whose fault is that?  I blame us.(...)
Read the rest of A teacher’s duty? (593 words)

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: collaboration, Ed Tech, education, education policy, publicity, technology, Title I, TLN, tween, UCI, Writers Project, writing

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There’s been so much talk lately of deep-needed reforms for education, but we neglect just how powerful a simple makeover can be.  I’m lucky to currently work at a school that has a patch of green, which fixes the broken windows and washes off the graffiti when it happens.  But I’ve worked at the schools that smell of urine, at the sites that lay forgotten by funding, yet are still expected to succeed. 

According to What Not to Wear, a makeover does wonders for your confidence, your pride.  According to Extreme Makeover, it can renew your hope in life.(...)
Read the rest of Extreme Makeover: Classroom Edition (248 words)

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Post tags: Ed Tech, ELA, ELD, extreme makeover, fundraising, k-12, k12, middle school, TLN, tween, UCI, Writers Project, writing

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I believe a classroom library is the heartbeat of a teacher’s environment.  It is the window into their own personality, and it reflects the importance of literacy in the classroom.  I believe every teacher, no matter the subject taught, should have one.

 Access to books should be thought about with the same differentiated approach as any other lesson, assessment, or activity.  It seems to me that there are four kinds of library-learners:

1. THE BRASH BIBLIOPHILE:  These are students who are well versed in the language of book choice and seek out what they want, avidly asking questions or using learned or inherent strategies to find the book that will make them sigh into their bed with a flashlight in hand.  They will find their way to their local bookstore by any means necessary, and look through the stacks until their parents pull them away.  

(...)
Read the rest of The Importance of The Classroom Library (923 words)

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2009. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: assessments, blog, book review, classroom library, classroom management, education, ELA, Golden Lines, How To, k-12, k12, Language Arts, learning, middle school, new teachers, school funding, teaching, textbooks, Title I, TLN, tween, UCI, Writers Project, writing

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