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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I won the San Gabriel Valley CUE (Computer Using Educators) Outstanding Teacher Award. Hazzah!

I’m not sure CUE realizes, however, that my enthusiasm for Ed Tech outweighs my knowledge.  My daily calls with questions to the computer teacher can attest to that.

I discovered technology late in my life.  I have grown up a theater geek, but in the past few years, I have added technology to my list of passions.  I used to be a very tech-tentative ELA teacher, but in 2005 I attended the CUE conference in Palm Springs, and I realized that the writing was on the educational wall.(...)
Read the rest of San Gabriel Valley CUE Teacher of the Year! (487 words)

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Post tags: CUE, Ed Tech, education policy, EETT, integration, SGVCUE, UCI, Writers Project

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I was reading through my Digg headlines this weekend, and I happened on this article of the top 10 most extraordinary Twitter updates.  I also did some digging (no pun intended) and found articles that range in claiming that there are anywhere from 4 million to over 14 million current Twitter users.  If true, then Twitter has a greater population that Greece.  Or, if you would rather think in cities, twice as large as London.

So today, my class is going to start Twittering.  I’ve been thinking about using Twitter as a tool for Thinking Aloud for some time now.  I always pictured it on the LCD projector as I taught, entering thoughts as I simultaneously taught, so as to model my own reasoning and processes for my classes.  

I also think it will be a powerful 21st Century (hate that term) tool for them to use to give me a snapshot of what they are thinking.  So I’ve been tackling the issue of how to Twitter online and offline with students.

Here’s what I’m just now deciding on.  You know how you sometimes get your best ideas in the shower or in the rear-view mirror?  Well, I got mine brushing my teeth.  Just a little share for all you readers out there.

Here’s how I’m setting up the unit and how I’m helping to control their safety while creating a transparent and open-door environment in my classroom.(...)
Read the rest of Twitter as Think Aloud (368 words)

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Post tags: Curriculum, curriculum design, Ed Tech, education, ELA, Think Aloud, tween, twitter, UCI, Writers Project, writing

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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)

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Post tags: Curriculum, curriculum design, curriculum development, Ed Tech, life long learners, metacognition, technology, TLN, UCI, Writers Project

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So I want to share some of the awesome questions my 7th graders developed to help them fill in the story gaps:

1.     If the mother pig didn’t have the “means” to have so many kids, why did she have three?             

2.     Why did the three pigs go their separate ways?  How was their relationship if they wouldn’t stay together?

(...)
Read the rest of Where the Wild Things Are: Part II (154 words)

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Post tags: Curriculum, curriculum design, Ed Tech, education, interactive whiteboards, k-12, k12, middle school, tween, UCI, Writers Project

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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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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)

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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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OK, guys.  So I got it from the horse’s mouth at CUE.  According to the ISTE Director of Governmental Affairs, No Child Left Behind is not going away.  

In the weeks leading up to the election, the Obama administration talked the talk, proving that Educational Technology was on their radar, but if you’ve been listening, the silence on Ed Tech has since become deafening.  (...)
Read the rest of How to be an Ed Tech Advocate (515 words)

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Post tags: achievement gap, blog, budget, CUE, Ed Tech, education policy, EETT, equity, ETAN, fundraising, internet literacy, k-12, k12, learning, lobbyist, middle school, NCLB, obama, online, school accountability, school funding, technology, Title I, tween, UCI, 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)

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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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-Tweenteacher

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Post tags: assessments, data, education policy, ELA, test prep, Title I, tween, UCI, Writers Project

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The Register reports that DARPA (Defense Advance Research Projects Agency) is currently researching how to create robots that are “like some self-aware computer systems capable of “meta-reasoning” and “introspection…”  Their goal is to “Provide machines with an ability to reason about their own reasoning.”

Um, is anybody else seeing the irony of these objectives?  We are funding the creation of synthetic brains that are able to reflect and have insight, yet we are still unwilling as an educational system to support, teach, or assess our children towards these same goals.

Our current student assessment system doesn’t even acknowledge the importance of thinking, but bubbling, on the other hand, ranks really high up there in the skills that students desperately need to know.

The students of today will, theoretically, be the scientists of our future generations; yet they will not have had the cranium training that their garbage disposals will be privy to.  

Perhaps we should just start training our Tech-Com human resistance now.  

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Post tags: curriculum design, curriculum development, ELA, Language Arts, metacognition, Title I, TLN, tween, UCI, Writers Project, writing

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I recently heard Judy Willis (of “syn-naps” fame) speak at a conference.  In her pre-teaching life, she was a neurologist and she brings her knowledge to the classroom and to her lectures.  (See my recently published article in Teacher Magazine, “My Brilliant Second-Career”).  Willis mentioned that she had just gotten back from Dubai where her charge was to teach new teaching program students about brain development and how it relates to education.

Questions she tackled with these candidates were:

How do children and adolescents learn?

What actually happens in the brain in order to hear and retain information?

What are proven strategies that help information to become embedded into long-term memory?

(...)
Read the rest of Starting from scratch in teacher training (169 words)

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Post tags: 2008, achievement gap, ascd community, blog, collaboration, credential, critical thinking, Curriculum, curriculum design, curriculum development, integration, metacognition, Title I, TLN, tween, UCI, Writers Project, writing

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So I looked at my 8th grade students’ scores after they took the MMA and sighed.  Their scores sucked.  (...)
Read the rest of Test Prep-Bubbling Power (506 words)

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Post tags: 100% accountability, 2008, achievement gap, assessments, education, k-12, k12, middle school, teaching, test prep, Think Aloud, Title I, TLN, tween, UCI, Writers Project, writing

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Science Daily is reporting that there has been a shift in how students are thinking as a result of their use of technology.  They believe it possibly lowers critical thinking skills and analysis.  Additionally, they wonder just how much schools should be catering to this change.

The important thing to remember is that when we talk about differentiation, we have to include all forms of teaching, from traditional pencil and paper to the use of technology.  But if we were to ignore the evolution that is occurring, that of the transition our brains our making as a result of society’s onslaught of daily technology, we would not be doing our job.

(...)
Read the rest of Is EdTech changing how students think or is it addressing the changes in student thinking? (437 words)

© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: achievement gap, ASCD Brief, assessments, blog, collaboration, critical thinking, Curriculum, curriculum design, curriculum development, Ed Tech, education, education policy, internet literacy, k-12, k12, Language Arts, life long learners, metacognition, sesame street, teaching, technology, Title I, TLN, tween, UCI, Writers Project, writing

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Yes, it seems The Sandman himself has gone and won the Newbery Award.  So congrats from Tweenteacher!  For a complete list of winners, click here.

I’ve been following Gaiman on Twitter for a little while and it’s great to track when and how he was given the news.  It was a literary narrative onto itself.  

So congratulations to The Graveyard Book and to the best-looking, leather-jacket wearing Newbery winner ever!

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Post tags: blog, classroom library, gaiman, newbery, Title I, TLN, UCI, Writers Project

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© heather for tweenteacher.com, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: achievement gap, assessments, collaboration, critical thinking, curriculum development, differentiation, Ed Tech, education, integration, k-12, k12, metacognition, middle school, standardized testing, Title I, TLN, tween, UCI, writing

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