Term 4 Week 2: Literacy and meditating

Reading and Strategies for Literacy


In our classes we should try to use reading strategies every time that we ask our students to read. This article defines seven strategies of effective readers and gives ideas about how we can teach each strategy.
Teach the Seven Strategies of Highly Effective Readers By: Elaine K. McEwan (2007)
To improve students' reading comprehension, teachers should introduce the seven cognitive strategies of effective readers: activating, inferring, monitoring-clarifying, questioning, searching-selecting, summarizing, and visualizing-organizing. This article includes definitions of the seven strategies and a lesson-plan template for teaching each one.

Literacy may have stolen brain power from other functions by John Timmer
The human brain contains many regions that are specialized for processing specific decisions and sensory inputs. Many of these are shared with our fellow mammals (and, in some cases, all vertebrates), suggesting that they are evolutionarily ancient specializations. But innovations like writing have only been around for a few thousand years, a time span that's too short relative to human generations to allow for this sort of large evolutionary change. In the absence of specialized capabilities, how has it become possible for such large portions of the population to become literate?

Professional Reading

• How Meditating Helps with Multitasking
• Improve Your Knowledge Daily - Good leaders are constantly seeking knowledge and new ways to learn, writes Art Markman. "There are no shortcuts to having high-quality knowledge, but effort spent learning new things effectively repays itself handsomely in the long run," he writes.

Term 4 Week 1: e-learning, promoting respectful schools and revision strategies

What’s on

World Teachers’ Day is celebrated on 28 October in New Zealand and Australia and internationally on 5 October. I think we definitely need to celebrate ourselves so treat yourself to something nice on Friday!!

Professional Reading

September’s Educational Leadership Magazine “Promoting Respectful Schools” is now in the library and able to be issued. Some of the entries are also available online so I have provided links. It has the following feature articles and columns:

• Bullying—And the Power of Peers - Philip C. Rodkin. This research synthesis explores who bullies and why and what educators and children can do to prevent bullying.
• What Students Say About Bullying - Stan Davis and Charisse Nixon. Kids speak out about which interventions ease or escalate the situation.
• Stepping Back from Zero Tolerance - Judith Browne-Dianis. Harsh disciplinary practices can have severe consequences for students.
• What's So Hard About Win-Win? - Jane Bluestein. Strategies for creating an environment that respects both adults and students.
• Confronting Racial and Religious Tensions - Stephen Wessler. When violence threatens, how do administrators provide outlets for tolerant listening?
• Respect—Where Do We Start? - Marie-Nathalie Beaudoin. Creating a supportive school culture starts with fostering a positive culture for teachers and staff.
• Building Safer, Saner Schools - Laura Mirsky. How restorative practices promote respectful behavior.
• Putting a Face to Faith - Charles C. Haynes. Face to Faith dispels stereotypes and helps students better understand their own and others' religious values.
• Breaking Silences - Robert A. McGarry. A plea for stopping homophobic name-calling and hate language.
• Learning from New Americans - Bill Preble and Carlton Fitzgerald. Inviting students new to the country to speak about their experiences builds their confidence and helps fellow students enlarge their perspectives.
• Looking Out, Looking In - Debbie Pushor. Rethinking how we talk and listen to families yields significant returns.
• Discussions That Drive Democracy - Diana Hess. How to teach students to talk about controversial issues in civil and productive ways.
• Life Lessons from the Philosophers - Scott Seider and Sarah Novick. Attention to respect has played a pivotal role in this school's superior academic achievement record.
• Letters to My Younger Self - Emilie Shafto. A college senior reflects on her life as a struggling 2nd grader.
• Commentary / The Threat of Accountabalism - Phillip C. Schlechty. Focusing only on improving test scores is a misguided school reform.
• Research Says… / Bullying Is Common—And Subtle - Bryan Goodwin. Many students bully to gain social status.
• Art & Science of Teaching / The Perils and Promises of Discovery Learning - Robert J. Marzano. Discovery learning works best when teachers prepare students and offer assistance along the way.

I especially liked this column entry by Carol Ann Tomlinson - One to Grow On / Respecting Students which focuses on how powerful it is for teachers to respect their students (as opposed to wanting to be respected oneself). Tomlinson writes that teachers who respect students:

• Understand the power of beliefs in shaping their practice. They rid themselves of any covert persuasion they may have that kids who are like them in race, economic status, language, beliefs, or motivation are somehow better or smarter than those who are unlike them.
• Believe their work can make previously unimpressive students shine—and can raise the ceilings of possibility for impressive students.
• Teach students how to grow academically and personally.
• Enlist students' partnership in creating a classroom that dignifies each person within it.

e-learning: Professional Reading & strategies

• How to model technology use in the classroom - Veteran teacher Heather Wolpert-Gawron offers 20 tips for using and modeling the use of technology in the classroom. Teachers should involve students in setting up new technology, use digital tools -- such as document cameras, videoconferencing and interactive whiteboards -- throughout the school day and use tech-inspired vocabulary, even when talking about offline activities, she writes.
• Google for Educators: The Best Features for Busy Teachers - An article which explores user-friendly google tools which will keep you and your class inspired, inventive, and organized. I can see that giving students time to explore these tools within your subject context could keep juniors on-task and interested in learning as the term and year comes to an end.

Revision Strategies:
As senior and junior exams are coming up here is another handy revision strategy: Boggle - This strategy helps students to review material and develop their own individualised study guides.

Revision Bites - I put together some revision bites for junior form teachers to go over with their form classes a few years ago. If you have time you may want to go over some of the ideas with your classes - they are relevant for seniors as well.

Term 3 Week 10: Differentiation, blunders, brains and alots

Professional Reading - Differentiation

Five Hallmarks of Good Homework by Cathy Vatterott
Homework shouldn't be about rote learning. The best kind deepens student understanding and builds essential skills.

6 wild ideas for ideal schools
Education columnist Jay Mathews shares six examples from his readers of schools that work. Among them is an example submitted by ASCD's Katie Test of a public high school that focuses on students' academic and emotional needs. Students at Quest Early College High School in Houston have wellness plans, speak regularly with educators, begin taking college-level courses in their first year and complete community-service projects. Mathews notes that the six schools highlighted by readers focus on close teacher-student contact, collaboration and projects.

Early Achievers Losing Ground
A US study shows that many top students are losing ground as they transition from elementary to middle school and middle to high school. Researchers with the Thomas B. Fordham Institute said the findings raise questions about whether federal education policies aimed at helping low-performing students are harming those who are high achievers. "We've been making good progress for kids at the bottom and for poor and minority kids -- that's important," said Michael J. Petrilli, executive vice president. "It just can't be the only thing that we do."


Other Reading

Twenty of My Biggest Teaching Blunders by Todd Finley
We teachers make 0.7 instructional decisions per minute, according to research summaries by Hilda Borko and Richard Shavelson. We make them in contexts that shift from hour to hour in overstuffed portables with finicky projectors, after grading, without enough time to collaborate, without enough information and with too much. We look confident when we’re not, look enthusiastic during second period when demoralized by first. We speed up for the majority when a few need us to slow down. We make decisions about what’s important on festive days and during dark ones, such as 9/11, when raw grief and disorientation filled America’s classrooms like hurricanes of ash...

This is your brain on YouTube
Neuroscientists found a way to peek inside people's brains with MRI scanners and create images of what they see. Researchers showed subjects a succession of YouTube clips, and were able to create watchable, recognizable versions of the clips based only on data gleaned from the scans. "We are opening a window into the movies in our minds," said study leader Jack Gallant

The Alot is Better Than You at Everything

This is a funny, interesting blog post by a true stickler for the English language. Fellow sticklers will enjoy

"Any subject can be made interesting, and therefore any subject can be made boring." --Hilaire Belloc, French-born British writer and historian