I used to teach Gifted/Talented classes using Socratic dialogue. I continue to try to apply what I did in those classes to my language classes. From those classes, I learned that the words that I say are less important to my kids than I had formerly thought, but that the way I say those words is most important. […]
I suspect that by April many of us are victims of the all too common phenomenon of teacher burnout, at least on some level. It’s not a joke – it’s real – and we don’t talk about it here bc it can be so personal. We don’t know why, but we spend April and May
I heard someone say that these long, often multi-day inserves are just “efforts at micromanaging the staff and a knee-jerk reaction to the low standardized test scores and the fact that most kids are poor readers”. It needs to be said here that everything we do in terms of non-targeted input and the general approach that
This from chill: We are in a three day in-service at school on curriculum mapping. The template asks for the following information: 1. Essential questions. I was given the example “What are the days of the week?” 2. Standards 7.1 and 7.2 3. Concepts, Knowledge and Content – my colleagues write stuff like greetings, saying
I was copied in on the following discussion between some of the Latin teachers on our site and want to share it with anybody interested at getting a closer, rather funkadelic, look at what’s shakin’ in their world: James started off the discussion: I found this video by poking around the website of a person with whom
Ben, there’s one more thing to add, I think, about SBG: How it lines up with the weekly/bi-weekly schedule we all find so powerful. Here it goes. (And I promise this is it! Like with jGR I am trying to show here how SBG can fit well with what we already know works.) If you
This is from Sabrina: Ben, I got an email from a former ESL professor of mine and she attached those two links to watch and remind us of …the magical power of music. It’s a great path to language learning, it’s academically challenging and fits with the common core’s new emphasis on oral development and
And this is the fourth of four substantial articles from James: Ben, this is the last e-mail I’ll send for the time being. Sorry for all the stuff, but I am really just feeling the flow and I have time because it’s spring break. Plus I would hate for the conversation to come to an
James continues: A few people have expressed concerns about how to keep a standards-based gradebook, especially if there is a school-wide policy of so many entries per week. Here’s my take. I wrote a detailed post on the practicalities of my standards-based gradebook a little while ago: http://jameshosler.blogspot.com/2012/11/making-powerschool-do-standards-based.html. What follows is my attempt to explain
We need a short break from all the SGB stuff. Mark offers that and thank you Mark: Hi Ben, I thought you might be amused by these two links featuring Kurt Vonnegut and his Masters thesis: http://aerogrammestudio.com/2013/03/26/the-shapes-of-stories-by-kurt-vonnegut/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP3c1h8v2ZQ Best, Mark
Note that James Hosler’s article on SBG has been renamed. I’ve had a lot of emails from teachers wondering where it went. I just changed the name to SBG 1. Sorry about the confusion. I’m glad we’re reading so closely though. We have to on this topic right now.
This is the second in a series of four articles by James on the SBG thread; the other two will appear tomorrow: Ben asked to establish the problem that standards-based grading solves. Why all the bother to change stuff? Good question; I’ll give some thoughts here. (I’ll try to keep it brief. Of course this
