Ending Flat Stories
When working from an invisible character with both physical and psychological characteristics that have originated in the group – either as a one word image or individually created image, depth and interest are generated in that character. Students become authentically involved with what is going on in class because the characters reflect genuine concerns that
Length of Stories
As a general rule, the most effective stories contain far fewer new ideas and far fewer sentences than most teachers have employed in storytelling in the past. It is highly recommended that teachers limit the amount of new information allowed into the story throughout the questioning levels. It will help everything. Moreover, kids want stories
Food For Thought
Alisa sent this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2019/09/26/students-high-achieving-schools-are-now-named-an-at-risk-group/
We Don’t Have A Minute To Lose
This is a repost from 2009: I heard somewhere that if you do something, anything, for 10,000 hours you gain mastery of it. It doesn’t matter what it is. But you gotta do it. You can’t fake do it. So, if it’s learning Lakota, you can’t do worksheets and study a book that talks about the
Positive Classroom Management
This is a lengthy post, but worth the read in my opinion: The goal is to use how we assess to build a positive response in class from our students, to build them up for trying and not necessarily for achieving. What things can we do? We can ask for little rounds of applause for
Don’t Teach Too Much Language
As a language teacher, I like simplicity and therefore I like repetition. Simplicity and repetition help my students remember and allows me to see much greater engagement from them than when I try to teach too much language. When I teach too much language my students feel – on a daily basis – the weight
A Few Links
From time to time, group members send me interesting articles to share with the group. Alisa has sent these two, which you may find time to read during your planning period this week: https://www.bookwidgets.com/play/AE3NJQ https://hbr.org/2019/01/data-was-supposed-to-fix-the-u-s-education-system-heres-why-it-hasnt
A Breakthrough
I’ve actually never read a comment like the one reproduced below, and the reason that that is a big deal to me is that over the past 15 years here there have been over 70,000 comments, so this is a rare one! It’s from Carly (Oct. 25). What she wrote represents in my view a
Big White Bird
I’m beginning to see more and more that one of the biggest enemies we face in this work are the very schools in which we do the work. The CI birds wings are just too massive for too many of the admins working in our buildings these days. These admins are ignorant of the research
Posting Daily Objectives – 2
Below is an example of what Carly does with the rather useless and clumsy daily objectives requirement that is another way admins have of keeping control over us. In her school, she is required to write them in a specific format: I can _______ by/in order to__________. Carly explains: I also think it is unnatural
Posting Daily Objectives – 1
Q. We are going to have to start to have learning targets each day/week and the kids are going to have forms to fill out explaining how they have reached that learning target. I need to figure out how to handle that with this way of teaching. Here is one possible answer to this question: