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Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins Fault in Our Stars by John Green Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn Maze Runner by James Dashner The Leading Indicators:  A Short History of the Numbers that Rule Our World by Zachary Karabell The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander Jack Reacher Series by Lee Childs Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith Mountains beyond Mountains: The Quest of Paul Farmer by Tracy Kidder Blinded By Sight: Seeing Race through the Eyes of the Blind by Osagie Obasogie    American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Dangerous Sniper in U.S. Military History by Chris Kyle,  Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden Killer Angels: The Classic Novel of the Civil War by M...

--> Open Space Technology is an educational learning experience that allows groups to choose an area of interest, explore that area, and report out.  The very nature of the experience makes it very useable within the classroom environment, but it has also been used in community, corporate, and leadership settings.  It can be a completely open process, with no thematic commonality between the areas of interest, or it can be more focused.   Though it is not a literacy strategy per se, it is quite fitting for our school building push towards engagement and inquiry. So for this month’s newsletter, I will write a little about how Open Space Technology works and why it might be a unique experience for your classroom. I first came to Open Space Technology in a leadership conference.  There were about forty of us from a wide variety of fields:  architecture, public health, food sciences, politics etc.  We were told, as a -->...

--> Guidelines for Writing a Commencement Address The draft you write for consideration does not need to be a final version, but should give the panelists a clear idea of what you plan to say in your speech.  The traditional commencement address has had content which reflects back on the class's experiences and also gives advice or guidance for the future.  The tone should be one which inspires and motivates the listeners. Although the Commencement Address is directed at the graduating class, the message needs to be meaningful and appropriate for the adult audience present as well.  Content, language, or style which parents or grandparents might find offensive is not suitable for a Commencement Address. Humor can be an effective minor element of a Commencement Address.  The predominant message, and consequently the predominant writing style, should be serious, thoughtful and inspirational.  Format:  This m...

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We generally think of writing and reading as two discrete language processes, but doing so overlooks the important relationship they have to each other. Asking students to write about their reading provides at least two fundamental benefits. First, those writings become an indicator of what students have learned from the texts. And second, those writings enable students to make meaning of those texts. For starters, short writing activities (and I emphasize short, especially for those who work with struggling students), can be a good indicator of what students have understood of the text. It isn’t the only or even the best indicator. But, it is a good indicator none-the-less. It can be as simple as a “quick write” in student notebooks, or perhaps a more developed, formal essay. The writings (depending on the prompt and the essay requirements) can indicate if they are reading for “gist” or “meaning”, or whether the student is capable of inference and evaluation. With the help of ...

--> --> As teachers we ask a lot of questions.   In fact, we do so frequently without thinking about those questions.   We believe it might be a good way to check our class’s understanding of what has been covered, or a way of getting them involved in an otherwise uninvolved lesson.   However, as it has been generally documented (Rothstein & Santana, 2012), teachers generally don’t ask the right type of questions, relying heavily on low-level recall over more complex questions of synthesis and evaluation, questions that take a considerable amount of energy and time to answer. We also tend to ask questions that require students to “guess what is in my head.”   We want them to evaluate something and to ultimately come to the same conclusion that we have come to.   But the very nature of deep and meaningful questions means that we should not really know the answer to the question before we ask it.   That seems like an odd concept...

In Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey’s Rigorous Reading , they claim that student learning increases by the simple act of explicitly stating the lesson’s purpose beforehand and revisiting it after the fact.   The practice has become more common in our classrooms, but I believe we can continue to improve with how we begin our lessons and how we assign our texts.   I think we all fear that moment when a visitor to our classrooms pulls a student aside and asks, “Tell me what you’re learning today in this class?” I often hold my breath when the question comes out, not entirely confident that the students know or that I’ve been clear enough in explaining it.   Still, taking a few moments each day to establish the purpose and how it relates to the broader ideas of the course is important.   I suspect that many of us do this in a general sense, though fewer of us take the time to write out or read that specific learning purpose for the day.   This...

An anchor standard of the Common Core asks students to “read closely to determine what the text says explicitly” and implicitly.     While the phrase “close reading” has become fashionable within our curriculum discussions, it is perhaps necessary to discuss what is actually meant when we use that phrase and, just as importantly, how do we foster that habit. The expression “close reading” means that a reader will look deeply into the meaning of a text.  It includes comprehending the intended (and sometimes unintended) messages of texts. A close read examines what is said and what is implied, and it requires readers to contemplate how the text is constructed.  Close reading differs from basic comprehension which asks only for the main idea and supporting details of a text.  Close reading  suggests that the text is more complex and requires readers to dig out a deeper understanding. Too often, we treat texts as though they mer...

When introducing myself, I often get a funny look when I mention my job title, Reading Coordinator. I admit, it feels like an odd title. I’m waiting for someone to ask, “What exactly do you coordinate? Tea?” The title dates back to our first reading specialist, who preferred “coordinator” versus “specialist”. The label seemed to suggest a more systemic approach to literacy and reading versus a small, scale technical one. In other words, a reading specialist might know the nuances of helping an individual student overcome reading difficulties. A reading coordinator works to develop literacy practices across the entire school by working with teachers as well as students. My responsibilities typically get evenly divided between teaching reading intervention courses, assessments, and staff development. For my first AVReading Newsletter of the year, I would like to briefly outline some of the literacy resources I can make available to you this year. AVReading Newsletter and Website: ...

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Our classrooms, much like society at large, operate under a type of social contract, whereby teachers and students make a type of implicit agreement.  The teacher agrees that she / he will work to foster the growth of student learning in exchange for the student’s willingness to participate and learn.  It’s an agreement that we rarely state explicitly, but it is the foundation of much that we do.  When the contract breaks down, teachers assume that students are not willing to play their part or students assume that the teacher is not providing a meaningful or relevant learning experience.    Inquiry learning strengthens that social contract by bolstering both the teacher (who is responsible for generating the inquiry) and the student (who must seek the answer to the question).  Under an inquiry model,  teachers guide students on inquiries that relate to the lives of students and the immediate world around them. And students in turn, come to trust...

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Here are some samples of past commencement addresses. 2014 2013  

In his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Freire entreats us to address the broader nature of literacy. He states that educators must do more than just teach students how to decode words in decontextualized text, but that we must teach them to read both the word and the world. While his original intent was to challenge educators to take a more active stance in addressing the inequities of our world, the phrase “reading the word and the world” has been watered down considerably. Today, the phrase represents the idea that reading involves much more than the comprehension of printed text. We read the world when we study graphs and charts. We read the world when we analyze the validity of data and statistics. We read the world when we study news broadcasts and documentaries for bias. We read the world when we evaluate the credibility of websites. We read the world when we study relationships and how they are defined by power. We read the world when we study paintings and the stor...

Video #1 -- Reading to Children (33:00) Video #2 -- Beatrice Doesn't Want To  (12:00)

The book study for this year’s Literacy Planning Committee is Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice. This month’s reading, written by Jim Burke focuses on 21st century literacies-- the skills and processes we believe the coming years will ask of our students. The term “new literacies” --or 21st century literacies-- is by no means new. Coined by a group of academics in the early to mid 90s, it’s very definition has become difficult to pin down. Leu et al. (2004) suggest that a hard definition for new literacies will always be elusive since they are constantly changing with the new affordances of emerging technologies. However, they do offer a running list—of sorts—that outlines some of the processes of reading as defined by this field. “The new literacies of the Internet and other ICTs include the skills, strategies, and dispositions necessary to successfully use and adapt to the rapidly changing information and communication technologies and contexts that continuo...

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Sharon Taberski, an independent consultant and teacher of 28 years, recently offered some thoughtful ideas about the design of our classrooms to make them more interactive. She discussed a need to not only construct our spaces to be more interactive, but to also construct our language to encourage interaction. A recent concern is that we have adopted the language of tests within our classes.  In other words, in teaching to the test, we begin to adopt approaches that require the same type of interaction with our students; meaning that we simply rattle off simple recall or short response questions at the expense of rich conversations and discussions. In response to this, Taberski believes that there are structural room design things that we can change, curriculum modificaitons, as well as language things we can take on. The first of these is changing the structure and design of our rooms.  She offered images of classrooms that were designed with...