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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...

At Friday’s faculty meeting, teachers took a brief survey to indicate their initial impressions of the Literacy Moment here at AVHS.  In this month’s newsletter, I’d like to share a few of those results and observations with you. Of the sixty four teachers with a non-ninth grade class, forty of them returned a literacy survey, which means these findings represent about 63% of the potential teachers who participated in the program.  In general, teachers were considerably enthusiastic about the program.  All 40 of the respondents indicated that they participated in the literacy moment.  That is a strong response, though, one should be skeptical of a bias since about 20-25 teachers did not complete the survey.  Thus generalizing from this data is more of a broad indicator versus a detailed picture.  Bringing Books According to teacher observations, classes varied in their participation.  About 57% of the teachers stated that 75...

With this year’s unique scheduling, we have a great opportunity to promote reading and literacy in our building in a powerful way.  Six times throughout the course of our fall trimester, we will provide our 10-12 th graders with twenty minute windows to enjoy the chance to read.  While the popular narrative suggests that no one really reads anymore, the truth is that we probably read more (in text print) than we have ever done before.  In 2005, Gallup found that there had been a 22% increase in U.S. readers who claimed to be actively reading from the data taken in 1957.  And despite the fear that movies and online entertainments have pulled time away from reading, we discover that in many cases they promote it.  Blockbuster hits like Harry Potter, The Hunger Games,  Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, and Twilight all suggest that the book themselves have a symbiotic relationship with books.  Social networking sites have also drawn more people to ...

Today's Presentation Works Cited for Today's Presentation Resources Connected Learning Integrating Learning and Literacy with iPad and iPhone Apps (O'Brien and Beach, U of M) Confronting the Challenges of a Participatory Culture Dig Me: Digital Media Program