AVReading

Though my focus for this year’s newsletters have been on classroom strategies, I have decided to end the year by addressing the recent events of our community and how we can be more mindful and intentional in teaching critical literacy with our students.  As Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Friere writes in Pedagogy of the Oppressed , it is not enough just to teach our students to read words, sentences, and books.  We must teach them to read the world.  This month’s newsletter will focus on how we can better commit to doing this within our classrooms.                   To start with, teaching our students to read the world assumes that we, as teachers, are learning alongside them.  It is important that we are acknowledging the ways we have been socialized into racist assumptions and beliefs that have influenced the way we see other people.  We are reading. We are ref...

The factory model of education, which to a large degree still remains prevalent in our classroom practices today, focuses on finding the most efficient means to educate students on a large scale.  It’s about looking for that perfect lesson plan or the perfect classroom set-up that will finally work for all students. We spend a great amount of time and energy constructing those fool proof lessons that reach each of our students.  Too often, however, those plans fall far short of our hopeful goals. And that is why an adaptive lesson or approach, also known as differentiation, can be very effective.               The practice of differentiating our curriculum and lessons is not easy.  It’s time consuming, and potentially counter productive.  So, for this month’s newsletter, let’s examine some ways that differentiation can be used within our classrooms.  Let me begin by defining differentiation 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 might be helpful. It is an all purpose formula. It is not required. Feel free ...

Although our focus this year has been on instructional strategies, in light of our current E-Learning push, I’ve decided to change focus and offer some helpful strategies for assigning and assessing reading in those spaces.                   We’ve learned a lot recently about how to set-up our E-Learning spaces and the types of expectations, lessons, and assessments that we will need to construct as we move our curriculum over to the digital world.                    For struggling readers, this move can be daunting.  Research shows that the obstacles struggling readers face is more than just limited vocabulary and slow reading rates.  It’s also understanding the organization and flow of visual texts.   This could mean difficulties in “reading” the layout of non-traditional (...

As part of our year long focus on teaching strategies, I am going to focus my attention this month on reading.  Of course, it is not an extensive examination of good reading strategies to use in your class.   However, they are the strategies that I have more recently been using with students in response to data trends and things that I have noticed within classes.  Before getting into the strategies, let me start with some things that reading research has established as good practice.                    First, engagement and motivation matter with reading.  Since we are asking students to do something that is cognitively demanding and rigorous, we have to do what we can to engage them as best we can.  There are numerous ways to do this like giving more choice to readings, having really good pre-reading activities,   and using powerful and interes...

I believe that one of the most significant changes to my teaching through the years is the way that I think about student bodies within my classroom.  It was just never something that was ever discussed in my teacher training courses, and it certainly was not a regular feature of my own middle or high school years.  As a teacher, I conceived of students as these entities that merely showed up in the room, took a seat, participated in some writing, reading, and talking (along with a healthy dose of listening), and then they moved on to another class.               I sometimes forget what that must be like.  And then we will have one of those rare professional development days where we are asked to sit for long stretches of time, and suddenly I can get a feeling for what it must be like to move from class-to-class only to spend 48 minutes of seat time at each station. Of course, moveme...

This month, we will extend our look at classroom strategies with a look at a unique type of small group work, commonly referred to as stations. Stations are a type of learning activity where students are divided into groups and sent to work at specific tables or areas placed throughout the room. They work especially well with activities or lessons that are interactive or “hands-on”.  In some cases, they can transform   lessons that have historically been passive (like readings or lectures) into more engaging, visual experiences.   Depending on how they are used, stations can provide a number of advantages.   As mentioned earlier, they can be more active and engaging, allowing students the chance to collaborate with peers and engage with concepts or ideas.  They can also break up a class a little.   In some cases, the lesson might require students to move from station to station, which can get them out of their chairs.  Stat...

The use of small groups within our classrooms has a number of advantages.  For starters, we know that students tend to learn more when they actively work to construct knowledge as opposed to when they are fed the information.  We have also learned that   co-constructing knowledge within a group tends to be even more effective and powerful.   Additionally, we have learned that mixed ability groupings offer a number of benefits, bringing together students with a diversity of learning styles and backgrounds for a common purpose.  And then there is the development of those “soft skills” of teamwork and problem solving, we often hear the business community and private sector tout as critical to their operations.            Still, using small groups can be messy.  Our Type A students aren’t often fans because they know that they could probably do the work in half the time if they could just d...