The Stenhouse Blog

News from the blogosphere

Here are a few tidbits we’ve found interesting around the blogosphere recently:

Herb Broda, author of Moving the Classroom Outdoors, wrote a guest post on the Children & Nature Network’s website recently. A recent study examining images of nature in children’s books found that those images are slowly disappearing. “Is that a concern? Absolutely! Picture books for children mirror the priorities and interests of society. In education we talk about the concept of the null curriculum—that which is taught because it is never mentioned. If children are seeing less and less of nature in what they read, the message being conveyed is that nature really isn’t an important part of day-to-day living,” writes Broda.

You can read the full article here. Moving the Classroom Outdoors was also mentioned in this article about a trailblazing principal in Pennsylvania.

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Erik Palmer’s recent book Well Spoken received a fun and informative review on the blog RAMS English. ”

“Who hit the mute button on public speaking in the English classroom? Seems there’s less and less of it, and when teachers do send their students to the front of the class, they quickly give up the practice for the very reasons they should be redoubling their efforts — the students’ propensity for whispering, mumbling, fidgeting, forgetting what to say, and stringing together unconscious fillers like “um,” “uh,” “and,” “so,” “then,” and (Odin help us) “like.”

It’s, like, maddening.”

Read the full review on RAMS English.

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Our very own Mark Overmeyer was recently honored as the 2012 Catherine Canny Award Honoree at the Cherry Creek Schools Foundation Luncheon . He’s been a teacher at Cherry Creek for over 20 years. Congrats, Mark!

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Amanda Villagomez, a middle-school teacher in Oregon, recently reviewed Kelly Gallagher’s book Write Like This. “Kelly Gallagher’s Write Like This: Teaching Real-World Writing Through Modeling & Mentor Texts made me even more excited to be going back to my 6-8 language arts classroom next fall. As with his other books I loved his voice and convictions related to teaching.”

She was also inspired by Living the Questions by Brenda Power and Ruth Shagoury.

Add comment March 21st, 2012

Tidbits from the blogosphere

There are a couple of things happening around the web that I wanted to share with all of you.

First, I want to mention that for the first time Stenhouse is going to participate in World Read Aloud Day on March 7. Check back to find out more in this space closer to the date, but I think we have some very exciting authors and events lined up. Find out more about Read Aloud Day on the LitWorld website and think about how you can participate in this great event.

If you have some chatty teenagers in your life, who, like, uhm, don’t quite know how to carry on a conversation, check out this great column by A+ Parenting Advice columnist Leanna Landsmann. She uses some tips from Erik Palmer’s recent book, Well Spoken.

Speaking of Erik: Blogger and teacher Jennifer Fulton read and recommended the book to her department chair, who then purchased a copy for everyone in the department. They used the book as the focus of one of their workshops. Read her review of the book on her blog.

Another review that’s worth a quick read is about Math Exchanges by Kassia Omohundro Wedekind, and appears on the blog Enjoy and Embrace Learning.

Franki Sibberson reviews Peter Johnston’s new book Opening Minds on her blog, A Year of Reading. “With Opening Minds, Johnston adds a new layer to what we already learned from him about the importance of the language we use with children.  This new layer has given me a great deal to think about and it will definitely make me a better teacher,” Franki writes.

Add comment February 7th, 2012