In this episode of Teacher's Corner, we recorded a conversation between two educators, Shawna Coppola, author of Writing, Redefined and Trevor Bryan who wrote The Art of Comprehension. Together they discussed what inspired their work--visual arts in communication and the importance of exploring inquiry to engage students.
By Stacey Shubitz & Lynne R. Dorfman
We believe that a writing workshop approach works better than any other method to teach writing, but without a true understanding of how it works, teachers will have to rely on a “one size fits all” program format. While it is comforting to have a script or instructions on what to do each day, teachers must be able to assess student work to inform teaching decisions; provide quality feedback on a regular basis knowing what to specifically praise; and what to work on to move each individual writer forward—all of which doesn’t come from a script. Writing workshop asks the students to make deliberate choices about their writing, which will help them be actively engaged, reflect on their growth, set goals, and more closely imitate the writing process of mentor authors.
“Introducing a spelling test to a student by saying, Let’s see how many words you know, is different from saying, Let’s see how many words you know already. It is only one word, but the already suggests that any words the child knows are ahead of expectation and, most important, that there is nothing permanent about what is known and not known.” —Peter Johnston
The following is a guest blog post from Gravity Goldberg and Renée Houser, authors of the new resource, Teacher's Toolkit for Independent Reading, Grades 3–5.
Sue is handed a teacher’s manual and told to keep up with the pace. Her evaluation is based upon her implementing the program her school district purchases and she is expected to teach the lessons in the order they were written regardless of whether she thinks the lessons match the students.
Young learners are full of questions and wonderings. So much so that they sometimes need a guide for their curiosity.
Reading aloud from her book, Little Readers, Big Thinkers, Amy Stewart shows us how close reading can teach even the youngest students new ways to enjoy texts, think about them critically, and share that thinking with peers and adults.
Here's a recap of the recent #StenhouseMath Twitter Chat with Amanda Jansen, author of the upcoming book Rough Draft Math: Revising to Learn. Read to find out how to use these innovative ideas in your own math class, and don't forget to preorder her book, coming this April!
The #StenhouseMath Twitter Chat with author of Rough Draft Math, Amanda Jansen is coming right up! Here are the questions we're planning to cover for the chat. Take a look, get your wheels turning, and join in the conversation on Tuesday, Feb 11th at 9:00 p.m. ET!
In Rough Draft Math: Revising to Learn, Mandy Jansen discusses the powerful role of revision in math class. At first glance, we might wonder, what does it mean to "revise mathematics"? Make it more correct? Mandy argues that, yes, we can certainly revise to make mathematical work more accurate, but students' explanations, definitions, proofs, justifications, or representations could also be improved by becoming more precise, detailed, elegant, concise, convincing, illuminating, and more.
Katherine Mills Hernandez thinks that movement, talk, and physical environment in the classroom all contribute and influence students’ learning. In her book, Activate, she offers many ideas to help you create a classroom that is ideal for deeper engagement and lasting learning. Below is a quick activity you can use right away.
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In this episode of Teacher's Corner we sit down with Katie Egan Cunningham, author of the new book Start with Joy. Find out what inspired her to write this important book and how you can use it in your classroom to infuse literacy instruction with joy, leading to learning that is more memorable and meaningful.