Because I purchase The Teacher’s Daybook each year for my lesson planning, Heinemann sends me catalogs and fliers about publications quite often. In my mailbox today, I received a promotional flier for Penny Kittle’s Write Beside Them. I was intrigued enough to check out the book’s page at Heinemann’s site. I watched the sample videos,…
I wrote this last night thinking of submitting it to the Faculty Room, but I realized I misunderstood our focus question, and I didn’t want my post to go to waste. Thus, here are my thoughts on some choices teachers ought to have about their profession and environment. Teachers have differing degrees of choice in…
I am excited to share that I have received official acceptance to Virginia Tech’s Instructional Technology Master of Arts degree program! I start this fall. My coursework will be completed online through Blackboard, so I will be able to remain in Georgia while attending school.
As I promised earlier, I am reading the studies cited by Robert Marzano Classroom Instruction that Works. The first study I picked up is “The Effects of Homework on Learning: A Quantitative Synthesis” from Journal of Educational Research, November/December 1984 (full citation at end of this post). Alfie Kohn’s claim in his rebuttal of my…
I read Classroom Instruction that Works by Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, and Jane E. Pollock for an online professional learning course, and I’m very glad I did. The book discusses research-based strategies teachers can use to increase student understanding and achievement. It fits well with Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s Understanding by Design….
I have been struggling with writing a UbD plan for Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. I think have have one sketched out, though I still need to create guiding questions for various pieces of the unit, including YouTube videos and a selection from Thomas L. Friedman’s The World is Flat. In looking at the…
Miguel Guhlin has joined the UbD Educators wiki and wants your help. He is posting UbD chapter summaries and wants input from other wiki members. I want to ask wiki members a question: Miguel suggested that we unlock those summary pages to allow nonmembers to participate. What do you think? My idea was that allowing…
In a recent post, I discussed three cultural markers that have made teaching more difficult for those of us who teach today than it was for our own teachers. However, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the ways in which teaching is a lot easier for us today than it was for…
[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/yqmLiWvoRfA” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] I am currently taking two online professional development courses through a local school system. Both are book studies, and if you look in the sidebar, you can guess which two books. The interesting thing to me is that one group is active, dynamic, and interested in conversation about the…
I have mentioned before that the UbD Educators wiki has grown quiet. I think there may be two reasons for this: We’re all busy educators who have difficulty finding the time to create, post, and/or comment on others’ posted UbD units. We’re not getting what we need out of the wiki. It’s not in my…
