Freda Needleman 1911-2008 Please forgive me as I’m taking a week off from educational blogging this week to remember one of my greatest teachers, my grandmother, who I called Mimi. She died this week, just thirteen days shy of her ninety-seventh birthday in her own apartment which she had lived in for over thirty years. …
Category: Open Court Reading
CUE2008: It’s About the Network
In reflecting on my CUE experience I’m struck by how much the internet has broadened my personal learning network. More important than any of the sessions I attended were the connections made in the hallway, passing through the exhibit hall, back at the hotel. The diagram at left attempts to explain with concentric circles around …
The Concept Question Board of the Future
I’ve mentioned elsewhere teachers who have used blogging as a modern day platform for their Concept/Question Board. Alice Mercer has now re-imagined the Concept/Question Board using VoiceThread, an online digital storytelling platform. Here, students record their voices asking questions and telling what they know about the coming unit. See VoiceThread Online Concept/Question Boards: Third Grade: …
Making A New Nation: Five Ideas for a Unit Opener
The American Revolution Unit contains several wordy stories of American History. The goal of the unit opener should be to assess prior knowledge and plant the seeds of recognition of a few key characters and motivations so that the following stories are comprehensible and relevant. Unit Opener Objective Students will be able to explain …
Unit Opener Planning Week is Back
Back in October, I hosted a Unit Opener planning week for Open Court units #2. It resulted in some terrific ideas being posted by web site visitors and fellow bloggers and those ideas are now linked to from the unit opener pages of those units. As teachers at different schools have different pacing, editions, and …
Subscribe to this Blog By E-mail
If you’re not used to reading blogs then you might prefer to subscribe to this blog by e-mail. Subscribe by e-mail If you subscribe by e-mail you will receive a weekly e-mail (currently sent on Sundays) which lists the previous week’s blog entries. You can read just the entries you’re interested in and come back …
Super Tuesday for Kids
Thanks to frequent contributor, Francie Kugelman, here is a ballot for students to participate in voting in the Super Tuesday election on February 5th.
The Making of: The City Mouse and the Country Mouse
I frequently receive questions from teachers on how to get started integrating video in the classroom. This begins a multi-part series in which I share the films we’ve made in my class and how we made them. If you have seen the films, find out how they were made. If you haven’t seen the films, …
Lucy Caulkins and KidPix
I’m a big fan of the way Lucy Caulkins teaches writing, asking students to focus on elaborating on smaller moments rather than the traditional beginning, middle, and end stories. For example, instead of: I went to Raging Waters. We parked the car. I rode the slide. We went home. I watched TV. Encourage students to …
Teachers As Cover Bands
Alan Levine posts his metaphor of teachers as rock and roll cover bands. He points to Johnny Cash’s wonderful cover songs later in his career. Though he follows the original songs faithfully, his own soul and interpretation come through. Particularly as more and more teachers are being asked to follow prescribed (some might say scripted …