In principal Matt Renwick’s school, digital portfolios are comprehensive collections of student work that teachers and their students curate and reflect upon on a regular basis. Here, Renwick offers a close-up look at the portfolio process.
Advertising: it’s everywhere. As media literacy educators work to engage students in conversations about commercial marketing, we have to consider the close reading of print and video ads. Frank Baker provides starting points and resources for teachers.
The Nonfiction NOW Lesson Bank (Grades 4-8): Strategies and Routines for Higher-Level Comprehension in the Content Areas by Nancy Akhavan delivers everything the title promises and more, raves reviewer Linda Biondi. Plus 50 lessons and 5 close reading ideas, ready to use.
In this helpful how-to article Judith Wencel, founder of SUCCESS in the Middle, distills 20 years of experience effectively recruiting and preparing community tutors and mentors – dispelling the myth that “nobody will volunteer in middle schools.”
Teaching children how to meaningfully participate in math conversations can be daunting, say educators Elham Kazemi and Allison Hintz. The authors of Intentional Talk share four principles to help teachers lead deeper, more productive discussions.
If asking student writers to develop voice, stamina and range isn’t hard enough, says teacher educator Troy Hicks, we now have digital tools to contend with. Watch as Hicks helps his 6th grade daughter think through her creation of a book report video.
Working Draft / Writing with Students
by Kevin Hodgson · Published 04/22/2014 · Last modified 11/16/2019
Eager to muse about the future of writing instruction, Kevin Hodgson calls on the handy ThingLink app to share reflections with nine authors featured in April’s Educational Leadership magazine. Penny Kittle, Carol Jago, Jeff Anderson, et al – read this!
With its emphasis on building teachers’ confidence and capacity, Technology Together is a terrific resource for school & district technology and administrative leaders, as well as central office curriculum and PD staff, says reviewer and deputy superintendent Marilyn King.
In her book about the social life of networked teens, Internet scholar danah boyd “issues a call to all of us who are adults to take more time to understand the shifts now taking place,” 6th grade teacher Kevin Hodgson writes. The guidance role of teachers & parents “has never been more important, nor more complicated.”
Education consultant Mike Fisher invites readers to be active participants in a Curriculum Brainstorm, using popular music and a song’s associated music video as a way to engage close reading of text, comparative analysis & use of digital tools.
