Out Of Service Inservice

Warning:  Likely Pointless Raging Against the Machine Ahead
 
Summer wouldn’t be summer if it didn’t come to an end–and today is that day for me, at least officially.  I’ve been in the classroom for many hours this month, of course, getting things organized for a new year.  I’ve been using Google Calendars to try and organize [...]

Transparency Can Be Good For You–Or Me

Caution:  Brain Dump Ahead
Today at RCWP’s Tech Matters I presented myself as a case study on the theme of collaboration. Aside from sharing a few tools I use to stay connected/networked, like Classroom 2.0 and my Google Reader, I told two stories about my collaborative efforts. One is a story of success [...]

Summer Goals Update Part 2

I’m reading the third and final professional book on my summer list.  Well, I actually have picked up a few more, but Choice Words by Peter Johnston is the last I committed to finish by summer’s end.  I wrote a bit about Peter Johnston after attending a panel last fall at the NWP/NCTE convention in NYC.  [...]

Craft Cracking

I have a rather terrible habit of assuming conscious negative intent when “higher-ups” (or their potential henchpeople) mention professional titles.  I anticipate more bolted-on, poorly supported shifts in curriculum and practices that don’t end up benefiting students as promised and promoted.  So during the last week of school, an enthusiastic literacy coach dropped the title Cracking [...]

Summer Goals

Needless to say, my first goal is to rededicate myself to blogging my teaching life/learning. So that I have something to blog about, I’ve got a few other goals to attach to this:
Goal 2: Finish Choice Words by Peter Johnston–I’m hoping it’ll be easier to read away from the daily mistakes I make talking with/to [...]

What I’m Doing Right…For Once

March Madness is not, in my world, connected to basketball.  March is Reading Month, making it four straight weeks of near-religious observance of the joys of readng.  It has also been the month in which I do my Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) for each of my students.  And this year, the month we finished collaborative [...]

Becoming one-teacher-at-a-time-ish…

     Happy FIFTH Snow Day to me…
    I finished One Teacher at a Time last week (first post here), while at the same time dipping my toe into the criterion-based assessment waters in both Math ( a unit on fractions) and Science (a unit on force and motion).  I started by setting up class lists with [...]

Shifty Paradigms

 
Last Wednesday I spent a few hours at my ISD with other 3-5 teachers listening to Jane E. Pollack, author of, most recently, One Teacher at a Time.  I thought I was just going to hear a little about standards-based report cards.  Instead, I had my entire practice challenged.  Yes, it was one of those [...]

Mandated Reading Program? No Sweat

So I’m in New York, and with the crazy schedule and general wacky pace of the city, this is the first opportunity I’ve had to blog about my learning at the National Writing Project’s Annual Meeting. Lots of shiny lights and distractions.
I attended a great session yesterday on getting creative with mandated curriculum. The Californians [...]