Ideas to Inspire

What Should Be the Focus of Schools?

caikeda — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:10:38 +0000

Why School? Reclaiming Education for All of Us

Mike Rose

The New Press (2009)

Hardcover: 192 pages

I don’t tout a book that I’ve never read, just as I don’t give students a writing assignment that I haven’t already written myself, but the National Writing Project book group ning is having an online discussion of this book and the coversations have been quite intriguing. Imagine, adult conversation centered around big questions. It made me feel like a professional again. If you too are yearning for those adult conversations, this is a great group to join.

From the New Press website:

A powerful and timely exploration of this country’s public education goals, and how they are put into practice, by the award-winning author and educator

I ask how to educate a vast population, what to teach and how, who will do it, what the work will mean. We still ask these questions because we haven’t satisfactorily answered them. And the way we answer them says a lot about who we are—and what we want to become.
—FROM WHY SCHOOL?

In the tradition of Jonathan Kozol, this little book is driven by big questions. What does it mean to be educated? What is intelligence? How should we think about intelligence, education, and opportunity in an open society? Why is a commitment to the public sphere central to the way we answer these questions?

Drawing on forty years of teaching and research, from primary school to adult education and workplace training, award-winning author Mike Rose reflects on these and other questions related to public schooling in America. He answers them in beautifully written chapters that are both rich in detail—a first-grader conducting a science experiment, a carpenter solving a problem on the fly, a college student’s encounter with a story by James Joyce—and informed by a deep and powerful understanding of history, the psychology of learning, and the politics of education.

Rose decries the narrow focus of educational policy in our time: the drumbeat of test scores and economic competition. Why School? will be embraced by parents and teachers alike, and readers everywhere will be captivated by Rose’s eloquent call for a bountiful democratic vision of the purpose of schooling.

Mike Rose, a professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, is the author of Lives on the Boundary, The Mind at Work, and Possible Lives. Among his many awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Grawemeyer Award in Education, and the Commonwealth Club of California Award for Literary Excellence in Nonfiction. He lives in Santa Monica.

The advantage of self-choice for reading

caikeda — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:15:22 +0000

A valuable assignment that English teachers assign is free reading, sometimes called SSR (silent sustained reading). The object of the assignment is to choose a book and read for a certain amount of time MINIMUM. Sometimes, students then need to record proof of reading.

What is the purpose of this? Free reading creates stamina. It refines the hidden reading strategies of visualizing when reading, hearing ourselves read and making connections in our mind. It’s not busy work, and it’s not punishment, no matter what your child says.

But what should they be reading? Self-choice empowers students, but as a family, it is sometimes frustrating to see your child reading what you believe is “below their level.”

Reading Ladders Region 4

View more presentations from Teri Lesesne.

I’m sharing a presentation by a professor of library science in Texas. She is writing a book about reading ladders, which basically is about letting students choose their own books, but creating challenges for them by offering other books in the same genre that are a little more complex, and leading them to books “at the next level.”

I’ll review the book when it comes out.

Beyond Twilight

caikeda — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:30:53 +0000

When Twilight first came out in hardcover, I thought the students were reading the Bible because it was so thick. The thing about it was that kids didn’t seem to care. The Twilight mania, like the Harry Potter mania seemed to take over irregardless of the size of the tome. But what happens when younger kids want to read the same thing as their older siblings? I personally feel that any of the books beyond Twilight are just not appropriate for our 6th grade readers, however, the vampire and other mysterious creatures mania has opened up room for good alternative titles for middle school readers wanting to read the macabre.

Some of my personal picks:

Title: Eighth Grade Bites

Author: Heather Brewer

Genre: Macabre

Reading level: Ages 9-12

Paperback: 182 pages

Publisher: Scholastic

This book is about the messed up life of Vladimir Tod, 8th grade dork and half vampire in hiding. It’s a good boy-friendly alternative to T. The protagonist, Tod, is a typical 8th grader full of sarcasm and drama. Being a half vampire doesn’t prevent him from being the target for the two school bullies, nor does it make him confident and suave with the girls. Follow this up with 9th Grade Slays, 10th Grade Bleeds and 11th Grade Burns.

Title: My Sister the Vampire: Switched

Author: Sierra Mercer

Genre: Macabre

Reading level: Ages 9-12

Paperback: 208 pages

Publisher: Harper Collins (July 24, 2007)

When Olivia Abbott moves to town, she’s excited to join the cheerleading team and make new friends. Then she meets Ivy Vega. At first, Ivy, pale and dressed all in black, looks like Olivia’s opposite. Then the girls look beyond the glittery pink blush and thick black eyeliner to discover they’re identical—identical twins!

Olivia and Ivy are brimming with plans to switch places and pull every twin trick in the book. But Olivia soon discovers that she and Ivy aren’t exactly the same. Ivy’s a vampire. And she’s not the only one in town.

Title: Coraline (Graphic novel format)

Author: Neil Gaiman

Genre: Macabre/graphic novel

Reading level: Ages 9-12

Paperback: 192 pages

Publisher: Harper Collins (May 5, 2009)

Coraline wanders around her new house and discovers a door leading into a mirror place, where she finds her button-eyed “other mother,” who is determined to secure Coraline’s love one way or another. This version is a virtuoso adaptation, streamlining passages that function best in prose and visually highlighting parts that benefit most from the graphic form.

6 Reading Habits: Part 6 Compare & Contrast

caikeda — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:47:32 +0000

Compare and contrast: fit this text into an ongoing dialogue (for those big picture people)

At what point in the term does this reading come? Why that point, do you imagine?
How does it contribute to the main concept and themes of the course?
How does it compare (contrast) to the ideas presented by texts that come before it? Does it continue a trend, shift direction, or expand the focus of the previous readings?
How has your thinking been altered by this reading or how has it affected your response to the issues and themes of the course?

Links to Haiti

caikeda — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 02:50:43 +0000

Here’s some Haiti resources for your classroom:

CNN has a 360 degree video from Haiti. It’s a really cool concept, but it’s a little jarring for me. Still, the kids will really like it. If you’re an old geezer like me and get motion sickness from today’s video games, then just don’t click the mouse around.

Boston.com, The Big Picture has a photo essay called The Faces of Haiti.

The BBC has an interactive map about how governments and relief agencies have been getting relief supplies to Haiti.

Another interactive map that gives the damage to different areas in Haiti.

6 Reading Habits: Part 5 Contextualize

caikeda — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:41:14 +0000

Contextualize: After you’ve finished reading, put the reading in perspective

When was it writter or where was it published? Do these factors change or affect how you view the piece?
View it through the lens of your own experience. Your udnerstanding of the words on the page and their significance is always shaped by what you have come to know and vlaue from living in a particular time and place.

Part 6: Compare and contrast

6 Reading Habits Part 3: Outline, Summarize, Analyze

caikeda — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 18:17:54 +0000

Yes, it’s out of order, but I was positive that I wrote this post, just not sure what I did with it. This photo was already in my media folder, so I know I’m not having a senior moment.

Outline, summarize, analyze: take the information apart, look at its parts, and then try to put it back together again in language that is meaningful to you.

Outlining lets you step back from the information and reveal the skelaton of the piece. What the main points are, what the evidence for the points are, and so on.

Summarizing lets you see the skelaton, but in a sentence and paragraph form. It gets to the meat of the piece.

Analyzing goes one step further by adding an evaluation element. It asks you to reflect upon and weigh in on how effectively or how sloppily the argument has been made in the paper.

Questions to ask yourself when deciding what is important:

what is the writer saying is true or valid?
why should I accept the writer’s claim (or reject the writer’s claim)?
what reasons or evidence does the author supply?
what is fact and what is opinion?
is there anywhere that the reasoning breaks down?

6 Reading Habits Part 4: Repetitions and Patterns

caikeda — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:16:15 +0000

By looking for ideas/thoughts that repeat in a piece, or looking for patterns are often ways to key in on what an author considers important and what he expects you to get from the piece. The way language is chosen or used can also alert you to an author’s position, hidden agenda or biases. Be watching for:

Images that repeat
Repeated words, phrases, types of examples, or illustrations
Consistent ways of characterizing people, events, or issues

Part 5: Contextualize – put the reading in perspective

Gratitude to Old Teachers

caikeda — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 03:25:29 +0000

When we stride or stroll across the frozen lake,
We place our feet where they have never been.
We walk upon the unwalked. But we are uneasy.
Who is down there but our old teachers?

Water that once could take no human weight-
We were students then-holds up our feet,
And goes on ahead of us for a mile.
Beneath us the teachers, and around us the stillness.

–Robert Bly

from Eating the Honey of Words, 1999
HarperCollins Publishers, New York, NY

6 Reading Habits to Develop, Part 2: Annotating

caikeda — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 03:04:59 +0000

2. Annotating text means to have a “dialogue” with yourself, the author, and the issues and ideas at stake. From start to finish, make your reading of any text thinking-intensive.

Throw away the highlighter in favor of a pen or pencil. Highlighting can distract from your learning and dilute your comprehension.
Mark up the margins of your text with WORDS: ideas that occur to you, notes about things that seem important to you, reminders of how issues in a text may connect with class discussion or course themes. This kind of interaction keeps you conscious of the REASON you’re reading and the PURPOSE your instructor has in mind.
Develop your own symbol system: asterisk a key idea, for example, or use an exclamation point for the surprising, absurd, bizarre
Get in the habit of hearing yourself ask questions–”what does this mean?” “why is he or she drawing that conclusion?” “why is the class reading this text?” etc. Write the questions down (in the margin, at the beginning or end of the reading, in a notebook, or elsewhere). They are reminders of the unfinished business you still have with the text.