I hear this sometimes: “Everyone knows one-and-done PD is bad.” Here are three reasons that I think the thinking behind this line could be improved. 1. If it’s true, then a recent study of 10,000 teachers suggests that “everyone” is wrong. One of the chief findings of a recent study on teacher professional development is that effective PD is pretty idiosyncratic. Basically, […]
“How Long Do You Spend Grading Articles of the Week?”
“Dave, how long do you spend grading articles of the week?” I sometimes hear that question, or at least I see it written on the faces of people who start doing the math when I tell them about Kelly Gallagher’s article of the week (AoW) assignment. The assignment: Students read, purposefully annotate, and write a one-page response to an assigned article […]
“Vision Without Execution is Hallucination”
When my students asked me for my words of wisdom earlier this month, I gave them a line from Thomas Edison: “Vision without execution is hallucination.” The vision part tends to be easy, for both my students and me. The execution part is harder; it’s also where the magic happens. Vision is easier than execution: two examples from […]
How to Stop “Likes,” “Ums,” and Other Distracting Speaking Behaviors
Part of quality speaking instruction — particularly speech delivery instruction — is helping students eliminate their distracting speech behaviors. If you’re familiar with Erik Palmer’s PVLEGS acronym for speech delivery (a must-use, in my opinion), such behaviors are Poise issues. Here are some of the distracting habits my kids bring into their pop-up debates and small group discussions each year: Fillers (“like,” […]
A Simple Classroom Birthday Tradition
My birthday was last week, [1] which means that I had a chance to participate in our classroom birthday tradition: words of wisdom. I’ll share my words (actually, they’re not mine) next week, but for this week let’s just talk about what “words of wisdom” is, why I think it’s a worthwhile investment of roughly one […]