If you are an elementary or middle school teacher who has ever perused my article of the week lists (disclaimer: Kelly Gallagher is the man who invented Articles of the Week), you’ve probably wanted to hurt me. This is because my articles are often a stretch even for my ninth graders (after all, the vocabulary difficulty of newspapers has remained stable […]
complex texts
Using the Efficient “Take a Stand” Strategy to Hook Kids into a Reading
Let me just start out with this: Erica Beaton (of b10lovesbooks.wordpress.com/#seekthebalance/my next door teacher neighbor fame) introduced me to this strategy (her version is much more sophisticated — see her explanation in the comments), and I’ve also seen something like it accredited to George Hillocks in Michael Smith’s, Deborah Appleman’s, and Jeffrey Wilhelm’s book UnCommon Core (which […]
9 Complex Text Resources I’m Pretty Pumped About Right Now
Recently, there’s been a trend in the messages I’ve received from the stellar stock of humanity known as you, the Teaching the Core readership (btw, if you ever need to contact me, just use this link — it goes straight to my inbox). Here’s what I’ve been receiving: life-improving, useful resources for 1) finding complex texts for […]
Why I Support the Common Core
I’d bet a Galapagos Tortoise that no one decides to become a teacher based solely on the prospect of adhering to a list of teaching standards. So, here’s a great question: why in the heck should we care about them? (Hint: It’s not because some armageddon is coming in the form of a standardized test […]
A Class Purpose and the Promotion of Student Flourishing
I love summer break’s gift of decompression. It is during the weeks from mid-June to mid-August that my brain defrags the preceding school year’s experiences, condensing them into a more manageable series of memories, lessons, and principles. What are we about? One principle that I began examining in the Fall of 2011 is that of […]