The Big Idea of big ideas

Part II:

We've had key ideas of classes re-packaged and re-sold to us in so many ways, it's tough to know where to begin, or what action to take.  Here, to help the confused and unwary, a brief overview of everything.

(Caveat lector:  If you thought the last one was bad, go no further.  The concepts are murkier, the definitions are longer, and the jokes are worse.  There's even a bibliography.)
(Special note to education students: After reading this, you're likely to be more confused about one of the most important concepts in education than you were before.  That's okay: you'll be in the same position as everybody.) 

Stealing other peoples' links

The great part about the internet is that almost everything is on it.  (At least temporarily.)  The bad part you have to be able to find it when you want it.  These are tech sites I hope to use someday, but have to keep track of in the meantime.

Tiki toki (stolen from iLearn Technology).  A tool for creating timelines.  I'm going to try it for a presentation, although the presentation was not intended to be exceptionally multimedia. 

Snipsnip.it (also stolen from iLearn Technology).  An apparently decent video editor.  I don't know that there's anything here I can't already do in iMovie, but for those times iMovie isn't available or sufficient, this might be useful.


Goodreads.com (stolen from Free Technology for Teachers).  A social networking site for readers.  It looks like it will make independent reading assignments much more thorough, effective, and maybe fun.

More about reading

In a comment on Coates's take on teaching reading, Ray says the following.

Two good books that are must reads for those who want to change reading in schools are Readicide; How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It by Kelly Gallagher and Focus: Elevating the Essentials To Radically Improve Student Learning by Mike Schmoker. Gallagher describes how American schools are killing the love of reading in schools and then he gives a plan to change the issue. Schmoker’s book is how we can take some straight forward steps to increase student knowledge in every subject through teaching some very simple steps for reading, writing, and talking.

I started to respond in the comments; when I got to the third paragraph, I just turned it into a blog post.

Readicide is on my reading list.  At my school, we have a very functional, test-score-driven approach to teaching reading.  It works for us; our reading scores are pretty good and getting better.  But I end up with huge numbers of seniors (I teach both the senior English classes) who have no interest in reading anything again.  So I just made it an assignment: Find a book you want to read.  Read it.  Tell me what you read.  I have guidelines for people who need that sort of thing:  They have to read 10,000 words every two weeks (a VERY light requirement) and the summary should be 100-250 words long.  But when students want to break the guidelines, I repeat that the assignment is to read something and tell me about it.  They can send me a video, an e-mail, turn in a paper, whatever.  They have to use words in their summary, but other than that, I don't care about the format.  I don't want the assignment to get in the way of the reading.

I have some anecdotal information to suggest that the assignment is having its intended effect.  Some of my upper-level students are taking time to read that they otherwise wouldn't, because they all lead busy lives with rigorous academic schedules and more social activities than can possibly be healthy.  They say they're enjoying the experience.  Other students, including a few that hate reading, have reported, "This is the first book I've ever read for school that I enjoyed!".  They're not books that I would have chosen for them, but then, that's the point, isn't it?

I worry about this assignment: I'm not really adding value to the experience.  This is an assignment that they could do on their own.  My good students can already read well, and I'm not doing anything to help the ones who aren't good readers.  But the point is that they don't read on their own; they don't get a grade for it, so it's not seen as important.  The anecdotes are frequent enough to keep me doing it, and I've since reviewed some evidence that helps justify it.  Dan Brown, in his post "You can't compensate for not reading," says that independent readers just do better, and that makes sense.  That point, however, raises another worry--am I affecting the "read on your own" thing by making it mandatory?

The point of that whole assignment description was to say that I'm eagerly looking forward to reading Readicide, which is kind of ironic, when you think about it.

Schmocker is also on my list--he also wrote Results Now, which Ray lent to me and I never got around to reading.  Between the title and Ray's summary, Focus might just be the book I've been looking for.  Those are reasonably good descriptions of my goals for the senior reading program.

My go-to guide for teaching reading is I read it, but I don't get it by Cris Tovani.  In it, she identifies 8 or 9 skills that good readers have and outlines her lessons for how she teaches them and how she encourages her students to use them.  I started out the year by presenting them, and it was surprising how few of them even my good readers did.  I sort of stopped referencing those strategies directly to my students, but I always keep them in mind when I design reading assignments.  I think that those strategies are a big part of what ELA class is, or at least what it should be.

It's been so long since I've been to school as an English teacher.  I have a lot of knowledge about the theory of learning, from many many many very interesting seminars on Marzano's books, differentiating instruction, and RtI.  From those seminars, I have a lot of "every teacher is a reading teacher" strategies.  But I don't have a lot of specialized content knowledge about teaching ELA.  I'm still an emerging practitioner of reading theory and writing processes.  The more of these books I can get my hands on, the smoother things will be, I hope

Useful videos

Now that Delicious is going the way of the dodo (everybody tells me so, that's how I know) there are two things I should really start doing here, in my own little space on the interWebs.  First, I should start cataloging serious alternatives: lots of people have them.  I followed someone's directions and imported all of my Delicious links into Google Bookmarks.  It seems a poor alternative thus far, largely because I can now not find my Google Bookmarks page.  Nor can I add bookmarks without going to Google Bookmarks.  For Delicious, I just pressed Command + D.  Viola, permanent record of link forever.  (I'm still doing it, and will up until the day they officially pull the plug.)  (Which, evidently, they might not.) 

Second, I should start using the space to keep track of links I want to keep track of.  Well, I've kind of been doing that already.  But I should probably, I don't know, do it better or have a better tagging system or something.  (An analysis of tags as the most insanely useful, or not, way of organizing information is forthcoming.  Some year.) 

For example, Nova has a bunch of videos online, like this about Machu Picchu.  There are others, I'm sure.

More books I want

Doing Literary Criticism by Tim Gillespie.  In my "Teaching Reading" class in college, we had a mini-unit on using literary theory to give readers a purpose for reading.  I found it to be mind-bogglingly useful in that and subsequent classes.  Picking a literary theory provides students with a way to pick out key information.  This is useful as students learn to read an entire text, and also when (as often) they're required to read a book they don't want to, or are stuck on.

Stenhouse Publishers here.

More books I want

The brain that changes itself, by Norman Doidge.  Recommended to me by Elaine.  It's apparently about the way your brain changes its shape all through your life, and the long-term value of learning.  Since what I do is highly dependent on brain research, and since Elaine declares it highly readable, I'll be acquiring a copy as soon as feasible.

More books I want

Some WL-specific books this time.

Blaz, D. (2001).  Collections of performance tasks & rubrics: Foreign languages.  Larchmont, NY: 2001.

The value of this book in a collection should be self-evident--the more examples of performance assessments that one has to hand, the more effectively one can design them.  Besides, I'm finding it tough to know if my performance assessments are really actual assessments, or not.  But what I'm really dying to see is the examples of rubrics that they give.

Shrum, J. L., & Glisan, E. W. (2009).  The teacher's handbook: Contextualized language instruction [4th ed.]  Thompson and Heinle.

(Bibliographical note:  I don't have the book in front of me, and I'm having a devil of a time figuring out where Heinle is based.  As an international textbook company and a subdivision of Thompson, I'm guessing their main offices are in New York with branches in London, Berlin, Sydney, possibly Beijing, and several other major cities around the world.)

On the ACTFL Language Educator listserv, Randy B. recommended this as a college-level WL textbook, saying that his/her students found it to be relevant to their lives.  Catherine J. B. and Jessi Y. concur.  Eileen Glisan chimes in to say "Thanks for recommending our book!"  It seems like this book would be similar to Curtain's Langauges and Children: Making the match, but on the listserv, everyone who's read it recommends it highly.  My biggest question is: Contextualized language instruction?  How else would you do it?

There are seven or eight other methodology textbooks I'd like to look at: Omaggio's Teaching language in context, Brown's Teaching by Principles, etc.  But the two above are at the front of the list.

Update, 10 minutes later:  This is the textbook's companion website.   I haven't looked through it yet--it's very possible that the website is useless without the textbook.  Probably not, though.

Another book to read someday

Wormeli, R. (2003).  Day One and beyond: Practical matters for new middle-level teachers.  Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

It's like a "First Days of School" with practical advice for middle school teachers.  The first chapter is available online here.  Wormeli proposes NCB-style self-reflection, washing your hands after every class, and keeping a box in which you keep every positive note, comment, picture, etc., that you receive in your time as a teacher.  He suggests giving yourself, as a new middle-school teacher, 12 really big mistakes each day--if you stay under that, you're doing okay for now.  It would be great to see how my current practice stacks up against his.  For the first chapter, I'm doing all right, I think. 

Summer reading list

Time for a little light beach reading.

Good, T. L., & Brophy, J. E. (2004).  Looking in classrooms.  9th ed.  Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

In her review of Art and Science of Teaching, Dina Strasser suggests that this is required reading.  She also suggests that, with a cover price of $118 on Amazon, most teachers won't be able to afford the 10th edition.   Abebooks has a good-condition used copy for $80, but the 9th edition seems to go for somewhere around $22, much more in line with the price of most teacher-improvement books on, for example, ASCD.  At any rate, it's a classic study of doing things right in classrooms, evidently.

Buffum, A., Mattos, M., & Weber, C.  Pyramid response to intervention.  Bloomington, IL: Solution Tree. 

I got to see Mark Mattos speak, and we were given copies of this book.  The subject of his talk was "Fulfilling our Moral Obligation to Students."  It was pretty heavy duty stuff, all about "winning the education lottery" and the like.  It's related to the "Failure is not an option" idea.  The book is about getting everyone the support they need to meet the learning goals.

Hill, J. D., & Flynn, K. M.  Classroom instruction that works with English language learners.  Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

The premise of this book is to teach English learners how to speak English.  My premise is that we teach our classes in Spanish, and the same tactics and strategies should kind of apply.

Marzano, R. J. (2010).  Formative assessment & standards-based grading.  Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.

I have one question for this book: How do formative assessments fit into a traditional grading system?

Sprick, R., Knight, J., Reinke, W., & McKale, T. (2006).  Coaching classroom management: Strategies and tools for administrators & coaches.  Eugene, OR: Pacific Northwest.

This was one of the most exciting trainings I went to last year, and the thing is a.) I wasn't really supposed to be there, and b.) it wasn't supposed to be a training.  It was a coaches' meeting, and I'm only sort of a coach.  But it was my first real introduction to CHAMPS, which was one of the more immediately exciting parts of the whole MiBLSi project for me--"Wow!"  I thought.  "Really useful classroom management skills!"  After this coaches' conference, all the things that overwhelmed me about The First Days of School suddenly made sense.  They gave us this book.

And the perennial favorites, The Art and science of teaching, and Making communicative lLanguage teaching happen.

Another book to read someday

Catching up or leading the way by Yong Zhao.  It examines the role of the American education system in the world.  The selling point seems to be this: as the US education system moves closer to that of the rest of the world, the rest of the world's education systems move closer to that of the US. 

My principal has told me a little bit about it.  I'd be interested to read the book, because the blurbs and the bullet points off of ASCD's website immediately raise my hackles.


Available here.