Podcast #13 Data Mining & Students: A Conversation with Chris Gilliard & Hugh...
Hugh Culik has been a high school English teacher, a novelist, a grant writer, an English Professor and Chair of the University of Detroit Mercy, English Department, Executive Director of the Upper...
View Article#14: A Look at Student Data Mining from Two Perspectives
Jeff Grabill is a Professor of Rhetoric and Professional Writing and Chair of the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures here at Michigan State University. He is a senior researcher...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Review of Upstanders: How to Engage Middle School Hearts & Minds with Inquiry
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a voracious reader (comes with the English teacher territory, right?). Anyone who knows me really well knows that I’m not just reading books for pleasure, but that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Student Blogs: Audience Matters
28 weeks. When I hear this I think of being just more than halfway through a pregnancy. While I am not having a baby, I am witnessing the growth and development of my classroom of writers. According to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Tumblr Experiment, part 2: First Steps in the Digital World
Read The Tumblr Experiment, part 1: Introduction The blogging universe is huge and can feel overwhelming, so my students’ first challenge was to carve out a bit of it for our own community. Our first...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Student Reflections Confirm Teaching & Inform Grades
Several years ago, I developed an inquiry question that asked if students use the language of workshop. Because I consistently use the “ELA Speak” of mentor texts, seed ideas, and generating...
View ArticlePodcast #15: Student Data, Mining of This Data, and Implications
The ability to collect and store vast amounts of information on students has increasingly become easier and cheaper. At its best, this information can be used to support students. At its worst, the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Instructional Strategies & Protocols…a means to an end, not an end to...
I have a son in high school who is, by all measures, a skilled reader and a dedicated student. When he reads for school, much to his chagrin, I tend to bug him by asking him lots of annoying...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Dinner Conversation with James Popham on Formative Assessment
A few months ago, I had the opportunity to share dinner and conversation with James Popham. As an avid fan of his work on learning progressions, I was excited to finally meet him. Three years prior,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading in the Sunshine
So…this happened the other day at my house. My kindergartner couldn’t put his book down long enough to go get the mail: Oh, be still my English-teacher-Mama heart. He had a phenomenal first year of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A ‘Stachetastic Idea: Raising Money in a Teacher’s Honor
It all started with a ‘stache. Sure, I had participated in Movember every November since 2011 to raise money for Men’s cancer and mental health. But I had always shaved off the mustache on December 1,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Workshop: To Go Digital…or Not?
At the end of the year, teachers must officially reflect on their teaching and the impact that it had on kids. Now, this is not to say that teachers don’t reflect throughout the year and observe the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Consistency Counts with Student Blogging
The end of the year has come and with it the chaos that teachers know all too well. This blog that I have been intending to write for three weeks is just now coming to fruition…at the end of a 15 hour...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Triathlon Swimming and Formative Assessment.
I titled this blog post not to try and get your attention, well, all right, partly to get your attention, but really because I have been struggling with the swim leg of a triathlon. Floundering is...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Review of Connected Reading: Teaching Adolescent Readers in a Digital World
As I mentioned in my review of Upstanders by Smokey Daniels and Sara Ahmed, I read a lot of professional books, especially in the summer. It’s late July as I’m writing this, and I’m on my eighth book...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Review of The Reading Strategies Book by Jennifer Serravallo
During the second half of the school year, I opened my classroom up to a doctoral student from the University of Michigan who was studying what untaught and sometimes intangible things make teachers...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Listening to Dragons & Peacocks at the OWP Summer Institute
I have a hard time finding time to write. I think about it, make notes in journals, and sometimes, sometimes, I finish something, but that something rarely gets in front of an audience. Maybe an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Camp ALEC 2015
Pulling in on the winding gravel road of Indian Trails Camp, I took a deep breath. I was excited to arrive after the two hour commute on a sunny Sunday morning. To say I wasn’t nervous would be a lie....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Trying to Lose 10 Pounds a.k.a. the Paper Load Problem
I have a problem with to-do lists. I love them. I gleefully make long, epic lists of my plans for a day or weekend. Sometimes I even write things on my list that I’ve already done just so I can...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Tumblr Experiment, Part 3: Blogging as Formative Assessment
This is part 3 in a series. Parts 1 and 2 explored the in-class use of Tumblr, a blogging platform, as an exercise in writing for an authentic audience. You can read part 1 and part 2 online. As the...
View Article
