I’ve been doing a lot with short constructed writing response. Part of this is due to trainings I’m going to on Common Core for my district. The standards emphasize a written response that sites cites the information from the text the question is based on. I’m not in love with the standards, but feel I can live […]

I know, I know, I’m not being a good correspondent. The end of a busy election season, was followed by exhaustion, and preparation for report cards and parent conferences, which had a week for Thanksgiving plopped in the middle. But the wait is worth it readers (or at least I think so).

One of the problems with having “newbies” involved in creating these new standards, especially folks who like to take a “de-contextualized” approach to novel and new situations, is that they don’t know where the land-mines are buried. Most of the discussions around Common Core ELA standards and the exemplars that are starting to show up […]

Listen to Steven Pinker at about 22 minutes in describing how we’ve gotten less violent towards one another in part because we build empathy, and reduce violence, by reading fiction, and narrative non-fiction accounts about people other than ourselves. A business memo does not build that kind of change, but that kind of change is […]

So, I did last week’s post late, and it was more about the beginning of this week (which didn’t get much better by the way) than week 9. Rather than focus on the FUBAR that week felt like (it wasn’t that bad, just felt that way), a post by Dina Strasser seemed relevant to a […]