One of the ideas that the ELA curriculum wanted students to get in this first unit was, how author background affects their work. I did like the particular piece they chose for this, Langston Hughes’ Theme for English B. It was a work that I was not familiar with, but it works well with upper […]

I could share an earful about the return of benchmark testing (which was on hiatus with the switch-over to the SBAC) and how it’s making a mockery of recent calls by the President to limit testing, but I’d rather talk about my classroom and what’s going on. I’m going to focus on mathematics, and a […]

My family life is still…complicated, but I am still working and I feel the need to try to write about what I’m doing in the classroom. I hope that it will prove interesting and intriguing to you too. I have moved to fifth grade (from sixth). The change is slight in some ways, but big […]

Sorry for the lack of posting. My family issues continue, but I’ve been doing a lot of planning (don’t worry, I got unit credit for it 😉 and felt the need to share this observation. I’m working with a Pearson text that’s part of a supplemental adoption for English and Language Arts. This text has some […]

This post starts with my response to a question that Larry Ferlazzo asked about formative assessment and that I responded to on his EdWeek blog. There were many excellent responses there, and I urge you to read them here.  I’ve expanded that response to look at an example of what won’t work. My first thought is […]