We’ve been doing a lot of work lately on three types of writing–Formative, Summative and Developmental. I wrote recently about the differences among them here for example. And here Ashley LaGrassa wrote about how using more formative prompts allowed her students to engage more comfortable in challenging work. Today I want to share further thoughts…
A little over a year ago, my colleague Dan Cotton wrote a series of posts about relationships in the classroom that were unusually insightful and that I keep coming back to. I often want to forward them to someone or reference them as a group. To do that I have to send three links and…
Recently I visited a school that used a lot of Narrate the Positive. Class would start. At the beginning of class a typical teacher would say, “Please take two minutes to answer question #1 in writing. Go!” As kids started working the teacher would say something like. “Charles has pencil to paper. Anjulina is getting…
Last week, as part of our development process for our new curriculum, I taught one of our Esperanza Rising lessons to a group of fourth graders. One of the toughest moments for me came when I tried to teach one of my favorite activities: a ‘Sensitivity Analysis’ question. Sensitivity Analysis is a close reading tool…
One of the activities at our Reading Reconsidered workshop today asked participants to draft Text Dependent Questions about the first two paragraphs of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, on which Colleen had taught an amazing close reading lesson. We gave people this chart describing types of Text Dependent Questions (TDQs) at different level Out Zoom In…