I’m lucky enough to get to learn constantly in my work and that inevitably involves recognizing my own mistaken thinking—things I believed but that I think time and evidence have proven were wrong. Here’s an example: A few nights ago as I was tucked in, reading aloud from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s On the Banks of…
Tim Shanahan is one of the country’s foremost experts on literacy. He’s a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he founded and directed its Center for Literacy. Though he understands the research on reading as well as anyone in the field, he’s also done plenty of real-world work, having been principal…
This morning I got up early to write. At about 6:30 I wandered into the living room to find that my daughter was downstairs already, sitting quietly over the heat vent- it was negative five degrees Fahrenheit here this morning. I needed to get some work done, but my rule is, I work until my kids…
I just wrote a post about Turn and Talks here. I hope it was useful. In re-reading it, I was struck by another commonality among the three classrooms I described in the post and wanted to put a bow on it. Not only are the amazing classrooms of Rue Ratray, Maggie Johnson and Eric Snider highly…
When we teach math we try to develop number sense- a broader intuition for how numbers work, an affinity for the logic of how they fit together. When we set out to teach ‘number sense’ one tool we often use is a simple version of “sensitivity analysis.” We ask students to evaluate the effect of changes…