Last week Beth Verrilli shared a thought-provoking post about the power of Read Alouds in an online setting. Beth noted how the two videos we shared both helped students to understand how to read a given text independently and also connected them to reading and to the classroom community. I found myself thinking about that when…
I’ve been blogging quite a bit this year about the English Curriculum my team is writing. I shared an overview of our goals and methods here. I shared some examples of how we’re approaching vocabulary here. I shared some examples of the ‘sensitivity analysis’ questions we use for Close Reading here. I reflected on…
The film version of the Giver is out in theaters near you. To mark its release I thought I’d re-post my own review… of the book… as a teaching tool. Reviews of the movie version are mediocre but as a book it’s–to my eyes–a work of significance and ideal for teaching. Go to see the movie…
A few weeks ago a transatlantic flight finally caused me to watch Saving Mr. Banks the story of how Walt Disney won P.L Travers’ trust and warmed her cold, cold heart just enough to get her to gift the ages with a Disney version of her book Mary Poppins. Decent movie, that Saving Mr. Banks. If…
Got an email last week from Lindsey Hugo at the consistently high-performing Edward Brooke Charter School in Boston. Lindsey’s 6th graders have been reading The Giver, which earns her instant glory points for rigorous text selection and for choosing what the gang here at Uncommon thinks is one of the very best works of youth fiction….