Ideas and Updates from Teachers Affiliated with the Chippewa River Writing Project
After months of research and soul-searching, I’ve come to the realization that I can’t use the terminology of “close reading” in my classes any longer. This has been a long journey for me, as I’ve tried to understand what “close reading” is or should be, and I’ve grown to believe that whatever it is, it […]
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The other day, my daughter called and asked me about a recipe. We chatted about its origin, and recalled a funny story that went with it. Our lively conversation had stemmed from a simple question. Recently, I’ve been paying close attention to questions and their resulting conversations. “Do you have an idea for your digital […]
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Time. There’s never enough of it, is there? Whenever I talk to teachers about my efforts to use an inquiry approach to teaching, they almost always ask, “How do you find the time?” To be honest, it isn’t easy. As I mentioned in my earlier posts, before the surprise alligator head hijacked my students’ attention, […]
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In my last two blog posts (21st Century Literacy and Alligator in the Classroom), I began to tell the story of a shared inquiry project on the American Alligator that my first grade students and I engaged in last winter. The project began when a parent of one of my students brought a preserved alligator head […]
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This is the second in a series of posts about inquiry-based learning in the first grade classroom. In my last blog post I wrote about the day a student’s dad surprised my first grade class with a preserved alligator head. The surprise developed into an inquiry project through which my students had the opportunity to […]
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