Tag: Teaching Strategies
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Decision Fatigue
I teach in an inner-city school and work with students who have a variety of disabilities including specific learning disabilities, autism, behavior disorders, and many other labels. My students are smart and capable, but they’re not always able to display these traits without some accommodations. Two years ago, I was assigned a caseload of 13…
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Standing Up for Students: One Middle School Teacher’s Urgent Plea against Standardized Testing during the COVID Pandemic
We have officially been in our “Stay at Home” order for about four weeks. In addition, Michigan schools will no longer meet face-to-face this year. During my time at home, I have been doing some processing and reflecting on education and where our education system is currently functioning, is going, and will be going after…
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Write With Them; Write For Them: The Power of Teacher-Created Mentor Texts
In the April 2014 edition of Educational Leadership, renowned reading and writing teacher Kelly Gallagher writes about the power of mentor texts and how teachers can use them to help students improve their writing. The article, entitled “Making the Most of Mentor Texts,” begins with an anecdote about how George Lucas and his special effects…
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A Visit with Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein
On August 25, the Chippewa River Writing Project welcomed Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein — authors of They Say, I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing — to Central Michigan University. During the morning, they led a roundtable discussion of approximately twenty-five CMU graduate assistants and writing/writing intensive faculty. After lunch, they led…
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The Beaver Island Institute 2016
I was reminded again this past summer that Michigan is truly one of the most beautiful places on this planet … At the beginning of the 2015-2016 school year, a unique opportunity was presented to my science colleague Jeremy Winsor and me to apply for a week-long science literacy professional development at the Central Michigan University…
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Writer’s Notebooks: A tool that is as individual as the writer
As a second grade teacher, I always started out the year reading the book, Call Me Marianne by Jen Bryant. In this book, a young boy named Jonathan notices an eccentric woman, Marianne, dressed in black cape and tri-cornered felt hat, carrying a notebook, and studying a newspaper article written about the new lizard exhibit…