Last year, I had the pleasure of partnering with my friend and colleague in a Marzano Research professional development workshop around effective assessment and standards based grading. Our district has been using a flawed version of standards based grading for almost a decade now. I say flawed because we’ve essentially approximated the process by tacking … Continue reading A New Standard in My Teaching: A Brief Primer on Standards-Based Grading
Close Reading With Costa’s Levels of Questioning
Have you ever told your students to find the "deeper meaning" of a text? Or asked them to share their "deeper understanding" of a concept or skill? Then you, like me, are guilty of one of the most common sins of teaching English Language Arts. Here's the problem: most kids have no idea what "deeper … Continue reading Close Reading With Costa’s Levels of Questioning
Friday Discussions
This year, I committed to making student voices a bigger component of every day in my classroom. I'm making sure to build in lots of intentional informal speaking opportunities on a daily basis. I'm holding Socratic Seminars at least once every quarter. In addition, I'm starting a new routine in all of my classes: the … Continue reading Friday Discussions
Teaching Rhetorical Appeals With the Presidents
This quarter, my seniors are honing in on rhetorical analysis. They're looking through the lens of issues that are significant on the local, state, national, and global levels. Since our vertical and horizontal alignment is a bit of a work in progress, I needed to find an entry point that would serve as instruction, review, … Continue reading Teaching Rhetorical Appeals With the Presidents
Five Issues of Diversity in GT Education and Their Promising Solutions
GT education has some serious gaps--but there is huge potential to transform a neglected system and support our students. 1. Defining Giftedness The Issue: Historically, it has been difficult to pin down a widely-accepted, enduring definition of giftedness. We currently operate under a general assumption that giftedness indicates exceptional academic achievement in a given field. … Continue reading Five Issues of Diversity in GT Education and Their Promising Solutions
The 5 Students You’ll Meet in the AP Classroom and How to Meet Them Where They Are
I teach AP Language and Composition. It’s a tough course, and for most of my students, it’s their first AP English course (they take it as juniors, then go on to AP Lit as seniors). In the past few years, my school has embraced an open enrollment policy for AP courses in certain subject areas. … Continue reading The 5 Students You’ll Meet in the AP Classroom and How to Meet Them Where They Are
How I Got Here: My Journey to Teaching AP Language and Composition
It all started with rejection.