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Cutting to the Common Core: The Benefits of Narrow Reading Units [from Language Magazine]
The author argues that the traditional ELA "legacy curriculum" of broad, thematic units is ill-suited for meeting the Core standard "shifts" in general and for meeting the needs of ELLs, in particular. This article lays out the difference between the thematic unit approach and the "narrow reading" approach, which requires smaller numbers of texts, of stair-stepped complexity, grouped around a narrow topic.
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Teaching with Primary Sources [a collaboration between MTSU and the Library of Congress]
"Teaching with Primary Sources offers free K-12 professional development thanks to funds provided by the Library of Congress. TPS-MTSU serves educators across Tennessee by improving the way primary sources are used to promote critical thinking in the classroom and across the curriculum. Teachers can start exploring primary sources today on our Web site and at the Library of Congress Teachers Page."
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Teaching Adolescents How to Evaluate the Quality of Online Information [from Edutopia]
The author, Julie Coiro, is a standout in the field of digital and information literacy, but I am not surprised by her research findings that more than 70 percent of 700 middle-schoolers demonstrated "shortcomings" in ability to critically evaluate information. Why should kids know how to evaluate online information, when we really don't teach them how to evaluate information in general? That doesn't diminish or take away from Coiro's assertion that "the problem is not likely to go away without intervention during regular content area instruction." I agree. Let's teach critical literacies across the content areas. The remainder of Coiro's column seeks to address this question: "So, what can you do to more explicitly teach adolescents how to evaluate the quality of online information?" What would be interesting is to engage preservice teachers in a dialogue about how Coiro's suggestions for critical evaluation of online sources apply (or, do not apply) to ALL sources of information.
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Vision Meets Reality: Common Core in Action [from Education Week]
"In this special report, Education Week explores how the initial vision for the standards—and for aligned assessments—is now bumping up against reality in states, school districts, and local communities."
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Standards Pose Teacher-Prep Challenge [from Education Week]
Part of EdWeek's "Vision Meets Reality" series on the Core standards. This column discusses the challenges preservice teacher educators face because of the standards, which "pose some vexing questions: What does 'alignment'—a vague concept to begin with—mean for educator preparation? How will the common core change the teaching of both content and 'methods' classes in which prospective teachers learn pedagogical techniques? Does student-teaching, generally cited by teacher-candidates as the most important element in preparation, offer enough opportunities to practice teaching to the standards?"
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Brains, Brains, Brains! How the Mind of a Middle Schooler Works [from Edutopia]
"Imagine that this is the CliffNotes of 'tween brain research, but your research should not stop at this because, frankly, the more you know about how they learn, the more you can pass on to them the secrets of how they process and embed knowledge. In the end, this leads to greater achievement."
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Creating Cross-Curricular Text Sets for the Middle Grades [from MiddleWeb blog]
In this post, the authors describe their process for building differently themed text sets around a common anchor text as well as some of their Web-based resources for creating text sets.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
