SAT Score Dilemma

                                                                                   Following is a great link:

American Educator, Winter 2010-11, Vol. 34, No. 4, AFT

to the magazine, The American Educator,  with an article by MJAdams on the SAT dilemma.  Adams is known best for her work in beginning reading and the brain.  

The title of the article is: Advancing our Students; Language and Literacy, The Challenge of Complex Text.  It explores how the complexity of high school texts have steadily dropped over the last 50 years - and how this issue needs to be dealt with in the common core. 


The question I think it poses is -- If we need to start where the child can read, have we prepared our teachers to teach hard for acceleration?


See what you think.

Increasing Student Understanding

"Researcher Robert Marzano in Making Standards Useful In The Classroom concluded that if teachers simply included why students were learning what they were learning and how it would help them as a learner in every lesson, then student understanding would increase by 80%."

Following is an article on the "why and watch me" traditionally used at the elementary levels.  As I visit high school classrooms, I am noticing effective teachers in all content areas use the same strategy.  Take a look and see how it applies to your classroom.  It will open the door wider and allow all of your students access.

 

Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan show how the "why and watch me" strategy can make the abstract concrete for struggling readers:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/765.cfm

How to educate young students about digital citizenship

Elementary-school computer teacher Mary Beth Hertz describes how she teaches her young students about social skills and responsibility online. Students in second grade practice commenting on each other's original stories posted on Storybird, while students in fifth through seventh grade learn how to blog and participate in discussion forums on Schoology, she writes. Edutopia.org/Mary Beth Hertz's blog (10/12)