A Few Recommendations

One of my favorite blogs, NeverEndingSearch by Joyce Valenza features an interactive website Simply Books: Promoting reading and literacy education for boys. The website was launched on September 4th and has potential for our Reading Apprenticeship training. Check out Joyce's blog and Simply Books.

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Planning for Differentiation

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An article in the Washington Post, Schools Look At Providing More Time For Teachers caught my eye recently which looks at teacher planning time. As you might imagine, teachers feel they lack planning time.... and they may have a point. The amount of planning time has stayed constant while requirements for inclusion and accountability have increased. My question is do we design curriculum to address these challenges from the onset or do we expect teachers to plan lessons, adjust their instruction for a variety of diverse learners, grade assignments, connect with parents and other colleagues, make copies in a 40 minute planning period?Why not differentiate the curriculum from the beginning?The graphic to the left depicts the Curriculum Planning Pyramid (Schumm, Vaughn, & Leavell, 1994) which represents how curriculum might be organized to meet the needs of all learners. The base represents the most important concepts you want ALL STUDENTS to learn. The middle layer represents additi…
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Failure to Launch

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We often assume teachers implicitly understand this dual role of being an effective teacher as well as a leader. They don’t.

Over the past fifteen years, I have been a part of numerous projects, which sought to build capacity through teacher leaders. An unfortunate pattern emerged across projects.  The selected educators would embrace the new ideas and/or practices in their classrooms, with their students. However, when asked to take an active leadership role, most would either avoid the task, provide a litany of reasons why the task could not be accomplished or provide a half-hearted initial effort with little follow through.

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