Twenty years ago ---- eek that's how long it has been since I graduated from high school, cursive was a given in the curriculum. Teachers used it, students had to be able to read it and write it. I can remember copying copious notes from the board in cursive. A lot has changed in those two decades. I now reserve cursive for signing checks and other documents. I rarely find I need to read something in cursive, other than perhaps a name. Typing, however, has become an absolute necessity. How important is cursive? With all the content that has been added, not to mention accountability.... how valuable is it? Do we need to spend time as early as third grade on teaching cursive? What do you think? Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/ocherdraco/88217480/
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
Kylene Beers, as part of a research study, observed two 7th grade classrooms for one year. Through discussions regarding attitudes and habits as readers, she developed a typology of a reader. “It was easy to identify readers at both ends of the spectrum; they readily fit the academic and social descriptions others have provided. It was more difficult to classify the aliterate readers. In fact, I found grouping them under one term – aliterate – was inaccurate because because they gave different reasons for not reading. Understanding these reasons eventually led me to three distinct types of aliterate readers: Dormant, Uncommitted, and Unmotivated” (Beers, 1996, p. 31). I have been pondering this information for awhile. It makes me wonder who the students are in remedial classes. Are they illiterate or aliterate? How would we know or are we focuses exclusively on test scores? Are instructional strategies the same for each type of reader? Are there a disproportionate number
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