You’re walking the halls, staying connected, setting high expectations and embracing teachable moments. There’s one more important step. Speak up and out against injustice.
QAR gives students practice questioning the text and identifying literal and inferential questions. Students learn to find different types of evidence and to rely on their own interpretation when doing close reading.
Students use this tool to identify a word’s meaning, its parts and its opposite. After organizing the information on an illustrated flashcard, students practice using the word in a sentence.
Recent news of some troubling comments reveals two false assumptions: that teaching kindergarten isn’t work and that sexual harassment isn’t a problem in schools.
The language that educators use to address students can maintain and reinforce class structures and classist attitudes. The antidote? Anti-classist language.
Today somebody vomited in fourth-period study hall. Before the period had ended, kids in my study hall already knew about it. On my way to fifth-period class, every kid I passed in the crowded hallway was talking about it. Webster’s dictionary defines gossip as “a report about the behavior of other people.” In my school, gossip is the pipeline through which all sorts of misinformation, lies, and occasional truths get exchanged.
Students learn the meaning of vocabulary words by writing the word in multiple ways. Students write guided paragraphs about words from the central text then share their writing with peers.