After An Educator's Journey
Out of the classroom & into the universe
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Once upon a time, I taught 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders. Now I’m retired and working on new ventures.
Category: Literacy
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There’s a thought-provoking article in EdSurge this morning. Just who owns a teacher’s intellectual property? My husband, a former software engineer for several large tech companies, always had to sign over his rights to any ideas that he created as part of the hiring process. But educators do no such thing – at least until…
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We’ve been working with nonfiction texts this winter, and so I was doing my due diligence on better ways to teach students how to read and comprehend these texts. For an experienced reader, navigating nonfiction is not a daunting task, but imagine for a moment what it must be like to see all the busyness that makes…
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“I can” statements are part of our lesson planning. I craft these statements for each segment of our day, direct student attention to them before, sometimes during, and after a lesson. One of the mini lessons I planned this week was to introduce students to an FQR organizer (Facts-Questions-Response). Of course that included a link…
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Kids can latch on to words in the most incredible ways. And second language learners really keep a teacher thinking. As an English speaker, I give almost no thought to words and phrases we use every day that have multiple – and often unrelated connections – to meaning. As a teacher of ELLs, however, that…
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When I was an undergraduate, practicing piano or flute was a drudgery that I could barely tolerate. I put in what I needed to put in to get through a performance, and, given that I was an adept reader of scores, that was pretty minimal. I can recall sitting in several Form and Analysis classes…
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One of the things I did for myself this summer was to enroll in an Orton-Gillingham Comprehensive training. I’d been trained at a previous school in Lindamood Bell and found that systematic phonics instruction really helped my students, particularly those whose first or primary language was not English. While the intensity of this training can’t…
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I am an avid reader of the Choice Literacy website. I love reading what the leaders in literacy have to say and particularly value those who not only share their pedagogy and thinking, but also work in classrooms with real students. Franki Sibberson is one of those contributors on Choice Literacy; her writings always make me…
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I’m afraid we didn’t get very far in “diving deeper” into today’s poetry selection. Mostly, today was a lesson in multiple meanings of words. By that, I mean, a word that meant one thing in the mid- to late-1800s (when this poem was written) and the colloquially accepted meanings that kids hear today. First of…
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We are beginning a new unit of study in English Language Arts this week – poetry! Going through this new unit I discovered a poem by Emily Dickenson – Autumn. And that reminded me of something Adrien shared with me long ago. You see, you can sing almost every Emily Dickenson poem to “The Yellow…
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We all need a good laugh – or even just a smile – every so often. Just to remind us of the joy that can be teaching. In the midst of this silly season – this season when there is some hefty assessment going on – I had one of those moments as I corrected a sizable…
After An Educator's Journey 