Whats behind the pushback diversity trainer Jane Elliot gets from many white students about her now-famous Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes exercise? The exercise aims to explain the daily struggles of nonwhite students, and the pushback doesnt come from a place of hate, but one of ignorance or even arrogance.
Its the common problem in our culture of denial, both in the sense of denying identity within race and thus denying the problem as well as denying the reality of...
Quiz themboth orally and on paper
Listen to their retellings
Have them read from the basic sight word list
Select a variety of papers that demonstrates their progress in spelling
Administer and score an attitude survey for each one
Give them the unit pretests and prepare the end-of-level posttests
Prepare a cloze passage for them
See if each one can segment a word into phonemes
Take a running record of everyones oral reading for the...
I have one student~ who lives and breathes fishing. He knows more about different types of fish~ fishing gear~ and fishing conditions than most adults. He has read dozens of books and magazines on the subject~ written his own E-book on fishing~ and serves as a fishing guide for his father and other family members.
I think its safe to say hes obsessed with fishing.
In fact~ it can be quite common for gifted children and those highly curious and enthusiastic about...
"If we want them to achieve, we must link them with achievers....One plus one--Pass it on."
(H. Weinberg, The Public Television Outreach Alliance)
Sometimes my students simply amaze me.
I teach a second-grader, who is a full-blown animal lover. Last year, she collected supplies for the Humane Society. She devours books, often one per day, that have dogs and other animals in them. As part of her gifted project, she established a dog washing club in her...
After spending a day at Brattleboro Area Middle School (BAMS) in Vermont, Im considering how my career path could overlap with living in this district. It isnt likely, but my point is that I want my future hypothetical children to go to exactly this kind of school and as a resident, I would want my local tax dollars to support this type of institution and all the amazing professionals that educate and care for the students in it.
BAMS...
TEACHING KIDS THAT THEY HAVE A HISTORY USING THEIR FAVORITE CHILDHOOD TOY
When you think of your childhood~ does one toy or stuffed animal or other item~ comes to mine? Mine was Pinkie. Pinkie is beige(so go figure the name I chose as a little girl). My mom had to sew her eyes and nose back on a number of times and the stuffing got squashed when I dropped it in the street and a car ran after it before my dad heroically rescued Pinkie for me.
In the beginning of...