May 18, 2009 at 4:42 am
· Filed under Thinking, writing
Inspired by The Book of 100 Truths, I started writing truth statements in my journal about a month ago. This is a writing/thinking activity I would recommend. When I first started writing my truth statements, I wrote them at the top of my journal entry. Lately I have found that I like writing them at the end of my journal entry. The writing helps me find the truth. THe first day I did this, I wrote:
Truth # 1 I want to read The Book of 100 Truths now that I have read the back of it.
Truth # 2 I realize that I sometimes make things more difficult than they need to be.
Truth # 3 It is way late and I should be in bed.
Truth # 4 I enjoyed sorting through the crew applications and look forward to doing more sorting tomorrow.
From the looks of these, you might think this is a pointless exercise. If you keep writing them they change though.
Truth # 9 The more you learn, the more you realize how much you don’t know. (I think I’ve actually heard this before, but it is true.)
Truth # 10 It is difficult to know what another person is thinking when you do all the talking.
When I get ready to write my truth statements, I really have to think about what I have learned from the day. I think this would be a cool thing to have students do. If they wrote one a day for each day of the school year, they would have at least 150 truths by the end of the year. How well would you know your students after reading 150 truth statements they had written?
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May 14, 2009 at 4:06 am
· Filed under Check It Out!, Quotes, Thinking
One way that I like to get people thinking and talking is by using an opinion exchange. This is an idea I got from choiceliteracy.com. I have adapted it for different situations, but it has always been successful in getting people to think and talk. Tonight I discovered voicethreads and as I was searching for something on my computer that I could upload as a practice voicethread conversation starter, I ran across an opinion exchange that I had saved on my computer. It is a list of quotes on the topic of reading. I got excited when I thought about combining these two great discussion tools. I hope you will click here to check out my Reading Opinion Exchange Voicethread and share your opinion. If you are a teacher, I hope you will think about how you might be able to use voicethread in your practice. You can read about how great it is for PLC’s here on the All Things PLC blog. You can also get ideas for how to use it in your classroom by browsing all the voicethreads that teachers have already created.
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May 13, 2009 at 3:03 am
· Filed under Book Quotes, Parker J. Palmer, Robyn R. Jackson, Teaching, Thinking
He had just come from a faculty meeting, and it was clear from his demeanor that things had not gone well.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I listened as long as I could,” he said, “but they could not get off their blame-the-the student shtick. Finally I said that they sounded like doctors in a hospital saying, ‘Don’t send us any more sick people–we don’t know what to do with them. Send us healthy patients so we can look like good doctors.’”
Parker J. Palmer shares this anecdote in his book The Courage to Teach. He carries the analogy further by sharing how it helped him come to this crucial understanding about teaching:
The way we diagnose our students’ condition will determine the kind of remedy we offer.
He goes on to say that we spend little time thinking about the maladies that our teaching is meant to cure and that we allow our treatment to be shaped by the thoughtless stereotypes we have of our students. Palmer’s thoughts on this remind me of the other book I’m reading, Never Work Harder Than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching by Robyn R. Jackson. The first principle in this book is to start where your students are. As I read her thoughts, I couldn’t help thinking about how important it is for us to value our students no matter where they come from. When we don’t value them for who they are, it is much like what Palmer’s friend says. We are like doctors who don’t want to work with sick patients. It is important for educators to stop seeing the students who enter our classrooms as deficient. We should be like House and his team. We should embrace the maladies of our students and work diligently to find cures. When one remedy does not work, we need to try again until a cure is found.
We need to work together to diagnose our students’ maladies and work together to cure them.
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April 16, 2009 at 7:20 am
· Filed under English, Learning, Reading, Teaching ·Tagged summerreading booksuggestions highschoolreading
I have been asked to compile a list of must reads for high school honor students. This list will be used as a resource for teachers to consult when compiling their summer reading lists. Since I have spent most of my career in elementary and middle school classrooms, I’m not sure that I am the person for the job, but I know that some of you out there in the blogosphere are high school teachers and you will share your wisdom with me. Please tell me what you think. What books (both classic and contemporary) do you feel are must reads for high school students?
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March 29, 2009 at 7:21 pm
· Filed under Blogging, Check It Out!, writing
If you go to www.wordle.net/create you too can create a cool word cloud like this one I created by copying the kindergarten reading standards from the Tennessee Department of Education website and pasting them in wordle. . 
You can also go to the wordle gallery and see cool clouds like this one created by Alicia Lewis from the very informative article Curriculum Theory and Practice. 
The article can be found at
found at www.infed.org/biblio/b-curric.htm
It is very cool, but what is it good for you ask? Well, if you check out the presentation Sixteen Interesting Ways to Use Wordle in the Classroom by Tom Barrett, you will have at least 16 ideas for how to use wordle. I’m sure you will think of even more.
If you are anything like me, you will find yourself wondering from website to website with your eyes popping out in amazement.
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February 11, 2009 at 7:13 pm
· Filed under Wordless Wednesday
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February 11, 2009 at 12:54 pm
· Filed under Wordless Wednesday
Happy Birthday
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February 7, 2009 at 3:42 am
· Filed under Thinking
When you grow up in Florida, chances are you don’t see many icicles. I remember the first time I saw icicles growing out of a rock on the side of the interstate. My brother and I were fascinated. We were so excited about those white icicles that Dad slowed down and came to a stop on the side of the interstate so that we could get out of the car and feel them.
As I drove in to Nashville for a meeting this morning I saw a car pulled over to the side of the interstate. There on the side of the interstate was a man holding up a little boy. A little hand reaching up to feel a cold icicle. A little boy whose father loved him enough to slow down in the midst of the morning rush. A gentle reminder to slow down and make memories.
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February 4, 2009 at 7:08 pm
· Filed under Wordless Wednesday
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February 4, 2009 at 5:16 pm
· Filed under Writer's Notebook Entry, poetry
On Halloween I took a group of high school students to the Young Writers Conference at the University of Tennessee at Martin. In the session I attended on collaborative writing we were greeted by a college professor wearing glittered cat ears. It was a fun session where students were challenged to work together to create writing to share with the group. I wrote this poem as I observed the interactions between the students and the college professor.
Three adolescent boys sit in the back of the room
rudeness dripping from their pores.
Too cool to listen to a crazy college professor in glitter ears.
The professor crazy enough to ignore their
immaturity and allow them the freedom to be themselves.
The boys naive enough to ignore her
wisdom and allow her to be herself.
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