Session E

Standards-Based Education

Yikes! I started talking with one of the vendors about how much I haaaate Julius Caesar and now I'm coming in to this session LATE. Gah. I hate that. So now I don't have a handout. Fortunately there were seats in the back! ;D

Step 1: Identify desired results - What do I want my students to know and be able to do? This is reminding me a LOT of UbD.

Step 2: Determine Acceptable Evidence - How will I know whether my students have acquired the requisite knowledge, skills, and understandings?

Step 3: Plan Learning Experiences - Yep, this is "backward design." He clicked past the slide too quick. :(

And he's continuing to talk about what is and is not an essential question... so I'm ducking out. We also still have two teachers from our department in the session.

Now I'm in Teaching Writing

We're talking about audience appeal. One idea: advertising analysis. Who is the target of this ad? What is the promise? This teaches them not only to be good writers, but also to be an attentive audience.

Take them from images to words – what words could you use to create this image in someone's mind?

Sentence variety: it's more than just telling them that they need variety. Read examples of monotonous writing, and contrast that with works with varied sentence structure.

Voice: the idea that the author is a real person and really cares. The tough things is – what if they don’t?!! Sounds like it was written by a person, not a computer. Makes the reader feel connected to the writer & feel like the writer is an interesting person you might want to meet. Voice != attitude ;)

Give students lots of little on-demand writing prompts?? Writing On Demand – Presenter says that it's an excellent book. Ditto Prompt Analysis. Ask themselves questions to analyze the prompt. Some employers ask for you to write how you think the company will grow or how you can be of use to the company – they want to see how well you write, because good writing is evidence of good thinking.

Every state has help for teaching writing; Kentucky is a suggestion. Look online to see what's available.

Questions about grading – discussed the use of rubrics, but we're short on time so it's just brief.