In Pictures and In Words is reading chapters 1,2,and 7 and trying out some of the techniques with our class.
Nonfiction Mentor Text decided to read chapters 2 and 3 before the next meeting. We encourage everyone to bring a student sample to share and/or sample mentor texts.
iWrite has decided to read Chapters 1 and Chapter 3 by our next meeting time. We encourage everyone to try out some of the resources that are listed in the appendix of the book regarding blogs, wikis or podcasts.
Drive will read Part One of the book. They encourage everyone to check out the Discussion Guide to see if there's a question you'd like to address with the group.
As link to Daniel Pink's website in case you want to check it out:
http://www.danpink.com/
A tradition that started with my daughters, as they became teenagers, was a special weekend with their grandparents, who live in Alaska. My parents took each grandchild on a special trip when they were thirteen years old. Each child flew alone on an airplane, stayed in a hotel, attended a special function, theater or sporting event, went out to eat, and explored the city they met their grandparents in. They created a scrapbook of the event with their grandmother in the evenings in the hotel and came home with a memory to cherish forever as well as the mementos in the scrapbook to treasure.
ReplyDeleteI now have a grandson and plan to carry on the tradition. For my daughters that special time with grandparents, doing what they loved, was one of the best gifts they every received and I want those types of memories for my grandchildren.
I have used parts of Drive in an advanced ESL class and college-level critical thinking course since we last met. It was interesting to have two very different groups of people rethink about why they were motivated to be in college. The ESLers stated they wanted to learn the language, but most of them because they wanted to earn more money. The students in the critical thinking class (most of them are transferring to university next semester or next fall) look at school as a means to end: money. VERY few people, at this point in their education, seemed to take any joy or pleasure in school...and their motivations mostly come from grades.
ReplyDeleteI assigned an essay in my ESL class asking "is it more important to be externally or internally motivated to be successful in today's society." I'm interested to see what they came up with.
American classrooms are outdated. Slate seeks your great ideas for how to modernize them.
ReplyDeleteBy Linda Perlstein
Updated Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2010, at 6:57 AM ET
While going about my day, I sometimes engage in a mental exercise I call the Laura Ingalls Test. What would Laura Ingalls, prairie girl, make of this freeway interchange? This Target? This cell phone? Some modern institutions would probably be unrecognizable at first glance to a visitor from the 19th century: a hospital, an Apple store, a yoga studio. But take Laura Ingalls to the nearest fifth-grade classroom, and she wouldn’t hesitate to say, "Oh! A school!"
Very little about the American classroom has changed since Laura Ingalls sat in one more than a century ago. In her school, children sat in a rectangular room at rows of desks, a teacher up front. At most American schools, they still do.
For full article see: http://www.slate.com/id/2269307/
I think that besides the promethean board and the computers in a classroom, classrooms have remained frozen in time. I always chuckle when I watch commercials on TV that feature students or a teacher in a classroom. The teacher's desk is still made of wood and is placed right front and center with an apple and a neat stack of books resting on top. There are blackboards and neat rows of desks. Could it be that as a society we still see the classroom in the same way people saw it during Laura Ingall's time. Why is that?
ReplyDelete