Friday, October 13, 2006
Day Off!
Today is a staff training day for the classified people in our school district. Thanks for making it a Friday! I was asked by a woman I really respect to be part of a research project she is conducting. This women has been in education for a long time. She has written books about education, urban education to be specific, and she has worked with a developmental studies center that is also highly respected for their work. I am actually in her book. She put my classroom book, My Name Is Special, into her book with a few student samples. That was a very great honor for me.
Now she is doing some research about Open Court and how veteran teachers use Open Court and how they supplement the program. First, let me say, I can't believe I am now a veteran teacher! That just happened too fast. I feel like I just started teaching. However, it has been twelve years. Yikes! Second, how nice to be thought of as having a brain that can actually see the flaws in an imposed, scripted curriculum and make changes that support learning. I can see how Open Court can teach children to read. I can also see how it does not give children the learning time to cement some of the major concepts about our language. For instance, seven year olds can't learn verbs, nouns, and adjective by telling them what they are without having some practical applications for using those parts of speech. Once you give them the practical applications they can then find them in sentences or expand their own sentences using interesting nouns, verbs, and adjectives.
I can't wait to get started.
| posted by feldmom at 10:19 AM
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KatieFeldmom had this to say:
Congrats on both accounts!
Happy Day Off!!!!!!!!!!!!!
