Stenhouse Newslinks
April 9, 2008
C O N T E N T S
1) Greater Expectations: Opening doors to college
2) PD Corner: Go graphic
3) Multimedia website aids K-4 comprehension instruction
4) Blog Watch: Using Cris Tovani's activities in the classroom
5) Testing the Joy Out of Learning
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1) Greater Expectations: Opening doors to college
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How can you help underserved students overcome obstacles such as poverty, poor reading and writing skills, peer pressure against academic success, and low expectations? Robin Turner, an English teacher in Anaheim, California, lays out practical, proven methods for preparing underrepresented students for college in his new book, Greater Expectations.
Starting with a foundation for a successful college-prep program in language arts, Robin tackles various modes of discourse-- literary analysis, autobiographical/biographical, persuasive research, and community-based writing--supporting his instructional strategies with how-to lesson plans and student samples.
Greater Expectations is grounded in Robin's experience with the Puente program, which serves over 43,000 underrepresented California students with accelerated reading and writing instruction, intensive counseling, and mentoring.
This new book is scheduled to ship in late-April, and you can preview the entire text online now:
http://www.stenhouse.com/0740.asp?r=n136
Greater Expectations: Teaching Academic Literacy to Underrepresented Students
Robin Turner * 240 pp/paper * $18.00
http://www.stenhouse.com/0740.asp?r=n136
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2) PD Corner: Go graphic
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"After years of fighting for shelf space in libraries and classrooms, graphic novels have finally become an acceptable alternative to their prose-packed counterparts--and kids can't seem to get enough of them."
--Michele Gorman, School Library Journal, March 2008
Is your classroom library a comic wasteland? Need titles? Teacher Scott Tingley's site, Comics in the Classroom, delivers with a repository of reviews, resources, and weekly features. Reviews of top titles list ages, content areas, and interests as well as providing links to handouts and lesson plans:
http://www.comicsintheclassroom.net
Visit the National Association of Comic Art Educators for a range of teacher resources and an active forum for sharing ideas about teaching comics:
No Flying No Tights serves up a core list of comic best-reads organized by genre and indexed by title, creator, and publisher.
For those not in the know, the site also provides clear distinctions between comics, graphic novels, anime, and manga (click the "What's the Deal? link after entering the site):
http://www.noflyingnotights.com/
For a comprehensive introduction to all things graphic, stay tuned for Adventures in Graphica by Terry Thompson, due out later this month. Terry shows teachers how to put graphica to work teaching comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency. Get details and pre-order the book here:
http://www.stenhouse.com/0712.asp?r=n136
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3) Multimedia website aids K-4 comprehension instruction
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Into the Book is a rich resource for teaching and learning reading comprehension in grades K-4. Organized around eight key strategies, the website offers videos and interactive activities for students while providing short PD videos, lesson plans, and other resources for teachers. It's free, thanks to the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board:
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4) Blog Watch: Using Cris Tovani's activities in the classroom
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Blog Watch is a new feature at stenhouse.com that highlights teacher blog entries related to Stenhouse authors and their books.
Our latest installment features two bloggers sharing how they used and adapted activities from Cris Tovani's books. "My students loooooooooooved it," one teacher writes of Tovani's text-marking
strategy:
http://www.stenhouse.com/html/newsarchive_62.htm?r=n136
And for more general education blog reading, check out Monday's Washington Post where columnist Jay Mathews and teacher-blogger Ken Bernstein weigh in on their "Favorite Education Blogs of
2008":
http://www.stenhouse.com/rd2008edublogs.htm?r=n136
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5) Testing the Joy Out of Learning
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In the March issue of ASCD's Educational Leadership, Sharon L.
Nichols and David C. Berliner explore the detrimental effects of standardized tests on student motivation as schools emphasize the importance of tests through slogans, pep rallies, and socials and some teachers come to view students as "test-score increasers" or
"suppressors":
http://www.stenhouse.com/rdtestingjoy.htm?r=n136
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