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1) New Stenhouse Blog: events, interviews, resources galore

We've just launched the Stenhouse Blog, featuring a wide range of articles as well as audio, video, and online events. Organized into categories such as classroom practice, writing, and teaching in the content areas, the blog offers up a wide range of short and accessible resources, perfect for ongoing staff development or to share with student teachers.

Explore the new blog here:

http://blog.stenhouse.com/

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2) Let Debbie Diller critique your classroom

Does your classroom environment work for you and your students? We've created a group on Flickr where you can share photos of your classroom and respond to photos from other teachers. Debbie Diller, author of Spaces & Places, will select three photos of whole-group areas and offer her ideas on how the area could be redesigned to provide a more comfortable or productive space. Grab your camera and go to this post on the Stenhouse Blog for details:

http://www.stenhouse.com/rdclassroomcritique.htm?r=n146

The first ten visitors that upload a classroom photo to the Flickr group will get a free copy of any Debbie Diller book from Stenhouse.

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3) Author Conversations: Debbie Miller and Franki Sibberson

I'm worried that we're often talking about things that aren't connected to teaching and learning...this book can take our talk right back to teaching, the things that will make a difference for kids.

Listen in as Debbie Miller talks with fellow author Franki Sibberson about Debbie's new book, Teaching with Intention, and the importance of communication with colleagues, especially around shared beliefs about teaching and learning:

http://www.stenhouse.com/html/debbiefranki.htm?r=n146

You can browse the entire text of Teaching with Intention online:

http://www.stenhouse.com/0387.asp?r=n146

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4) PD Corner: Teaching genre

Every piece of writing, every text we read, comes to us both as a text—the piece it is—and as a kind of text—an instance of genre.
—Randy Bomer, Time for Meaning

"Teaching Genre in the Classroom," Chapter One of Heather Lattimer's Thinking Through Genre, is an excellent introduction to what genre studies entail and how to weave them into your reading and writing workshops:

http://www.stenhouse.com/0352.asp?r=n146
(Click on the Chapter 1 link in the Table of Contents.)

Looking for classroom tools to help you teach genre? Third-grade teacher Beth Newingham's website offers a variety of downloadables that will ease the process—posters, tracking sheets, reading logs, and more:

http://www.stenhouse.com/rdnewingham.htm?r=n146

"Genre Study: A Collaborative Approach" is one of many lessons for teaching genre at ReadWriteThink. Students read within a specific genre as a group, complete book reviews, and share their discoveries with the class:

http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=270

Lori Mayo's article "Making the Connection: Reading and Writing Together" shows how genre studies in a high school language arts classroom impacts students. Most helpful is Mayo's description of her own process as she gathers, plans, and uses models to teach genre and immerse students in reading and writing:

http://www.geocities.com/lorimayo_99/ej.html

Chapter Seven of the new book Reading for Real describes how the simple concept of students reading, meeting, and talking over a basket of themed books organically builds engagement, comprehension, and community. Kathy Collins zeroes in on "survival skills" for particular genres prior to teaching them:

http://www.stenhouse.com/0703.asp?r=n146
(Click on the Chapter 7 link in the Table of Contents.)

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5) Computers in the classroom: promises and perils

Three recent articles explore the effects of increased technology in the classroom. "Are Underprivileged Students Better Off Without Computers?" (T.H.E. Journal) profiles a Romanian program that gave vouchers to low-income families to buy computers. A research study of the program concluded that it may have hurt academic achievement by taking away from homework time:

http://www.thejournal.com/articles/22765

"Access, Adequacy, and Equity in Education Technology" (NEA) summarizes a teacher survey on technology and presents nine major findings that suggest schools have a long way to go to successfully integrate technology into instruction:

http://www.nea.org/research/index.html

In "The Laptops Are Coming! The Laptops Are Coming!" (Rethinking Schools), social studies teacher Sarah Heller McFarlane looks at the social aspects of educational technology, from the loss of face-to-face relationship time to the impact of online advertising:

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/22_04/lapt224.shtml

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