Stenhouse Newslinks
September 22, 2005
C O N T E N T S
1) Using grammar in context
2) Author Conversations: Harvey Daniels & Stephanie Harvey
3) PD Corner: Academic Choice
4) Captives of clock and calendar
5) Banned Books Week
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1) Using grammar in context
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Are you looking for concrete ways to merge grammar and mechanics
with craft in the context of meaningful writing? In his new book,
Mechanically Inclined, classroom teacher Jeff Anderson draws on
sixteen years of study and experimentation and shares his
strategies for balancing explicit instruction about rules with the
daily demands of writer's workshop.
With over thirty detailed lessons, this practical book explains
why kids often don't understand or apply grammar and mechanics
correctly, focuses on the most common errors in student writing,
and shows how to carefully construct a workshop environment that
best supports grammar, usage, and style concepts.
Mechanically Inclined will be available in print in October, but
you can browse the entire book on-line now:
http://www.stenhouse.com/0412.asp?r=n76
Mechanically Inclined: Building Grammar, Usage, and Style into
Writer's Workshop
Jeff Anderson * 216 pp/paper * $20.00 * Available in November
http://www.stenhouse.com/0412.asp?r=n76
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2) Author Conversations: Harvey Daniels & Stephanie Harvey
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Harvey Daniels and Stephanie Harvey reflect on the complementary
roles of strategic reading and literature circles in this new
video clip, just added to our Author Conversations page:
http://www.stenhouse.com/html/authorconversations.htm
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3) PD Corner: Academic Choice
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"The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice."
--George Eliot
People of all ages need to make choices in order to learn and
grow. Third grade teacher Rosalea Fisher notes a worsening
situation in schools when she writes: "Many teachers face my
dilemma: How can I give my students choices in their learning if I
don't feel as though I have choices about what I teach?"
In the essay "Choosing Choice," she shows how she integrates more
choices for students into the new curriculum of textbooks and
manuals mandated at her school:
http://www.responsiveclassroom.org/newsletter/13_4NL_3.asp
The Northeast Foundation for Children has just published Learning
Through Academic Choice, designed to help teachers infuse more
choice into every curricular area. This new book is available from
Stenhouse, and you read the Introduction and Chapter 1 on-line:
http://www.stenhouse.com/8914.asp?r=n76
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4) Captives of clock and calendar
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Time is learning's warden. Our time-bound mentality has
fooled us all into believing that schools can educate all
the people all the time in a school year of 180 days of 6
hours each. The consequence of our self-deception has
been to ask the impossible of our students: We expect
them to learn as much as their counterparts abroad in
only half the time.
In an essay from the September issue of Edutopia, Milton Goldberg
and Christopher Cross challenge many aspects of how schools use
time--including class periods, the school day, the school year,
and how much time is spent on different subjects:
http://www.stenhouse.com/rdtime.htm
This piece is an excerpt from the forthcoming revision of
"Prisoners of Time," a comprehensive report first published in
1994. The revised report, which includes an additional emphasis on
supporting teachers in at-risk schools, will be available on-line
from the Education Commission of the States; check their Web site
at http://www.ecs.org in mid-October to obtain a free copy.
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5) Banned Books Week
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Banned Books Week is September 24-October 1. The American Library
Association provides a comprehensive resource section on their Web
site for celebrating this event, including a list of suggested
activities, ideas for studying censorship, lists of challenged or
banned books, a history of book burning, and much more:
http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bannedbooksweek.htm
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