Category: Standards and accountability
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Old Wine in New Skins Part 2
Yesterday I didn’t get to the point of the post. Perhaps today. NGSS and Common Core are grounded in particular assumptions about learning. These assumptions include: * All people can learn; learning is a characteristic of humans; * People learn by integrating new knowledge into existing knowledge; * Asking and seeking to answer questions results…
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So many children…
I’m going to be a little poetic here. By which I mean turning my attention to that which is not tangible. I have the opportunity right now to work one-on-one with several children. It’s a chance to go back to basics: children want love, acceptance, security. They want to find out about the world, while…
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STEM Writing Template
The Common Core Standards call for students to engage in literacy practices across the content areas. I am providing the STEM Writing Template as a model so that students can write to learn science. The following is a workshop agenda. STEM Writing Template (Adapted from Keys et. al, (1999:1067-1069) and also Hand, Prain and Wallace…
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Teaching Science through Conversation/What is Inquiry? What are productive ways to use students’ ideas for instruction?
In recent months I’ve thinking about Rosebery & Warren’s (2008) concept of science talks. In addition to modeling science talk for my own students by doing it with kids, I’ve been trying it out in an undergraduate physical science course I co-teach with a chemist. The students had been given the assignment to come up…
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Standards-Based Education is a Scam
There is no research basis for so-called standards-based education. There is not one shred of evidence that demonstrates the effectiveness of many of the practices which I see in schools as I visit student teachers, not one study of the benefits of students knowing which standard they are “on.” Yet every teacher I talk with…