What should we teach in

ELA classes?

9-2-14

On your own paper, respond to the following prompt:

Be ready to read your response aloud.

While you wait for class to start . . .

ADEPT Performance Standards

1. Planning1. Planning

2. Instruction2. Instruction

3. Environment3. Environment

4. Professionalism4. Professionalism

•Long-rangeLong-range

•Short-rangeShort-range

•AssessmentsAssessments •ExpectationsExpectations

•StrategiesStrategies

•ContentContent

•MonitoringMonitoring

•CreatingCreating

•ManagingManaging

•ResponsibilitiesResponsibilities

NCTE/IRA Standards

ELA: English Language Arts

Reading

Writing

Speaking

Listening

Thinking

Reading

Writing1. Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence.

2. Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content.

3. Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, well-chosen details, and well-structured event sequences.

4. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1-3 above.)

5. Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach, focusing on addressing what is most significant for a specific purpose and audience. (Editing for conventions should demonstrate command of Language standards 1-3 up to and including grades 11-12 here.)

6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products in response to ongoing feedback, including new arguments or information.

7. Conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question) or solve a problem; narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate; synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.

8. Gather relevant information from multiple authoritative print and digital sources, using advanced searches effectively; assess the strengths and limitations of each source in terms of the task, purpose, and audience; integrate information into the text selectively to maintain the flow of ideas, avoiding plagiarism and overreliance on any one source and following a standard format for citation.

9. Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research.

10. Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of tasks, purposes, and audiences.

Speaking

Listening?

Thinking?

In pairs, read aloud one of your response journal entries (or explain it, if you don’t have your journal. Choose one of the entries to discuss in greater detail as a group.

Be ready to summarize the discussion for the class.

(Note: You are NOT turning in your responses this week; we’re simply using them as discussion starters. You’ll turn in your first two responses next week.

“It is not, of course, the English teacher’s primary job to prepare students for the workplace.” (2)

I thoroughly agree, but I doubt that many administrators and policy makers would join me. I hear over and over and over that getting an education is about getting a good job, as if K-12 schools were just farm clubs for colleges, which themselves are farm clubs for businesses. The farm club might be a great major for Major League Baseball, but it doesn’t work for education. First, not everybody is going to go into the work force. My wife and our next-door neighbor are both stay-at-home moms – by choice – and schools ought to acknowledge that option. I’ve heard that volunteerism is shrinking as the pool of potential volunteers shrinks inversely with the fulltime work force. Further, the “work force” can be trained for whatever job. (I’ve heard employers say, for students who plan to go to grad school, “Major in something other than your grad school field. They’ll teach you in grad school what you need to know in your major; find an undergraduate field that complements the field, not one that simply repeats it.”) More importantly, though, I think our job is to prepare students for life – and there’s lots more to life than the workplace. The workplace doesn’t necessarily care whether people are inquisitive, or whether they have hobbies or interests. The workplace wants human capital, not human beings. Such a view is incredibly short-sighted, of course, and maybe “the work place” will eventually catch on, but teachers need to talk about more than just work. We need to educate citizens. People need to read well, write well, and think well – not just to do well in school and to get good jobs, but also to vote wisely and to create new jobs that haven’t even been dreamed of yet. These are scary times, and ignorance makes the times even scarier. The world is facing huge problems that require huge thinking skills, huge analytical skills, huge communication skills, huge motivation and inspiration skills. OK, those are job skills, too – but focusing only (or even too much) on jobs can cause us to lose focus on the bigger issue of LIFE.

Reality Test:

Complete “College Prep: Are You Ready?” (Figure 1.4 on page 11) now that you’ve completed college. How “ready” for college are you after four years of it?

Based on your responses to the checklist, what areas of study most need extra attention in high school?

What questions do you have about…

…anything we’ve discussed today,

…anything in the textbook, or

…anything else related to this class

or to student teaching?

For next week . . .

Response journal: ETC, ch 2 (Who We Teach)(First two entries due by beginning of class)

If you can make the time, read (and maybe participate in) some ECN online discussions

What makes a fire burnis space between the logs,a breathing space.Too much of a good thing,too many logspacked in too tightcan douse the flamesalmost as surelyas a pail of water would.

So building firesrequires attentionto the spaces in between,as much as to the wood.

When we are able to buildopen spaces in the same waywe have learnedto pile on the logs,then we can come to see howit is fuel, and absence of the fueltogether, that make fire possible.

We only need to lay a loglightly from time to time.A fire growssimply because the space is there,with openings in which the flamethat knows just how it wants to burn can find its way.

(Teaching with Fire, ed. by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner)

Fireby Judy Brown