Are “Just Right” Books Too Easy?

In this article in Reading Today, Timothy Shanahan (University of Illinois/Chicago) examines the long-standing belief that children learn best when they’re taught at their current instructional reading level, using materials that are not too hard, not too easy – “just right.” This seems like common sense, as anyone who has watched a frustrated student struggling with a frustration-level book can…

Should Books in School Libraries Be Organized by Reading Level?

In this article in Knowledge Quest, Georgia librarian Susan Grigsby makes the case for not leveling books in school libraries – for example with Lexile numbers, AR levels, or colored dots. “I believe strongly in teaching independence in book selection,” she says, and creates personal bibliographies for her middle-school students by having them fill out surveys of their interests –…

Close Reading with Sets of Related Picture Books

(Originally titled “Close Reading Without Tears”)

In this Educational Leadership article, Nancy Boyles (Southern Connecticut State University) says she is a big fan of close reading because it has the potential to teach students “to delve into a text and uncover one layer of meaning after another, to appreciate as much as possible a book’s multiple themes, diverse points of view, rich…

Technology Improves And The Internet Expands But School Acceptable Use Policies Still Lock Students Out Of The Benefits

from the an-internet-with-18-years-worth-of-training-wheels dept

Tech Dirt

Tim Cushing

What a 'balanced' tenure system might look like

A new brief from The New Teacher Project envisions what it is casting as a "balanced" teacher-tenure system. Under this system, teachers would be eligible for tenure after five years. Tenure would be awarded for sustained strong performance, and could be revoked for ineffective performance. Appeals could contest process and bad faith, but not judgments about performance. Hearings would be limited to a single day,…

Traditional PD: 'totally useless'?

In a guest post on the Answer Sheet blog in The Washington Post, Alvin Crawford of Knowledge Delivery Systems, which offers online professional development, writes that few can argue teachers today are getting the support and training they need to be effective and efficient, whether they stay in the classroom or not. In a 2009 report from the Center for Public Education, for instance, asked about experiences with professional…

Beyond Preschool: Alleviating Poverty Over a Lifespan

Robert E. Slavin