Literacy Speaks Volumes

Today was the first day back after our winter holidays. It wasn't too taxing~while I had developed lesson plans for these two days back, we didn't get to them. I spent part of each class period reviewing some old/new policies and rules. Don't we all seem to forget so soon what we have to do or what we shouldn't do? After the review, we had our annual Spelling Bee. After twenty-two years with seventh-graders, I'm still amazed at the spelling skills (or lack thereof) of thirteen-year-olds. The ones who can barely keep their grades in the black are some of the ones who can spell the best. Why is that? Spelling is a skill that does take knowledge of our language~so why doesn't that transfer into other areas of my curriculum? Speaking of curriculum~count down to standardized testing (sort of). I've been looking at the performance indicators and trying to determine which ones need to be taught in depth and which ones can be barely brushed upon. The stude...

When we return from the holidays, I'll be teaching "A Day's Wait"--a short story by Ernest Hemingway. The story is not particularly one of my favorites, and I'm skipping one of my favorites, "Dark They Were and Golden-Eyed" by Ray Bradbury. Unfortunately, the story by Bradbury doesn't focus on the tested skills that the story by Hemingway   does. I know I could make it work with the Bradbury story, but I'd have to create my own resources, and I'm busy enough like it is. So, like many things in education, I'm going to settle. I'm going to skip the story that would be more interesting and go on to the one that I can justify on my lesson plan. This is not going to be a post about lamenting the fact that our education system has become all about the test scores and less about good teaching. If you're reading this post, then you know the predicament that education is in~I don't need to beat that horse. This post is abo...