Tweets of the Week

This is cool--students with not-that-great reading skills doing a whole book together as a class!
http://www.edweek.org/tsb/articles/2012/02/29/02sacks.h05.html?tkn=XYWFhb3IvF%2F4zVhG35xyEoNj9GKF4TNYxnWn&cmp=clp-edweek

Here are some highlights:
Framing the project. The students recognize this ritual as the beginning of a personal literary journey.
My italics.
 Providing reading time and support. The key is to make students feel part of a group process without getting in between them and the text.

 Tracking progress. Some of my struggling readers choose to write Post-it notes on almost every page of the book.
 Creating group mini-projects. Students collaborate to expand their understanding of what they read without interrupting the subjective, immersive nature of their experience.
 Discussing literature. By the time the due date arrives for completing the reading, students are usually dying to discuss the book.

I say, hats off, to this persistent educator in leading the kids through the trek of an entire book. What a gift she has given them.

 Fiction can help kids become more caring individuals. A writer can allow a reader to enter into the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of a character in a way that the real world cannot. Et voila! empathy.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/social-emotional-learning-fiction-teaching-maurice-elias?fb_ref=.T3hyStUZs6k.like&fb_source=timeline


Living through literature. What would it be like if...
http://www.edutopia.org/social-emotional-learning-literary-characters

Here is the quote of the week: "Reading great literature, it has long been averred, enlarges and improves us as human beings. Brain science shows this claim is truer than we imagined."

(Naturally from an English major.) What a surprise, great literature develops your brain!

Here is the article this is from: 'Your Brain on Fiction." Great Title!
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brain-on-fiction.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all

Wyeth's illustration of "The Last of the Mohicans." You just can't tell me Nattie Bumppo wasn't real!

Uncas, Hawkeye , Chingachgook