Marshall Memo 710

A Weekly Round-up of Important Ideas and Research in K-12 Education

November 6, 2017

 

 


In This Issue:

1. Key insights on studying, remembering, and learning

2. Getting good writing from middle-school students

3. Best practices for addressing social, emotional, and behavioral issues

4. What to do when students talk when they’re not supposed to talk

5. How frequently should special-needs students’ reading be assessed?

6. Fifteen websites with leveled texts

 

Quotes of the Week

“One of the things they don’t teach us in our education courses, is just how freaking much students talk, and how hard it can be to quiet them down in order to get anything accomplished.”

            Jennifer Gonzalez (see item #4)

 

“Anytime you can give a reminder before misbehavior, it’s a good thing. Anytime you give a reminder after you see misbehavior, it’s a bad thing. You should be holding students accountable, but be preemptive whenever you can.”

            Michael Linsin (quoted in ibid.)

 

“What classroom teachers want, deserve, and need is in-the-classroom support from staff skilled in behavior management.”

            Nathan Levenson (see item #3)

 

“Never read a student’s first draft.”

            Dominic Carrillo (see item #2)

 

How will reading this make my writing better? Which author will I use as a model? What will my voice, theme, and organization be? How will it come across to my audience?

            Questions students should ask themselves when reading model texts (ibid.)

 

“Self-testing is one of the strongest study techniques there is. Old-fashioned flashcards work fine; so does a friend, work colleague, or classmate putting you through the paces.”

            Benedict Carey (see item #1)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Key Insights on Studying, Remembering, and Learning

            In an appendix to his 2013 book, How We Learn, Benedict Carey answers eleven essential questions that sum up the main insights he presents in the book:

            • How important is routine, like having a dedicated study area? Not at all, says Carey. “The more environments in which you rehearse, the sharper and more lasting the memory of that material becomes… That is, knowledge becomes increasingly independent of surroundings the more changes you make.” Most people learn better by studying in different locations, using different methods, at different times of the day, constantly changing the way they store material in memory.

            • Is there an optimal amount of time to study or practice? “More important than how long you study is how you distribute the study time you have,” says Carey. Ideally, break up study time into chunks over two or three days, each time reengaging with the material, retrieving it, and re-storing it in memory – “an active mental step that reliably improves memory.”

            • How much does it help to review notes from a class or lesson? Very little, he says. Looking over highlighted material is one of the least effective ways to study; the same goes for verbatim copying. That’s because both are fairly passive and don’t engage the brain in the kind of work that will make learning sink in. What’s more, passive review can cause what cognitive scientists call the “fluency illusion” – unwarranted confidence that you’ll remember it for good.

            • Is cramming a bad idea? Now always. It’s okay if you’re behind and have no choice. But the downside is that you won’t remember much after the test or performance. That’s because the brain sharpens memories only after a little forgetting has taken place.

            • So what does work? “Self-testing is one of the strongest study techniques there is,” says Carey. “Old-fashioned flashcards work fine; so does a friend, work colleague, or classmate putting you through the paces.” So does reciting a passage from memory, or explaining a concept to yourself or a friend. Testing yourself (or being tested) does two things: it forces you to retrieve information from memory, and it gives you immediate feedback if you couldn’t remember it so you know what you don’t know and need to work on some more.

            • What’s the most common reason for bombing a test after what felt like careful preparation? It’s the fluency illusion – the erroneous belief “that you ‘knew’ something well just because it seemed so self-evident at the time you studied it,” says Carey. Several passive, ineffective study methods feed this illusion:

-   Highlighting or rewriting notes;

-   Working from a teacher’s outline;

-   Re-studying after you’ve just studied.

Far better to test yourself, space out the study, and find out what you actually don’t know.

            • Is it best to practice one skill at a time until it becomes automatic, or to work on many things all at once? Working on just one thing (free throws, a musical scale, the quadratic equation) improves skill. “But over time, such focused practice actually limits our development of each skill,” says Carey. “Mixing or ‘interleaving’ multiple skills in a practice session, by contrast, sharpens our grasp of all of them.” Mixed practice helps review material from several areas, sharpens differentiating among them, and trains the brain to match the problem types with appropriate strategies. This is especially helpful in a subject like mathematics.

            • How does sleep affect learning? The deep sleep that occurs in the first half of the night is most important for consolidating and retaining hard facts – names, dates, formulas, concepts. So if you need to remember that kind of information, Carey recommends going to bed at your regular time to maximize deep sleep. But the kind of sleep we have in the early morning hours helps consolidate motor skills and creative thinking. If you need to perform creatively, whether it’s in math, science, writing, or music, you might stay up later and sleep in to maximize the effects of the second kind of sleep.

            • How about improving performance on longer-term creative projects? The proven method for a big, complicated project like a term paper is getting started as early as possible, chunking the work, and spreading it out over time. Doing this “activates the project in your mind,” says Carey, “and you’ll begin to see and hear all sorts of things in your daily life that are relevant. You’ll also be more tuned into what you think about those random, incoming clues.”

            • Are distractions from smartphones and social media a bad thing? Not unless you’re trying to give continuous focus to a lecture or some other sequential, connected learning experience. When you’re struggling to solve a problem, “a short study break – five, ten, twenty minutes to check in on Facebook, respond to a few e-mails, check sports scores – is the most effective technique learning scientists know of…” says Carey. “Distracting yourself from the task at hand allows you to let go of mistaken assumptions, reexamine the clues in a new way, and come back fresh.” Your brain will keep working on the problem offline, without your fixated, unproductive focus, and you’ll often have fresh insights when you return to it.

            • Can “freeing up the inner slacker” really be called a legitimate learning strategy? If by this we mean “appreciating learning as a restless, piecemeal, subconscious, and somewhat sneaky process that occurs all the time – not just when you’re sitting at a desk, face pressed into a book – then it’s the best strategy there is,” says Carey.

 

How We Learn by Benedict Carey (Random House, 2013, p. 223-228)

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2. Getting Good Writing from Middle-School Students

            In this article in AMLE Magazine, teacher/author Dominic Carrillo describes how he gets high-quality writing from his middle-school students:

            • An authentic audience – Carrillo has found that students are highly motivated by publishing their letters, essays, or short books online, potentially read by thousands. Students are skeptical at first, but not after Carrillo shows them samples from previous classes. One student wrote an open letter to anyone contemplating suicide and heard back from a young woman who said the letter helped her decide not to take her own life. Carrillo’s most recent project was having students choose an influential public figure and write him or her a persuasive letter. “The idea was that if Donald Trump or Miley Cyrus didn’t actually read their letters,” says Carrillo, “then at least an online audience would get the message.”

            • Wide reading – Students start by reading models of effective writing in the genre they’ve chosen: for short stories, Hemingway, Chekhov, Shirley Jackson; for memoirs, Stephen King, Maya Angelou, Malala, and Malcolm X. Carrillo also has students look at writing by students in previous years and his own published writing (he’s the author of a young adult novel). Students spend several days taking a critical look at these exemplars, discussing story elements, the author’s voice, theme, intention, characters, organization, and any other applicable Common Core standards. Some key questions: How will reading this make my writing better? Which author will I use as a model? What will my voice, theme, and organization be? How will it come across to my audience?

            • Imperfect first drafts – “I recommend dedicating a full class period to discussing bad first drafts,” says Carrillo. He opens by asking students to pair-share about what makes writing so difficult and then has them read an Anne Lamott essay on terrible first drafts (it contains some profanity and might need to be redacted). Students grasp that being a good writer is not an innate gift, their writing won’t be perfect at first, all writing benefits from criticism, and they need to stop overthinking and put pen to paper.

            • Helpful feedback – Once students have produced first drafts, Carrillo has them sit in a large circle and establishes what Ron Berger calls a “culture of critique.” General feedback (“Good story, I liked it”) isn’t helpful. Nor is rude and hurtful feedback (“Boring” “That sucked”). To model helpful, specific comments, Carrillo shows a six-minute video about a first grader’s efforts to draw a butterfly, “Critique and Feedback, The Story  of Austin’s Butterfly” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOSiU42P8Gc. “Ultimately,” says Carrillo, “students see the value of quality feedback and are ready to critique knowing that the end goal is to create excellent, publishable writing… Whole-class peer critique goes from being a dreaded and uncomfortable idea to a purposeful and valued part of the process.” Over two or more class periods, students read their writing aloud (or have the teacher read anonymous submissions) and classmates offer comments and suggestions.

            • The peer editing funnel – A guiding principle that Carrillo learned early in his teaching career was, Never read a student’s first draft. Before the teacher sees student writing, it should be edited and refined based on peer feedback and reflection:

-   The whole-class workshop described above deals with the holistic problems by posing questions like: Is the piece clear? Does it make sense? What’s the intention? Is it effective? What’s missing? What needs to be cut?

-   Peer editing and revision – Working in pairs, students use a checklist to give detailed feedback on each others’ writing.

-   Gallery walk – Students’ writing is printed out and posted around the room and each student is asked to pick one piece to scan for final edits and quick fixes and then, on cue, move to another.

Create a Google doc – All students’ final writing is loaded into a single online document that peer editors can access to make small finishing touches. This also allows the teacher to monitor the writing and make formative comments and suggestions.

• Put early finishers to work – Carrillo gives students who complete their writing ahead of their classmates a leadership role in the publishing process: chief editor, an editing team member, formatter, cover designer, event manager, or lead marketer for a school library unveiling, book sharing event, or student exhibition. Students who take on this role need to master the chosen publishing platform, for example, CreateSpace, Lulu, Blurb.

By the end of this process, he says, “students are usually impressed with how much their writing has improved through revision and editing – and most of it they’ve done through effective peer collaboration… I won’t pretend that every student ends up loving the writing process, but they definitely walk away respecting it, and have learned new strategies along the way.”

 

“Authentic Audience, Wonderful Writing” by Dominic Carrillo in AMLE Magazine, October 2017 (Vol. 5, #4, p. 25-28), no free e-link; Carrillo is at [email protected].

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3. Best Practices for Addressing Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Issues

            In this article in District Management Journal, Nathan Levenson says principals and teachers he works with are reporting an increase in the number of students coming to school with significant social, emotional, and behavioral problems. When these needs are not addressed, they create disruptions in classrooms, undermine learning, and put great stress on educators, contributing to teacher and administrator attrition.

Districts across the country are investing in curriculum, programs, and additional staff to address these issues, and some are getting a much bigger bang for their buck than others. What’s the difference? Levenson and his colleagues conducted a thorough investigation and came up with ten practices that maximize the impact of existing staff, focus on prevention, and get the most from outside expertise:

Make best use of the talent, expertise, and time of current staff:

            Before investing in additional staff, says Levenson, “schools and districts can first take steps to ensure that teachers, psychologists, social workers, behaviorists, counselors, and others are able to effectively use their talents and time to do the most good for the most children.” The biggest challenges are paperwork and meetings. The most effective schools:

            • Streamline meetings and paperwork to increase time with students. The average social worker is with students 32 percent of the school week, but some manage to spend 66 percent of their time with students. Similarly, most school psychologists spend 14 percent of their time counseling students, but some spend more than 30 percent. It can take 3.5 days to complete a special-education evaluation, but some psychologists need only 1.5 days.

            Levenson and his colleagues have analyzed every step educators take creating an IEP and attending meetings. The most efficient schools set targets for boosting student contact time and reducing non-student hours in several ways:

-   Pre-meetings of teams are not necessary for students with simpler diagnoses.

-   Sharing reports in advance is not always necessary.

-   Certain psychological assessments aren’t needed for every IEP.

-   Psychologists don’t have to attend every IEP, RTI, and staff meeting.

-   The same is true for other service providers’ attendance at IEP and staff meetings.

All this significantly increases time with students without pushing paperwork into evenings and weekends. Streamlining can save as much as two hours of professional time a week.

            • Assign roles based on strengths, not titles. In one school, a psychologist was assigned to coordinate the PBIS program, despite having no formal training in behavior management. People assumed she was “good at everything” and didn’t ask about specific strengths. Levenson recommends that service providers be surveyed to identify the areas in which they have the most training and experience, including:

-   Academics (reading, English, math);

-   Supporting students with challenging behaviors;

-   Counseling;

-   Substance abuse and addiction work;

-   Case management;

-   IEP assessments;

-   Scheduling paraprofessionals and other staff;

-   Managing outside partners.

“While many staff have multiple strengths,” says Levenson, “it is unrealistic to think all staff are equally skilled in all of these areas. When administrators allow staff to identify their areas of expertise and then match job responsibilities to their skills, both students and staff can benefit.”

            • Strengthen teamwork through common planning time. In many schools, there are very few opportunities for administrators, guidance counselors, school psychologists, social workers, special-education teachers, behaviorists, classroom teachers, and paraprofessionals to discuss students they’re working with. Yet this kind of cross-disciplinary meeting is essential to share insights, monitor progress, and serve students effectively. Levenson recommends that schools build their schedules around “sacrosanct” times once or twice a week when it’s possible to convene staff working with particular students.

            • Provide behavior management support to teachers in their classrooms. Too much is being asked of front-line teachers with behaviorally challenging students, says Levenson. “What classroom teachers want, deserve, and need is in-the-classroom support from staff skilled in behavior management,” he says. “Such support includes hours-long observation of students; leading conversations with students to help identify triggers; observations of the student, class, and teacher after the behavior strategies have been set; and acting as a parent liaison at times as well.”

Focus on prevention:

            • Identify and manage behavioral triggers. Levenson tells the story of a first grader in a suburban school who periodically screamed ugly insults at his teacher, threw scissors and other objects, and ran out of the classroom. The boy’s teacher and principal had disciplined the boy numerous times and worked with his parents, and had reached their limit. They demanded that this student be removed from the school and sent to an out-of-district placement. But the superintendent brought in a behavioral specialist who observed the boy and figured out that he exploded when he felt embarrassed – even when the embarrassment was subtle, like being given a hint to answer a question. Once the teacher understood the trigger and adjusted her approach, the boy improved dramatically and was able to be successful in the district.

            • Increase access to staff with expertise in behavior management. “Some teachers and special educators may have a knack for identifying triggers,” says Levenson, “but few have formal training.” It’s important for schools to have access to educators with this highly specialized and valuable skill. Districts should be on the lookout for opportunities to bring such people on board when vacancies occur. Effective behavior specialists will reduce severe problems and make it possible to economize on one-on-one paraprofessionals, shifting those funds to specialists and other resources. Levenson also recommends having a small, highly skilled district-wide team to do initial planning for the most challenging students and share insights and support across schools.

            • Don’t let discipline policies create more discipline problems. A fair and comprehensive discipline code has these basic provisions:

-   It ensures student and teacher safety.

-   It has consistent expectations from classroom to classroom.

-   Suspensions are used as a last resort and not for nonviolent infractions.

-   It minimizes loss of learning time.

-   It mitigates for unconscious bias.

-   It is applied similarly regardless of race, gender, or school.

But a discipline code should not be so rigid that it can’t account for individual prevention efforts and behavior management plans – for example, a student walking to a time-out space without a pass being disciplined by an overly rigid assistant principal.

            • Stay focused on academic achievement. “Too many ‘behavior programs’ seem to undervalue the importance of academic learning and student achievement,” says Levenson. Behaviorally challenged students are often academically able, and if they sense that teachers believe they’re not, that can be a trigger. The key is figuring out and addressing behavioral issues as quickly and effectively as possible and then providing rigorous academic instruction with general education teachers.

Seek and support outside expertise:

            • Nurture partnerships. Local mental health agencies, nonprofit counseling services, and universities can often provide social and emotional services at little or no cost, waiving co-pays and deductibles and billing students’ insurance for services. Levenson cites a 5,000-student district that was able to leverage over $1 million in counseling services a year for almost no cost. In addition, outside agencies might address areas in which the district doesn’t have in-house expertise – body image issues, alcohol and substance abuse, dealing with trauma, summer and school vacation coverage, and coaching district staff on best practices.

            • Support and coordinate local partnerships. Small problems can become deal-breakers with external partners, says Levenson – for example, a counselor showing up at a school and finding that someone else is in the room he was scheduled to use. To get the most out of partnerships, says Levenson, schools need “a dedicated point person who has time to manage, communicate, and smooth over the inevitable bumps in the road.” Specifically:

-   Providing counseling space inside schools;

-   Providing an online room calendar to avoid double-booking;

-   Scheduling services on a five-day cycle, even if the school’s master schedule isn’t on that cycle;

-   Placing services into student schedules;

-   Introducing outside partners to all school-based staff;

-   Inviting partners to faculty, department, and other key meetings;

-   Checking in weekly by phone, and monthly in person, with each provider;

-   Having a single point of contact.

 

“Improving and Expanding Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Supports: 10 Best Practices” by Nathan Levenson in District Management Journal, Fall 2017 (Vol. 22, p. 10-27),

http://bit.ly/2zBF3py; Levenson can be reached at [email protected].

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4. What to Do When Students Talk When They’re Not Supposed to Talk

            In this Cult of Pedagogy article, Jennifer Gonzalez describes a typical scenario from her early years teaching middle-school students. She gave students a writing assignment and for a few seconds things were quiet. Then a student said she didn’t know what to write, and Gonzalez walked over to her desk to help. Two more hands went up – they were stuck as well. Before she got to them, a student closed his journal, finished already, and the two stuck students asked him what he wrote about. “The room needs to stay quiet so we can concentrate,” Gonzalez told them. Another student had a question and she squatted by her desk, and behind her, a conversation started between two other students. “Okay, people,” she said, louder this time. “Let’s keep it down.” Now it was a game. Someone needed to visit the pencil sharpener. And another person. More conversations. “And then I yelled,” says Gonzalez.

            A common scenario? Gonzalez says she hears versions of it all the time from teachers. “One of the things they don’t teach us in our education courses,” she says, “is just how freaking much students talk, and how hard it can be to quiet them down in order to get anything accomplished.”

            As she wrestled with this problem and consulted with experts, Gonzalez made two baseline assumptions: First, humans need to talk, and trying to impose silence over long periods of classroom time is a formula for trouble. But students at every grade level should be able to sit quietly while the teacher gives directions or teaches a directed lesson, and they should be able to sit quietly during independent work time. And there should be times when it’s okay for students to talk, work in groups, express themselves, move around, and have fun. All that strengthens classroom management.

Second, a big piece of classroom management is building good relationships with students. “If you haven’t taken the time to get to know them as individuals,” she says, “if you mispronounce their names, if you regularly use sarcasm or make them feel stupid for asking questions, then they aren’t going to want to behave well for you.”

            Gonzalez’s next step was figuring out why she was having so much trouble getting students to work quietly. Michael Linsin, her go-to guru on classroom management, suggested there were two reasons:

-   Students don’t believe you mean it. “So even if they hear you,” says Gonzalez, “even if they understand that you want quiet at a certain time, they don’t believe anything negative will happen if they ignore your request.”

-   They don’t understand what “no talking” means. Different teachers have different definitions of classroom silence, and it’s quite possible that in many students’ minds, quiet chatting about something important is not a problem.

“When most of the class is not doing what you ask,” says Linsin, “it’s on you. It’s about you. There’s some disconnect there, there’s something they’re not understanding.” This isn’t about disrespect, it’s about communication, and solving the problem is still in the teacher’s hands. “That’s not to say that you won’t have disrespectful students,” says Gonzalez, “but shifting the blame to them means you have no power over the situation. Blaming students simply isn’t a useful way to address the problem.”

            So what about all that talking during silent writing time? “The good news is that the solution is pretty simple,” she says, “and it requires no behavior charts, tokens, or Jolly Ranchers.”

            • Step 1: Define expectations in explicit detail. “If you believe you’ve already done this, and it hasn’t worked, the issue is probably lack of detail in your explanation,” says Gonzalez. You may need to model the desired behavior yourself, or have several students show what’s expected while you’re delivering instruction and during independent work time. And it’s important to be explicit about (and model) what’s not acceptable.

            • Step 2: Have students practice. “Whether you’re teaching how to find a topic sentence or how you want your students to line up before recess,” says Gonzalez, “it’s all teaching.” You might say, “I’m going to give you 60 seconds, and I want you to show me what good listening looks like, and no talking. So let’s pretend I’m standing and giving you a lesson. I want to know what that looks like. [Standing up front, then walking around.] Mmmm, okay, that looks good. Mmmm. Chin up a little higher!” It’s okay to have some fun with this, exaggerate, act things out; it’s not a punishment. It’s also a good idea to agree on a nonverbal sign that students can give to someone who is violating the norm, trying to talk to them during a silent time – perhaps a scissors or peace sign, meaning “I’m really sorry, but I have to listen to the lesson” or “I’m really sorry, but I have to do my work.” If the chatterbox sees the sign and gets back to work, there won’t be a consequence because he or she is showing responsible behavior.

            • Step 3: Teach the consequences. It should be crystal clear what will happen if students violate the norms – from an initial warning to contacting parents and other steps.

            • Step 4: Do it for real. After going through Steps 1-3, teach a lesson and have an independent work period where the class puts it all into practice. “If you’ve taught the expectations in detail,” says Gonzalez, “students should do a good job, but if they don’t, you need to enforce your consequences exactly as you described.” It’s actually helpful if a student steps over the line so you can show that you mean what you say.

            • Step 5: Continue to define expectations in small chunks. Tell students what’s expected of them before any transition in classroom activity. “When you are about to do group work,” she says, “let students know that talking within the group is okay. If you then switch to independent work, remind them that absolute quiet will be expected. Briefly describe what that will look like, even spelling out what not to do if that fits the activity.”

            The key to all this, says Linsin, is prevention: “Anytime you can give a reminder before misbehavior, it’s a good thing. Anytime you give a reminder after you see misbehavior, it’s a bad thing. You should be holding students accountable, but be preemptive whenever you can.”

 

“When Students Won’t Stop Talking” by Jennifer Gonzalez in Cult of Pedagogy, October 8, 2017, https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/student-talking/

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5. How Frequently Should Special-Needs Students’ Reading be Assessed?

            In this article in Exceptional Children, Joseph Jenkins, Margaret Schulze, and Allison Marti (University of Washington) and Allen Harbaugh (Boston University) ask whether it’s desirable for teachers to monitor special-needs students’ reading progress every week, or whether less-frequent monitoring might be as effective. Weekly monitoring is the recommended frequency, the idea being that teachers should use the data to continuously adjust instruction.

But the authors note that many teachers don’t use curriculum-based reading assessments on a weekly basis because of the instructional time taken, the paperwork generated, and their skepticism that oral reading assessments are accurate measures of students’ true reading proficiency. Is teachers’ resistance to weekly monitoring a detriment to student learning, or are teachers on to something when they assess less frequently?

            “Asking this question begs another,” say Jenkins, Schulze, Marti, and Harbaugh, “– what is a reasonable criterion for determining when decision accuracy is high enough, given the inherent trade-offs between identifying ineffective interventions as early as possible and mistakenly abandoning interventions that are indeed effective?”

Their study of grade 2-6 students with high-incidence special needs found that intermittent assessments (about every three weeks) were as effective as weekly monitoring – in some cases more accurate and more helpful to instruction – as long as multiple measures were collected on each occasion. Pending replication of their findings, the authors recommend that teachers be given flexibility to decide the frequency of reading assessments.

 

“Curriculum-Based Measurement of Reading Growth: Weekly Versus Intermittent Progress Monitoring” by Joseph Jenkins, Margaret Schulze, Allison Marti, and Allen Harbaugh in Exceptional Children, October 2017 (Vol. 84, #1, p. 42-54), http://bit.ly/2yafBD7; Jenkins can be reached at [email protected].

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6. Fifteen Websites with Leveled Texts

            In their book, Making Teacher Evaluation Work: A Guide for Literacy Teachers and Leaders (Heinemann 2017), Rachael Gabriel and Sarah Woulfin list online sites that provide leveled reading texts:

-   New York Times Kids Blog: http://www.nytimes.com/section/learning

-   Tween Tribune: http://tweentribune.com/

-   Epic Books: https://www.getepic.com/

-   Kids Discover: http://www.kidsdiscover.com/quick-reads/

-   Common Lit: http://www.commonlit.org/

-   ReadWorks: http://www.readworks.org/

-   Starfall: http://www.starfall.com/n/level-c/index/play.htm?f

-   Breaking News English: http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com

-   For the Teachers: http://www.fortheteachers.org/reading_skills/

-   ThinkCERCA: http://www.thinkcerca.com/

-   NewsELA: https://newsela.com/

-   News in Levels: http://www.newsinlevels.com/

-   Unite for Literacy: http://www.uniteforliteracy.com/

-   Bookbox: https://www.youtube.com/user/bookboxinc

-   Center for the Study of Adult Literacy: http://csal.gsu.edu/content/are-you-learner

 

Making Teacher Evaluation Work: A Guide for Literacy Teachers and Leaders (Heinemann 2017), Rachael Gabriel and Sarah Woulfin (Appendix 3F, p. 127)

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About the Marshall Memo

 


Mission and focus:

This weekly memo is designed to keep principals, teachers, superintendents, and others very well-informed on current research and effective practices in K-12 education. Kim Marshall, drawing on 48 years’ experience as a teacher, principal, central office administrator, consultant, and writer, lightens the load of busy educators by serving as their “designated reader.”

 

To produce the Marshall Memo, Kim subscribes to 60 carefully-chosen publications (see list to the right), sifts through more than a hundred articles each week, and selects 5-10 that have the greatest potential to improve teaching, leadership, and learning. He then writes a brief summary of each article, pulls out several striking quotes, provides e-links to full articles when available, and e-mails the Memo to subscribers every Monday evening (with occasional breaks; there are 50 issues a year).

 

Subscriptions:

Individual subscriptions are $50 for a year. Rates decline steeply for multiple readers within the same organization. See the website for these rates and how to pay by check, credit card, or purchase order.

 

Website:

If you go to http://www.marshallmemo.com you will find detailed information on:

• How to subscribe or renew

• A detailed rationale for the Marshall Memo

• Publications (with a count of articles from each)

• Topics (with a count of articles from each)

• Article selection criteria

• Headlines for all issues

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Subscribers have access to the Members’ Area of the website, which has:

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Core list of publications covered

Those read this week are underlined.

All Things PLC

American Educational Research Journal

American Educator

American Journal of Education

American School Board Journal

AMLE Magazine

ASCA School Counselor

ASCD SmartBrief

District Management Journal

Ed. Magazine

Education Digest

Education Next

Education Update

Education Week

Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis

Educational Horizons

Educational Leadership

Educational Researcher
Edutopia

Elementary School Journal

English Journal

Essential Teacher

Exceptional Children

Go Teach

Harvard Business Review

Harvard Educational Review

Independent School

Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy

Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk (JESPAR)

Kappa Delta Pi Record

Knowledge Quest

Literacy Today

Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School

Middle School Journal

Peabody Journal of Education

Phi Delta Kappan

Principal

Principal Leadership

Principal’s Research Review

Reading Research Quarterly

Responsive Classroom Newsletter

Rethinking Schools

Review of Educational Research

School Administrator

School Library Journal

Teacher

Teachers College Record

Teaching Children Mathematics

Teaching Exceptional Children

The Atlantic

The Chronicle of Higher Education

The Education Gadfly

The Journal of the Learning Sciences

The Language Educator

The Learning Professional (formerly Journal of Staff Development)

The New York Times

The New Yorker

The Reading Teacher

Theory Into Practice

Time Magazine