Thoughts gleaned from

Adolescent Literacy:

Turning Promise into Practice

1. A teacher must create a safe place for the students and educate them. A teacher is essentially “flying blind”, but he or she still cranks up the props each day and takes ‘er up. That’s how you leave no child behind.

2. I, and many teachers, are “digital immigrants” – total newcomers to a world our students feel very comfortable in.

3. The dimensions of understanding: When we understand, we

a. concentrate intensively

b. dwell in ideas

c. struggle for insight

d. manipulate our own thoughts to understand more completely

e. explore as renaissance learners

f. discuss

g. create models to help us remember

h. feel, because our experience is enriched when we have emotional connections

4. Good teachers

a. model how proficient readers frequently reread and rethink

b. show students how readers pick and choose among portions of the text to explore more deeply

c. teach kids about metacognition – thinking about one’s own thinking

d. introduce kids to a more intellectual life

e. engage in regular, lively, individual written correspondence with each student (get a mailbox for the teacher and one for each student) – ten points for completing a letter, zero for not

5. Metacognition involves

a. monitoring for meaning

b. using and creating schemata (??)

c. asking questions

d. determining importance

e. inferring

f. using sensory and emotional images

g. synthesis (creating an evolution of meaning, combining understanding with knowledge from other texts and sources)

(from p. 36)

6. Talking -- we need to make the teaching of discussion a significant part of the curriculum – have serious conversations

7. FLAT WORLD TEACHING (ch. 10 - study this chapter!) – help students become

a. collaborators and orchestrators (USE BACKPACK.COM)

b. synthesizers

c. explainers

d. leveragers

e. adapters

f. green people

g. personalizers

h. localizers

8. The importance of choice (p. 209-)

9. Develop a class blog (wikispaces.com)

10. Encourage student readers and writers to think of themselves as apprentices on their way to becoming experts.

11. Thinking Maps (p. 253)

12. Seven Characteristics of Effective Comprehension Teachers – see p. 279 – very important!