If you scroll all the way down you will find a list of all the categories we have used on our blog. When you click on one of them you will see all the posts that we have written in that category. For example, if you click on “blogging tips” you will see all of the blogging tips that have been posted. Of course this only works if we remember to use those categories when we are writing our posts.

As I was enjoying the sunshine in Mexico (I had a great time; I’m sure everyone was wondering!), I did think about my question a little bit.  What I came to a conclusion about in the limited research I have done so far is that simply implementing differentiating instruction as a whole as a possible way to motivate lower achieving students may be too much.  More of a focus on simply giving students more choice may be the way I should go.  If I find that that works, I might try other methods later.  Please let me know what you all think about that.  Thanks

If you want to post once a week but know that you are going to be out of town one week, no problem. All you have to do is write two posts in one day. Publish one post now by clicking “publish” when you finish writing. Publish the second one next week by clicking on the word “edit” just above the “publish” button and next to the words “publish immediately.” You will be able to choose a date and time to publish your posts. Heck, you can do a month’s worth of posts in one day and we will all be impressed with your blogging frequency.

I found this website thanks to the adolescent literacy discussion board on the NWP site.
www.adlit.org There is a great list of strategies. There are videos of authors. There is a list of research reports. Check it out. I think you will like it. I’m going to add it to our website list so that we can get to it easily.

Did you know that if you click on the tags at the end of the posts, you will see other blog entries on wordpress that have that same tag. Try it out.

My question is still evolving, but I thought I better get something posted. I sat down to post my question yesterday, but when I started typing it I just couldn’t get it right. So, today I sat down and did some more thinking/writing about it. I won’t bore you guys by sharing everything from my journal, but I thought I’d share some of my thinking.

I started by writing

I need to work on my question and et it posted on the blog. I guess I’m still a little overwhelmed by the enormity of my project. I have so many things going on in my life right now it is overwhelming to think about undertaking such a large inquiry project.

I wrote almost a page about how I needed to tackle such a large project. Which led me to write

I need to be prepared for this to take years to complete. As I look at the books and articles I am reading, I realize that people like Carol Ann Tomlinson and Nancy Atwell have been working on the same question/topic for years. I think my question is really something I will be trying to find the answer to for the rest of my life. It isn’t just something I’m going to work for a year and be done. I think what I really want to know is a question of education reform. I think I need to remember to start small. I need to choose a small question for this year, but it should have more to do with what I am passionate about — education reform.

I wrote a little more before getting to these thoughts.

My question is really a question of reform. I don’t want to reform the school, I just want to reform how the school deals with literacy issues. So what is my question? What is necessary for a school to create motivated students? Why is ti so important for students to become readers? How can we use AR to encourage students to become motivated readers?

At this point, I thought I had found my question. So I went back to the question framing exercise on page 37 of The Power of Questions.

How can Accelerated Reader be used to encourage studas a tool for developing self-motivated readers?

Is this question “loaded”? Are there assumptions I have as part of this question?

Yes, the assumption that we want to develop self-motivated readers. Why would that be a problem though?

according to Arhar, Holly & Kasten, 2001 “the stance we take toward our topic is important.” We need to maintain a sense of wonder and curiosity and not a sense of judgement. We want to be able to see the multiple perspectives of the issue so that we won’t be biased in our research.
Really what it is asking is do I think I already know the answer to this question. I do. I have certain assumptions about how AR should be used. Can I be open-minded about this?

At this point I realized that I was asking the wrong question. I already think I know the answer to how AR should be used. I know how I want us to use it at WJHS and we have already worked together to create and implementation plan. I continued to write.

Can a school whose use of AR has been detrimental to had a negative impact on students desire toimpact succeed in using the program to develop self-motivated readers?

That’s it. I have found my question. I think. This is really what I want to know and I have not thoughts about what the answer to this question will be.

I’m feeling much better about my question now. Arhar, Holly and Kasten say, “Maintaining a curiosity throughout the research process is almost a guarantee of success.” I’m feeling like I have found a question I can be curious about. I’m glad I took the time to work through me apprehension. I just couldn’t get anywhere until I figured out how to really answer the question, “Is it ‘loaded’?” I had to be honest with myself and realize that there were assumptions in my other questions.

I’ll finalize my question and subquestions and share with you guys at another time. Right now, I must get to the grocery store so that I can feed my family.

I thought of Greg’s research question yesterday at the Literacy Camp when Dr. Alice Patterson referred to Carol Ann Tomlinson as the Guru of Differentiated Instruction. I had forgotten about it until I was just looking around our blog and noticed that we had a tag for Carol Tomlinson. I had written a post about an article of hers earlier this year. If your research is leading you to look at differentiating instruction, you might want to check out her work. I found this list of her books by doing a google search.

Has anyone ever heard Maria Elena Arguelles speak? I spent today in Nashville at Literacy Camp and really enjoyed her keynote speech. If given the chance to hear her again, I would take it for sure. She was introduced as one of the top presenters in the area of ESL instruction, but I quickly realized that what she had to say could be used by any educator. Here are just a few things that I wrote down to share with you all.

* August & Hakuta, 1997 - research she mentioned concerning high expectations. I didn’t know if it might be helpful to Greg as he researches ways to meet the needs of all his students.

* www.princetonreview.com/vocabminute - everybody is going to want to check out this site. They have great vocabulary songs. You can either download the songs, listen to them right there on the site, or subscribe to the podcasts. The songs are great. The one she played for us was The Silly Hate Song. I think you’ll enjoy it, and many other songs. She reminded us to not just play the songs for our students but to give them an activity to do that will help them connect to it. For example after listening to the hate song she suggested having students think about and write or talk about what someone would have to do to make them feel each kind of hate.

I also heard Dr. Alice Patterson speak. I wrote a few things she said down because I thought of some of your research questions when she said them. She said that last summer she learned there were 3 R’s in education. Rigor, Relevance, Relationships, but that she realized there was a problem with the order. It should be Relationships, Relevance, Rigor because, “When you have the relationships and make the learning relevant the rigor is going to come.” This of course made me think of Greg. She also talked about metacognition and metacognitive strategies. I thought of Brenda and her research in using those metacognitive strategies with secondary students. The quote I wrote down is, ” To be truly literate you are metacognitive.” Also she mentioned a researcher from Univ. of Minnesota who did a lot of work in the areas of metacognition, higher order thinking and good reader strategies. Her name was Ann Brown. A name I was not familiar with and thought would be worth looking up.

After a lot of thinking and examination this week, I have decided that my question for the following year is “How can I incorporate more writing time into my literature classes while making this writing meaningful and engaging for my students?”.  Everything I seem to read says that college and even workplace success is directly related to a person’s ability to write.  In fact, on the way to Martin one morning this week, NPR had a story saying that the SAT board released a statement saying performance on the writing portion of the SAT was a better predictor of potential student success in college than the other portions of the test.  It almost seemed to be a sign that in fact this is what I should be focusing my research on.  As a junior English teacher, I feel that it is my job to prepare my students for college and/or the workplace that awaits them after school.  If in fact future success is directly related to one’s writing skills, then it is my job to prepare  my students for this future.  This means I need to incorporate more writing time into my classes.  However, my reading also seems to support the idea that students must be involved, at least a portion of the time, in meaningful and engaging writing not simply the formulaic writing they are accustomed to finding in their English classes.  While I know this will prove a great challenge for me this year, I am excited to see what impact my current ideas for writing will have on my students and their writing.

I came to the Advanced Institute with the question: how do I effectively implement writing workshop in my classroom so that it incorporates grammar, literature, and the writing process? After doing activities to clarify my plans, I realized that I already have implemented writing workshop. I kept thinking what is my burning question. Finally, I came to the conclusion that my question has evolved to : how do I effectively manage a writing workshop in my classroom?

My goals as of June:

• read literature about managing writing workshop
• evaluate what I have done in previous writing workshops