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Just Do It, Even if You Really, Really, Don’t Want To
This article, titled The To Motivation: Giving Up, by Olive Burkman, a writer for New York’s The Guardian, resonated with me. The basic idea is that the key to being motivated isn’t psyching yourself...
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Google Apps in Education Conference – Using Tech to Foster Literary Nerddom
I’m spending the weekend at the Google Apps in Education Conference, and it is wild. I consider myself pretty tech savvy, but there’s nothing like a tech conference to break down that illusion pretty...
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Tech and Engagement
I think I have a little bit of a nerd crush on Rushton Hurley and Jim Sills, two of the presenters at the Google Apps for Education summit. Actually, I should probably add Richard deVaul in there too...
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Shifting from Curmudgeons to Readers
In one of her opening lessons on engaging readers, Lucy Calkins writes about how kids have the choice to approach books as “curmudgeons” or to “read like it’s gold.” One of the great things about...
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Using Goodreads to Create a Community of Readers
At the Google Apps for Education Summit last summer, Megan Ellis talked about how she uses Goodreads to create a community of readers and to help her keep track of what her students are reading and...
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Making Envisioning Tangible
My in-laws came to visit this weekend, and we started talking about books. My father-in-law doesn’t visualize when he reads. At all. “I don’t really understand what that means,” he said. Although...
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Fostering Academic Language
Calvin and Hobbes often gets to the heart of what some students are thinking. Take this cartoon, on language: Besides the connects to current verbing trends (google it, xerox it, etc.) the idea that...
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Gender Stereotypes and Disney’s Frozen
Teachers are used to using touchstone texts to teach children–books they go back to over and over again to teach reading skills and strategies. The benefit is that once children know a story very...
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Matching the Reader to the Book
four boys reading, from Google Images My husband is an occasional, sometimes outright reluctant, reader. If he doesn’t really love a book, he’d rather play on his iPhone or troll Reddit for random...
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The Hidden Value of Captain Underpants
Captain Underpants is a series about two fourth grade boys who accidentally hypnotize their cruel principal into becoming the superhero Captain Underpants. The series, criticized for its offensive...
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