Heh, I was just updating the blog on VocabularySpellingCity about the Community Partnership and I thought that I would mention it here.
I was looking at an article called: Community Partnership with Broward County Public Schools
VocabularySpellingCity and Science4Us, a Science Elementary Program are proud community partners of Broward County Public Schools as part of our strategy of giving back to our community on an ongoing basis. The 2014-2015 school year has been full of exciting events, such as the Hour of Code Presentations, STEM Olympiad, Career City at Dillard Elementary, Career Day for the SuperCoders at our headquarters, and the FAT Village Art District Dillard Parade! The article generally recaps 2014-2015's community partnership events.
This year, the blog talks more about general issues in education:
Sunday, November 22, 2015
Saturday, November 21, 2015
Why do teachers say they work for the school board?
I'm perplexed by how many teachers I find who talk about working for the school board. It seems like a weird thing to me.
Realistically, teachers report to their principal. The principals work for the superintendent. The superintendent is selected by the board.
In business, most people when asked who they work for, will either cite their boss or the president/CEO of the company. I've never heard of anyone is business talk about the board of directors as who they work for.
In non profit universities and hospitals, I imagine people work for the dean or president or executive director.
What is it in some parts of the country or some school districts that this language of working for the school board has taken hold? I'm suspicious that it's a load of C***. Specifically, I think it's almost Orwellian in that it highlights the role of a board of frankly amateurs and denigrates the role of the professional superintendent.
Any thoughts anybody? Any insight?
Realistically, teachers report to their principal. The principals work for the superintendent. The superintendent is selected by the board.
In business, most people when asked who they work for, will either cite their boss or the president/CEO of the company. I've never heard of anyone is business talk about the board of directors as who they work for.
In non profit universities and hospitals, I imagine people work for the dean or president or executive director.
What is it in some parts of the country or some school districts that this language of working for the school board has taken hold? I'm suspicious that it's a load of C***. Specifically, I think it's almost Orwellian in that it highlights the role of a board of frankly amateurs and denigrates the role of the professional superintendent.
Any thoughts anybody? Any insight?
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Words Their Way, Reading Programs, and Literacy Curricula
For a long time there's been different approaches to teaching recently. Recently, the Reading Wars have ebbed as most schools settle into a system which relies in large part on classic phonics but for decades before that, the Reading Wars between the Whole Language and Phonics people raged.
Currently the big fights in literacy curriculum have more to do with the increased demands (ie rigor) of the Common Core and how the heck to teach it. Schools are struggling to develop skills at teaching close reading and the ability to do sophisticated synthesis and comparisons between two or even three informational texts.
But in the background, there remains some big disagreements on the role of curriculum, standards, and technology. Some people still believe in and rely on the classic basal readers which provide a recipe and all the materials for each grade level. Reading Street, Journeys, and Wonders reign as leading reading programs. An alternative approach which has had great traction across the country is Words Their Way (now it belongs to Pearson) which has students sorting out sounds and cutting them into little pieces.
These are are very traditional programs in terms of delivery so they often get paired with slick modern technology solutions such as VocabularySpellingCity. Here's a success story on the mechanics of combining Words Their Way with VSC and a research study that talks about how the high effectiveness of pairing VSC with WTW:
Currently the big fights in literacy curriculum have more to do with the increased demands (ie rigor) of the Common Core and how the heck to teach it. Schools are struggling to develop skills at teaching close reading and the ability to do sophisticated synthesis and comparisons between two or even three informational texts.
But in the background, there remains some big disagreements on the role of curriculum, standards, and technology. Some people still believe in and rely on the classic basal readers which provide a recipe and all the materials for each grade level. Reading Street, Journeys, and Wonders reign as leading reading programs. An alternative approach which has had great traction across the country is Words Their Way (now it belongs to Pearson) which has students sorting out sounds and cutting them into little pieces.
These are are very traditional programs in terms of delivery so they often get paired with slick modern technology solutions such as VocabularySpellingCity. Here's a success story on the mechanics of combining Words Their Way with VSC and a research study that talks about how the high effectiveness of pairing VSC with WTW:
VocabularySpellingCity is the only resource we've found that has the capacity to be paired with the Words Their Way approach to accomplish the goals of spelling, phonics and vocabulary instruction,” write Nielsen-Winkelman and West. “As educational technologies emerge and evolve, it is essential to use a critical eye toward the specific tool affordances when making decisions about instructional practice.”
The article, “Improving Word Study — Moving Beyond Paper and Pencil to Transformative Educational Technology,” was published in the June 2015 issue of Literacy Special Interest, the Journal of the International Society for Technology in Education’s (ISTE) Literacy Professional Learning Network, in conjunction with the ISTE 2015 Conference.
Creating A Streamlined Process
Nielsen-Winkelman and West identified six key components for phonics, vocabulary and spelling instructional practices and used them to evaluate VocabularySpellingCity (VSC) and Words Their Way (WTW): (1) systematic instruction, (2) explicit/direct instruction, (3) making connections, (4) repeated exposure, (5) comprehension of material read silently or orally, and (6) oral reading of connected text.
Nielsen-Winkelman and West identified six key components for phonics, vocabulary and spelling instructional practices and used them to evaluate VocabularySpellingCity (VSC) and Words Their Way (WTW): (1) systematic instruction, (2) explicit/direct instruction, (3) making connections, (4) repeated exposure, (5) comprehension of material read silently or orally, and (6) oral reading of connected text.
Credit: Nielsen-Winkelman, Tiffany and West, Lynnea
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