Webinar on common core standards

New times require new approaches to education and greater attention to building the teaching profession. On July 17, 2010, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) released new “model core teaching standards” for public comment. The model core teaching standards are an initial effort to articulate—through the lens of the teacher—what effective teaching and learning would look like to ensure all learners are college and career ready. Unlike the original teacher standards, which focus on the assessment and support of beginning teachers, the new core teaching standards are standards of professional practice for all teachers. 

These model core teaching standards represent a new vision of teaching with increased focus on twenty-first-century knowledge and skills, personalized learning, a collaborative professional culture, improved assessment literacy, and new roles for teachers and administrators. In order to deliver a first-rate education to every child, policy leaders and educators must engage in the process of first defining effective teaching practice and then shaping policies based on a consistent vision of quality teaching.   

To learn more about the model core teaching standards and their potential for improving teacher effectiveness, join the Alliance and CCSSO for an interactive webinar on Wednesday, October 6 from 2:00 – 3:00 pm (EST). The webinar will also include a question and answer period to address questions submitted by viewers across the nation.   The draft core teaching standards are open for public comment until October 15, 2010. To download the new standards and submit comments, go to [ http://www.ccsso.org/Resources/Programs/Interstate_Teacher_Assessment_Consortium_(InTASC).html ]http://www.ccsso.org/intasc.

To register for the webinar and/or submit questions, click here.

Reading and writiing work

BROCKTON, Mass. — A decade ago, Brockton High School was a case study in failure. Teachers and administrators often voiced the unofficial school motto in hallway chitchat: students have a right to fail if they want. And many of them did — only a quarter of the students passed statewide exams. One in three dropped out.

Then Susan Szachowicz and a handful of fellow teachers decided to take action. They persuaded administrators to let them organize a schoolwide campaign that involved reading and writing lessons into every class in all subjects, including gym.

Their efforts paid off quickly. In 2001 testing, more students passed the state tests after failing the year before than at any other school in Massachusetts. The gains continued. This year and last, Brockton outperformed 90 percent of Massachusetts high schools. And its turnaround is getting new attention in a report, “How High Schools Become Exemplary,” published last month by Ronald F. Ferguson, an economist at Harvard who researches the minority achievement gap. (Sam Dillon at NYT)

Follow the above linked text to read more. To download and read the report, How High Schools Become Exemplary, click here.

UND President Robert Kelley's reading tomorrow is postponed. Check back at this blog soon for an update.

Important event this week

         UND President Robert Kelley will read for Literary Lunches   
                          first lunch only September 30, 2010. 

Getting organized

LiveBinders is a terrific online tool for compiling and organizing information from the Internet and your desktop. Instead of bookmarking sites, you use LiveBinders for putting material in an online binder that you can share through a variety of platforms. You also have the option to make your binder(s) private, so that it cannot be shared.

Below is an example of  LiveBinder...about using LiveBinders. Click on the binder to explore it.

LiveBinders Tips and Tricks

Barrington Bunny's story

"A good story keeps working on you," Pastor Roger Dykstra told yesterday's literary lunch-goers, and the story he read, Barrington Bunny, certainly did just that.

Dykstra, the lead pastor at Calvary Lutheran Church in Grand Forks, read this seemingly simple Martin Bell story--one he first heard as high school student---about a bunny in search of companionship on Christmas Eve. Barrington, the lone bunny in the forest, searches for a Christmas party. He's unable to find a party he can join and is about to lose hope when a wolf explains to him that all the animals in the forest are his family, something that prompts him to find unique gifts for the other animals.

Spoiler Alert: After Dykstra finished the story, he joked that it took him "eight times to read before he could read it without crying." Certainly there were no tears from anyone you'd know at Literary Lunches yesterday.  ;)

Dykstra said something about Barrington Bunny that will keep "working on"  those who heard him: "I believe that sometimes you being you is exactly what the world needs."

Lunch and re-thinking what we think we know

At yesterday's session of Literary Lunches, Tori Johnson, director of special education for Grand Forks Public Schools, read from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon, a book whose narrator is Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15-year-old boy with autism. She prefaced her reading by not only talking how some people with autism have difficulty reading facial expressions, but also by saying, "When you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism."

In Johnson's selection, Boone discovers the corpse of a dog on a pitch fork. The police arrive. It's then we get a glimpse into Boone, who notices even the slightest detail about the police.

Johnson also read an excerpt from The Last Lecture by the late Randy Rausch. The excerpt candidly focuses on how whining doesn't help people. And Johnson concluded with work by the poet Maya Angelou.

The Big Read is on the horizon

"We are so pleased to host a Big Read in Grand Forks,” said Wendy Wendt, director of the Grand Forks Public Library. “Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried is a fictionalized memoir of an infantry soldier as his platoon trudges through the jungles of Vietnam. We chose this book because of its potential appeal to those who may not have a habit of reading books for recreation. We also thought the strong armed forces presence in the greater Grand Forks area would afford many community members a story in which they could identify – veterans, active duty military, and their family members. In addition, people who have never been personally affected by military service gain some small insight into the sacrifices made for this country by reading this book.”

Grand Forks Big Read community partners include the Grand Force Air Force Base, the Grand Forks Public School District, Northland Community College, and UND, which will be bringing the author, Tim O’Brien to the community on Oct. 14 and 15. Other community participants include the arts community, the Myra Museum, Turtle River State Park and many others. (text from University Letter, University of North Dakota Faculty/Staff Newsletter online)

The word of the week for September 20-24, 2010 is...

Reading the classics

Friday's installment of Literary Lunches featured the words of Harper Lee's famous character Scout spoken by WDAZ news reporter Brady Mallory. Scout is the narrator of  Lee's classic To Kill A Mockingbird.

Mallory's excerpted the following: When Mrs Dubose insults Atticus Finch, his son Jem destroys her camelias. Dubose demands retribution in the form of Jem coming to read to her every day. Jem is only released from reading each day when Dubose's alarm clock rings. Unbeknownst to Jem, every day she sets the alarm to go off a few minutes later than it did the day before, thus extending the reading time. When Dubose dies a few months later, Jem learns that she had been using this reading time to distract her mind while she weaned herself off morphine, so she could die free and clear, beholden to no one nor anything. Jem learns that even though he thought he was only working off his punishment, he was, in fact, doing a great service to Dubose.

The Big Read, a month of activities, speakers and performances to encourage and celebrate reading, will kick off Monday [today]with a party that will give away copies of The Big Read’s focus book, “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien.
The event launch will be from 3 to 4 p.m. Monday on the sixth floor of the Grand Forks County Building in downtown Grand Forks. The Big Read is sponsored by the Grand Forks Public Library and other community organizations.
“The kickoff event on Sept. 20 will be an opportunity to learn more about the Big Read and pick up a free copy of ‘The Things They Carried,’” Wendy Wendt, director of the Grand Forks Public Library, said in a news release. (from The Grand Forks Herald)

For more on O'Brien and The Things They Carried, click here.

Dahlstrom celebrates poetry through the work of Billy Collins

At yesterday's installment of Literary Lunches, retired Grand Forks Central English teacher Carol Dahlstrom read poetry by former United States Poet Laureate Billy Collins, who instituted the Poetry 180 Project at the Library of Congress.

Dahlstrom explained that she choose to read poetry because, as a teacher, she found poetry challenging to teach because students had a hard time understanding ir. She read Collins' work (Nostalgia; You, Reader; Genius and The Names) because his work is accessible and also because he is reading at Moorhead State University, Moorhead September 23, 2010. The Names was commissioned by the United States Congress to commemorate 9/11. Collins has stated he will never publish the poem in a collection nor read it aloud again. (He read it to Congress September 6, 2002)

Dahlstrom shared the following advice to students writing poems or compositions: "Write about something everyday...it doesn't have to be momentous."

Today's reader is Brady Mallory of WDAZ News.

Do you have the cash for this tome?

Billed as the world's most expensive book, a rare copy of John James Audubon's Birds of America is scheduled to go on sale at Sotheby's this December, according to a BBC News report. Only 119 copies exist of the 19-century book, which contains 1,000 life-sized illustrations of almost 500 breeds of birds, and most copies are owned by museums and libraries. A separate edition of this book sold for a record-breaking price of $8.8 million a decade ago. (from the International Reading Association website)

On an unrelated note: Today's Literary Lunches reader is retired Grand Forks Central English teacher Carol Dahlstrom.

Marilyn Hagerty: 'Reading and writing go hand in hand'

Grand Forks Herald columnist Marilyn Hagerty demonstrated just that yesterday at Literary Lunches when she read the writing of her son as well as her own work. She shared emails from her son Bob Hagerty, a writer for the Wall Street Journal, in which he described the penchant he had as a youth for Mad Magazine, something he didn't necessarily have for some of the literature in school. Yet he wrote his mother that, "Parents should not worry so much about what their kids are reading, just [so] they are reading."

Hagerty emphasized the importance for students in their busy lives "to stop and think about literature.....that will enrich our lives." Before reading her own work, she recommended Ernie Pyle's War, for its description of war like no other, and Jon Hassler's The Dean's List.  

Hagerty read from her own work Echoes, a collection of her Herald columns. She read about a man who mistook tulip bulbs for onions as well as about a gathering of Donna's. When Hagerty asked students if they knew anyone named Donna, senior Justin Fischer replied, "I know a Prima donna."

To keep up with the Literary Lunches schedule, click on the Literary Lunches tab at the top of the blog. Biographies for readers are being added to the schedule. A special thanks to Katie DeLong's Grand Forks Central Interventions students, who are helping create those biographies.

Literary Lunches kick-off: a young football star

Not only did UND football co-captain and Grand Forks Central graduate Ryan Kasowski kick off Literary Lunches yesterday by reading an aptly chosen book, A Football Alphabet: T is for Touchdown by Brad Herzog, he also talked about balancing the demands of being a student and an athlete. He told that audience of GFC students and teachers that he, like all the players on the football team, is a student before he's an athlete.

Kasowski fielded questions about the differences between high school and college sports and academics, as well as the demands of his schedule. He stressed that, with determination, he's able to keep up and that it's all worth the work when he gets out on the field to play football in front of fans. And he spoke of books that are important to him, recommending Tony Dungy's books, in particular Quiet Strength, The Principles, Practices, & Priorities of a Winning Life.

Today's Literary Lunch celebrity reader is Marilyn Hagerty, columnist for the Grand Forks Herald.

We are LIVE today

The Grand Forks Central Literacy Committee members welcome you to our blog, officially LIVE today. The committee is working hard with teachers, administration, staff, and students to help students at Grand Forks Central High School become more literate.

We've got programs up and running as well as works in progress. One of our programs, Literary Lunches, begins today. Students will have the chance to eat lunch and listen to area celebrities read selections from works they've chosen.  Today's reader, Ryan Kasowski, is a co-captain of the University of North Dakota's football team and a Grand Forks Central graduate. The schedule of each week's readers is in this blog's sidebar.

Since the beginning of the 2010-2011 school year, we've had a word of the week. Each week's word is showcased in a Wordle poster; those posters are displayed in the building. Again, check out the sidebar. You'll find there a slideshow of our words.

Another Wordle update

Grand Forks Central's word of the week for September 7-10, 2010 is RESPONSIBILITY, one of the Character Education words that are part of the Grand Forks Public School District's Character Education program.

FYI: Wordles for words of the week will appear in a slideshow on the sidebar of this blog.

Watch for Wordles

To increase student awareness of vocabulary and to have fun, Grand Forks Central is featuring a word a week. This words will appear with some of their synonyms on posters throughout the school.

The word for the week of August 30 to September 6, 2010 was INFER. (Check out the Wordle above)

If you want to know more about Wordle, click here.

Look for material soon

Look for material soon