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Monthly Archives: August 2006

Reading “Principles of Adolescent Literacy Reform”

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

NCTE published a policy document called NCTE Principles of Adolescent Literacy Reform that takes a hard look at the state of literacy education in the US, and makes recommendations for improvement. The introduction to the report tells us that although reading has been an instructional focus for students in elementary grades, we now see that [...]

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Classroom Operating Manual

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

There is no way to tell everyone on the first day of school – or even the first few days – everything they need to know about “operating” the classroom. I pick the most basic things, managing supplies, using the hall pass, getting lunch, knowing what to do when you come in the room, what [...]

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Blessed are the Irrelevant

Monday, August 28, 2006

Will’s Richardson’s and Miguel Guhlin’s posts today about the rate of uptake for read/write web integration in classrooms suggested a reading of the The Eight Beatitudes. The word irrelevant, that Miguel used, made me think about the benefits of being overlooked and passed by. So, with the help of a thesaurus, I suggest a ninth [...]

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Classroom Fieldnotes Wiki

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Last year I began thinking about how, after so many years of teaching, I should have the beginning of the year figured out. But I don’t. Each year I dig around looking for a file that I call “first week of school” or something. It has informational letters to parents, and it also has beginning [...]

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Outcast Planet

Thursday, August 24, 2006

You never know when you’ll be called upon to speak authoritatively on something you know little about. Fortunately, since I began blogging two years ago, I have experience. I heard a news story on the radio this morning about the demotion of Pluto from its status as a full planet. It is now classified a [...]

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It Finally Happened

Thursday, August 24, 2006

Years ago I told one of my second-grade classes that when one of their own children became a student of mine, it would be my last year teaching. This morning a little 9 year-old boy said to me, “Mr. Noon, you taught my mom when she was in second grade. I spoke too soon.

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Chicken…Egg…Chicken…

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

There is a chicken and egg controversy over at HunBlog about IQ, socioeconomic status, and achievement. Brad Hoge kicked it off with a riff about my post on the likelihood of significant climate change in Hades, and the response he got in his comments confirmed my observation that it won’t happen anytime soon. Brad made [...]

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The Illiteracy Lie

Saturday, August 19, 2006

USAToday published an opinion column written by Colorado’s commissioner of education in which he bashed schools and teachers for causing an “illiteracy crisis” that puts “the fate of our nation in serious peril.” Citing scaredy-cat luminaries Rudolf Flesch and E. D. Hirsch, Commissioner Moloney predicted that the sky will fall on our once-great nation because [...]

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The Community Writing Project

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Last year I put together a website for my 4th graders to publish on. I called it Tell the Raven because we have a totem pole in the schoolyard. Totem poles aren’t normally found in the interior of Alaska. They come from Northwest coastal people. This totem pole was carved by a Tsimpshian carver from [...]

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The Last Day of Summer

Sunday, August 13, 2006

It’s cool and misty outside this morning – the perfect weather for going back to work after a summer off. Summer’s spell has been broken. It’s dark at night again, and steady rain for the last 2 days tells me that the deck may not get refinished after all. I picked up my keys from [...]

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