So, today was the NJCTE spring conference, and this year one of the attendees was Sarah Gross, who was awarded the Teacher of the Year award. She is a blogger with the NY Times, and when I got home I figured I’d check out her stuff. The most recent post is about Socratic seminars, which is a fancy educator way of saying class discussions. The blog post is here: http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/skills-practice-socratic-seminars-using-informational-text/?smid=fb-share
I just want to let it be known that I TOTALLY DID THIS LAST WEEK BEFORE THIS BLOG POST WAS PUBLISHED! I used the article about the SAT they suggest and we talked about the same quotes they point out and I had my students mark the text and I feel like a badass for doing the same thing as a Teacher of the Year level teacher. Only difference is my guiding question was about the connection of standardized testing and success, not about if it makes sense to overhaul the test to make it more fair.
nerdgirlfromcamelot 