A place for those who find and create meaning through words
There are times when deadlines, the uncertainty of change, an onslaught of communications, and stress converge, descend upon us suddenly making our lives seem chaotic. Sitting in Rehoboth’s Coffee Mill, I wrapped up an email to a young teacher feeling excited yet overwhelmed by the demands of preparing for a new school year. She felt... Continue Reading →
Author Stephen King believes a good book should engage its reader on different levels, so much so the reader will read the book twice. I found a particularly engaging YouTube video of King addressing a Master's Class at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell in 2012. During part of his presentation, he spoke about how the... Continue Reading →
This is a transcript of the narration for a short video I put together about the World War II Memorial after visiting Washington, D.C. in June of 2017. Visit my Facebook page if you would like to view the video: www.facebook.com/dcwriting.dcooper/. The National World War II Memorial honors the contributions of over sixteen million members of... Continue Reading →
A rubric’s validity is a matter of how trustworthy the grades are it generates. Measures are only as good as the tools providing the measurements, and, if a tool is faulty, we cannot trust the numbers it provides. A ruler can tell us a pencil is six inches unless the ruler’s markings are incorrect. The... Continue Reading →
Proper formatting and the use of citations can be missed easily among all of the mechanical improvements we try to make before releasing our charge to high schools. Teaching students how to create well-formatted final copies, to support claims with quotes and internal citations, and to provide works cited lists can be particularly difficult if not taught... Continue Reading →
This is the transcript of the audio narration for the previous video. My father, a member of the .918 Printing Club, demonstrated graciously how a platten press from the Industrial Revolution was used to create a page of text. ________________________ We’ve all wanted to take hammers to our desktop printers from time-to-time, smash them to... Continue Reading →
What is this activity about? These easy-to-prepare races are great tools for reinforcing kinesthetically the Five Themes of Geography. The five themes are “Location,” “Place,” “Human Environment Interaction,” “Region,” and “Movement.” The Association of American Geographers adopted the Five Themes in 1984, and the themes have been used for decades to help students identify and... Continue Reading →
Students love to view their peers' work, and students can learn quite a bit from structured and purposeful sharing. "Project Walks," sometimes called "Gallery Walks," are great opportunities for students to obtain new ideas and to consider how they can incorporate these new ideas into future work. Direct students to display their projects on desks or... Continue Reading →
Tobie is approximately one hundred and eleven years old. No one really knows his human age, because he is a fifteen and a half year-old dog (human-to-dog-year conversion ratios vary). My wife and I do know Tobie has become quite wise through his life of travel and intense introspection. Here are some of his most poignant... Continue Reading →
My student’s hand shot into the air before I could finish my sentence, and I called upon the jersey-clad, lacrosse-obsessed eighth-grader knowing exactly what his question would be, the same one bouncing within most of my students’ heads, “Do we have to draw, or can we use the internet?” “I want you to draw.” Cue... Continue Reading →
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