Daniel Kliger

@smorrisey Now amusing myself by reading this using the vernacular “cat” as meaning “guy” or “friend”

@idkknowitall I would say Red is most likely a general contractor and he isn't like the this guys other friends.

A real question from a student's adaptive reading screener today. No idea what the correct answer was supposed to be or what the question is intended to assess. My cat Red is not like other cats. He likes to make houses. We live in a house he made. Red is a ________.

@tetheredtoed1 @smorrisey STAR by Renaissance

@smorrisey @idkknowitall Which screener??

@Suchmo83 @SoRclassroom @DTWillingham @markseidenberg and math instruction tends to have this problem too, interestingly. It's as if we are insufficiently convinced by kids doing something as evidence that they have learned it. We need them to explain it back to us. Not sure where that comes from at its root

@Suchmo83 @SoRclassroom @DTWillingham @markseidenberg partly not the thing itself but an emphasis on kid's explaining it. I think it's fine for us to say, "this is an open syllable; that's why there's this sound," and make sure they can spell/read it. It's when we ask kids to explain/analyze that we start to risk wasting time.

It's not the case that children with dyslexia need identical instruction as typically developing kids, just a higher dose: @markseidenberg explains seidenbergreading.net/blog/oexqqvuvp…

@Suchmo83 @DTWillingham @markseidenberg tbqh I suspect he really wants to argue that some things are being explicitly taught to all students that should be taught to *none*, but that such a claim alarms some people who, rightly or wrongly, believe those precise things were critical to their child's success as a reader.

@DTWillingham @markseidenberg That was a very long thread, so here is the simple version: Is Seidenberg right that there are aspects of instruction that are only necessary for some pupils? Yes Is dyslexic/non-dyslexic a productive binary for deciding who benefits from these aspects of instruction? No

@MrZachG Why does she lend her name to I-ready’s terrible “phonics” workbooks?

If you were having dinner with Anita Archer tonight, what you ask her?

one of these is a professionally published curricular text for second graders marketed as "HQIM" and one is the same text fed through a LLM once with instructions to improve the writing. Whole books or not, could we start with good writing?

@MrLandesman I think @Mr_Raichura has written/spoke about this particular benefit of All Hands Up as well, but one thing I like about it is how it allows you to delay deciding the means of participation

Cold calling, mini whiteboards, and choral response, is there a time to use each strategy, or is one better for whole class participation?

@smorrisey you can take that to the bank!

And we just began learning about rivers so the dam puns are going to be epic.

I start off the school day with a "dad" joke/pun. After I say it, one of my students (always with a HUGE smile on his face) looks at me and says this exact line. "It gets better EVERY DAY!" I love starting my day off this way. He appears to love it too. 5th grade is the best!

@eduleadership A lot of the most popular published curricula are rife with stuff that is unrelated to grade level standards. Sometimes teachers are modifying programs for good reasons

For a deep dive on one aspect of this argument, see Timothy Shanahan’s new book Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives. amazon.com/Leveled-Readin…

A strong curriculum with a clear scope and sequence is especially important for elementary, where exceptionalism runs rampant. People tend to think their students are somehow different from all others and need something bespoke, rather than proven. No!

@kylascan only one crane sighting? sorry this must have been so depressing

Walked 10 miles around Prague

@smorrisey @SoRclassroom It might be a difference between the ELA materials and the social studies ones. I think most schools are really only using the CKLA ones published/packaged by Amplify.

@idkknowitall @SoRclassroom I think the grade 3 CK unit on Rivers does a better job of this because the whole chapter revolves around Rivers.

E.D. Hirsch was the first guy to say your car should have three tires on it when everyone was driving around with two.

@SoRclassroom Teaching kids any knowledge is enough of an improvement over not doing it at all that it's going to be generally difficult to understand how poorly "HQIM" do it.

@SoRclassroom "China" is not a useful organizing principle because it is not a principle and the kids cannot reuse that structure for any other topic (and because it is not a structure).