Game Process
Share cards out so everyone gets about the same number.
Decide which cards you agree with and which cards you disagree with.
Try to TRADE those cards you DO NOT agree with for cards you DO agree with.
To Trade: Read the card to the WHOLE GROUP. Everyone can discuss what they think the card means. If someone offers you a card (after discussing it) that you prefer, and they prefer yours, you may mutually swap.
Everyone must have the same number of cards at the beginning of this round as they started with.
*Please DO NOT make a pile of cards the group doesn’t like.
Form pairs.
- Each pair may discard ONE card per pair; the card thepair most dislikes.I will collect this card.
Form two groups at your table.
- From the available statements, select the top five statements you most agree with.
Form one group.
- From the available statements, select the top five.
- The aim of education is to prepare students to be active, responsible citizens who can participate in the global economy.
- Instructional material can have significant impact on learning. Consequently such material should be carefully evaluated by knowledgeable educators.
- Standards, for teaching, should focus on how students learn, not just on what they learn.
- Students have spent too much time making personal connections to texts. Focusing on such connections leads the reader away from the author’s message.
- Learning is the creation and use of knowledge. It is the teacher’s role to impart that knowledge to students.
- Reading is a specialist subject area and, as such, students need instruction from reading specialists.
- Assessment determines students’ competency. Teachers should base their instruction on the assessments students will be given.
- Educators benefit from opportunities to collaborate, share and dialogue ideas across district, county, and state lines. By having common goals and a common language this is more likely to occur.
- Students use language to communicate and learn. Every educator should teach the language of their content area.
- A text is anything that creates meaning for the person interacting with it. It can be print, various media, or even a teacher teaching.
- Students must be able to read a text closely to determine what it says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it. Rather than asking questions about their prior knowledge or experience, they are expected to use evidence from texts to present careful analyses, well-defended claims, and clear information.
- Texts are increasing in complexity. To become independent, the 21st Century learner must learn how to retrieve meaning from text rather than from the teacher.
- The Common Core makes reference to text-based questioning. Students should be discouraged from connecting their experiences to the text as this will not support their use of text-based questioning.
- Project based learning, where students get to demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes with technology are the hallmarks of the 21st Century learner.
- Education has been making texts easier and too accessible to students. Students need to learn intellectual rigor.
- Effective classroom are places students are actively doing authentic work: actively researching, discussing, making, presenting, creating, and discovering. Moreover, they are places where students work collaboratively more often than not.
- Student background knowledge and experiences illuminate text reading but should not replace attention to the text itself. Questions and tasks should require thinking about the text carefully and finding evidence in the text itself to support the response.
- Education is about knowing and using information. Informational texts provide information, therefore students should mainly read informational texts. Consequently classrooms and school libraries should be stocked mainly with informational texts.
- It takes a whole school to educate a student.
- Text dependent questioning is a powerful approach ensures students understand key points and issues. In this approach the teacher directs and prompts students to relevant information and cues.
- Critical thinking is a pivotal skill for the 21st Century learner. Educators must provide multi-media opportunities for this to occur together with effective teaching and demonstrations.
- Books are, and will remain, the main text form for some time. Consequently, educators should focus primarily on this text form.
- A library with full shelves equates to a quality collection.
- Librarians are a pivotal part of a school instructional core. As such, it is essential librarians and classroom teachers plan together for student learning.
- The Common Core considers text complexity to be a critical component. It is the educators’ role to make that complexity accessible to students.
- True learning is about internalizing a process for learning that transfers across all content areas, and inquiry is the process at the center of all true and meaning learning. In a school community, librarians are uniquely, and pivotally, placed to support such learning.
- Effective standards not only tell educators what to teach, they tell them how to teach. This ensures that all learners’ needs are adequately being addressed.
- The emphasis of reading anchor standard 10, asks readers to "read and comprehend complex literary and informational text independently and proficiently". To do this requires a pedagogy focused on "higher order" or "critical" thinking coupled with increasing text complexity and articulation of thinking and understanding. This requires cooperation among ALL educators.
- The Common Core shifts many teachers’ focus from literature appreciation to building information skills. The richness, and complexity, involved in this re-focus requires educators’ knowledge about such texts, how they function, and how to support student learning with them.
- 21st Century learning is about technology and how to use it.
- The role of the school librarian is to lead in building 21st-century skills by collaborating with classroom teachers to design engaging learning tasks that integrate key critical thinking skills, technology and information literacy skills with subject area content. In addition, the school librarian provides a library program that contains multiple instructional avenues and resources in various formats for the authentic application of information literacy skills.
- Effective learning is about the aggregation of discrete skills. The teacher’s role is to point these out to students. The learner’s role is to put these skills together.
- Contemporary texts do not have the rigor, or depth, that traditional well-established texts have. Students should have limited exposure to such texts.
- The role of the library is to collect and showcase fiction and nonfiction books.
- The library is the only classroom in a school that encompasses all curriculum areas and all grade levels.
- Traditionally the librarian was a selector, protector, and preserver of resources. The 21st Century librarian is a discerning cultivator and matchmaker between people and the widely varied resources that match their needs.
- No number of books or librarians will instill literacy in high school students who cannot read.
- 21st Century readers are asked to integrate information from multiple sources and explain relationships between ideas and author’s craft. It is imperative that educators have knowledge and understanding of texts and the learner.
- The CCSS on based on the understanding that growth takes time; it is not the job of a specific grade to achieve all this growth. Librarians and media specialists are ideally positioned to support this spiral curriculum.
- Since most young children hear fiction when they are young, nonfiction texts should not be introduced until at least grade four.
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