Category: Classroom Teaching, Critical Exploration, Investigations

Creating Responsive Curriculum

Much curriculum tends to be static: It prescribes what students should notice and what they should think. How can educators create curriculum that changes as students and teachers engage it — curriculum that engages students and all their varied observations and ideas? …

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Category: About, News

2011 Accomplishments

In this school year, “the having of wonderful ideas” is unfolding in a growing number of classrooms. I’m very proud to list all that our organization has accomplished in 2011. …

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Category: Classroom Teaching, Critical Exploration

Objectively Speaking

Conventional wisdom holds that effective teachers write the objective of each lesson on the board before class so that the students are aware of what the teacher intends them to accomplish. …

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Category: Classroom Teaching, Critical Exploration, Programs

Our First Teacher Workshop … in the Participants’ Own Words

Our first, three-day teacher workshop, “Critical Exploration in the Grade 4 – 12 Humanities Classroom:  An Introduction,” held in August, was focused on poetry as well as on history. …

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Category: Forum

A Drawing by the Author of the Will Churn/Marshall Strode Letters

Hi, Steve and I had this drawing ready for the session on looking closely at student work, and if we had had time after talking about the letters, we would have considered it together.  It is also from the Industrial …

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Category: Classroom Teaching, Critical Exploration

The “Real Game” of Research: An Exploratory Project for Middle School

What does it really mean to be a researcher? When we assign students a research project, how can we make the experience as authentic and engaging as possible? …

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Category: Forum

Moonrise video

I saw this on my alma mater’s blog. It’s a link to an article about a film called “life in a day.” The first clip is a video of the moonrise. Though it was neat and wanted to share! Article …

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Category: Critical Exploration, Programs

Introduction to the August Teacher Workshop

In addition to finding interesting materials, Critical Explorers and the people who have inspired it have developed ways of asking questions, listening to and responding to students, and looking at students’ work. …

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Category: Forum

The Moon Project by Sallie Wolf

Since November 30, 1994 I have been watching for the moon, charting it in my journals using symbols I devised myself, and then compiling my data, using my training in art to help me organize the information and frame the …

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Category: Classroom Teaching, Critical Exploration, Investigations

Strategies for Ancient (and Other) History Explorations (Part II)

(Creating Reconstructions) The primary texts of ancient history, even in translation, can be difficult for students to read and comprehend. When writing styles, vocabularies, or cultural references have changed, primary documents only a few centuries or decades old can seem almost as inaccessible. How can we help students make sense of these sources? …

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