Chapter 3: Curriculum and Assessment to Improve Teaching and Learning

The part of chapter 3 that stood out to me was the part about the different standards. One of the standards that I found intriguing was the Excellence and Equity standard. I never thought that excellence should be looked at as a standard. This is, of course, if excellence was a relative term. I feel like if, as an educator, I am looking at the cumulative grades on the report card looking for high B's and A's then I am failing my students, but if I was to look at excellence as this student was working at level x in the beginning of the year and is now producing work that is much higher then they have achieved working excellence in my opinion.

Chapter 9: Planning for Block Scheduling

Although the title of chapter 9 is "Planning for Block Scheduling" I felt like it could have been better titled Planning for your Lessons. That is what this whole chapter was about. Yes it did have some parts about planning for a larger block then per usual, but it was very brief. Although I disagreed with the title I did like some of the things Wormeli wrote in this chapter. One of the things that I really liked was the idea about taking attendance while the students are doing something so that you don't delay the lesson. I also liked when they wrote "I want to begin with the end in mind, and assessment is incorporated with instruction." I need to permanently get my mind to go into this mindset. Don't base everything around the finished product without knowing where you are beginning. There was one thing about this chapter that really caught my attention. Under the section titled Inviting Thinking Activity the first line is I have to get them engaged within ninety seconds of entering the classroom. I have never heard this before, but I feel like there is some truth in it. Although it will be really tough to do, I feel that if I can get and hold the students attention from the beginning the rest of the lesson will go smoother.

Chapter 6: Organizing Relationships for Learning

In chapter 6, Organizing Relationships for Learning, Jackson and Davis talk about the different ways to organize large schools to create more intimate learning environments for our young adolescents. The authors suggest many different ways of doing this. These include making houses or "schools-within-school", creating teams, different kinds of scheduling, and advisories. I had heard of all of these before, and have even had one on one experiences with some of them, but I have never heard of houses before. I liked these ideas. I believe with Jackson and Davis when they say that no school should exceed 600 students so that they groupings of students and educators is small enough to "stimulate the development of close, supportive relationships. The "small schools movement" is happening now and I like the idea of it. By opting to restructure a large school into two to four separate, autonomous schools-within-schools there will be a better learning environment.