Natalie Wexler Quotes

When I die,” goes one internet meme, “I want my group project members to lower me into my grave so they can let me down one last time.

In short, teaching writing is not only inseparable from teaching content, it can also be tantamount to teaching students how to think critically.

For is not a Book the most reliable of Companions--and generally among the most stimulating as well? No need to worry about amusing or pleasing or making a good impression on a Book, when its only purpose is to entertain and, perhaps, instruct. And if it should fail in that purpose, one can merely return it to its shelf, without so much as a by-your-leave and no occasion for anxiety about its wounded Pride, either.

Research has established that one aspect of reading does need to be taught and practiced as a set of skills, much like math: decoding, the part that involves matching sounds to letters. The problem is that the other aspect of reading—comprehension—is also being taught that way. While there’s plenty of evidence that some instruction in some comprehension strategies can be helpful for some children, there’s no reason to believe it can turn struggling readers into accomplished ones.

Students who aren’t reading on grade level by third grade are four times less likely to graduate from high school. If the child is poor, the odds are even worse.

In a fifth-grade unit on Westward Expansion, for example, teachers aren’t supposed to tell kids, “The question we’re going to write about today is how the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 led to settlers moving west.” Instead, they’re advised to say, “Historians write about relationships between events because the past will always have an impact on what unfolds in the future.” Students are encouraged to consider generalities like “what historians might care about that is special to history.” It’s difficult enough for many kids to understand Westward Expansion without also having to think about what historians “might care about”—a directive that is so broad as to be almost meaningless.