Hello California Educators: Meet Pearson!

2009-10-14T20:22:00.001-07:00

Pearson Literature and
Language Central for California

The top five reasons Pearson makes sense

1. Connected ELD Support ► Language Central: (Program 2) ELD support is available with concepts and skills tied directly back to the core program with a full-color, visual student work text; complete Teacher’s Edition; full kit of digital and ancillary support; and systematic 5-day plans

2. Motivation ► Reality Central: We’re proud to offer a complete set of non-fiction, issue-based articles that align directly to each core selection of the Literature program. Our series of articles act an anticipatory set, provoking student discussion and debate with issues today’s 21st-Century students live, while motivating them to read the connected selection in the anthology.

3. Differentiation ► Paired, Leveled Selections: Pearson offers two paths for your diverse students; one accessible selection and one challenging selection that each focus on the same California standards (reading, writing, grammar, listening, and speaking skills) regardless of which leveled selection was chosen. Teachers and students are given back the power of choice.

4. Instructional Design ► UbD Lead author, Grant Wiggins, promotes the transfer of learning developed through a carefully crafted Big Question. These timeless unit-based Big Questions invite all students to bring their personal backgrounds and experiences into the daily learning process. Pearson remains true to Understanding by Design principals, allowing for teachers to build connections with rich selections, non-fiction pieces, novels, writing, and conventions.

5. Powerful Technology ► PHLitOnline.com: This dynamic, interactive site provides incomparable digital access to content. The online curriculum offers vocabulary support, instant assessments, reporting, and remediation PLUS engaging videos, automatically leveled selections, active grammar, songs, and full audio of each selection.

If you have any questions about Pearson products
please contact Kirk Van Wagoner at 916-764-0074 or kirk.vanwagoner@pearson.com

Meet your Pearson representative and see what's new http://pearsonandyou.blogspot.com/

Give PHLitOnline a Try – Interactive Digital Resources

2009-04-17T20:11:00.000-07:00

For a preview of the new California Literature online materials please go to www.phlitonline.com and enter the following case sensitive Usernames and Passwords

TEACHER USERNAME: onlineaccess
PASSWORD: pearson

Grade 6 USERNAME: 6digital
PASSWORD: explore

Grade 7 USERNAME: 7digital
PASSWORD: explore

Grade 8 USERNAME: 8digital
PASSWORD: explore

Grade 9 USERNAME: 9digital
PASSWORD: explore

Grade 10 USERNAME: 10digital
PASSWORD: explore

Grade 11 USERNAME: 11digital
PASSWORD: explore

Grade 12 USERNAME: 12digital
PASSWORD: explore

What is the “Big Idea” of Understanding by Design (UbD)?

2009-04-17T14:18:00.000-07:00

The Big Idea

Understanding by Design represents a disciplined way of thinking about the design of curriculum, instruction, and assessment. It pulls together many ideas and processes that have been tested both through research and classroom use and proven to give rise to powerful learning experiences that result in deeper understandings of the core facts, concepts, and generalizations, a.k.a., the “Big Ideas”.

Coverage vs. Learning

Understanding by Design provides a way to move from “covering the curriculum” to “ensuring understanding”. The learning is achieved not through hoping that the “teaching” of content yields understanding, but through carefully-designed instruction derived from the specific understandings and applications sought. The work of learning provides students with the opportunity to investigate, play with, test, and verify key concepts to make sense of content.

Think of traditional standards-based instruction as a list of codes used in building . Think of Understanding by Design as the process of bringing that building to fruition. From the blueprints, to the building materials, the tools, the construction, and the learners experince it all - students are connected to the learning.

Understanding by Design emphasizes the use of a backward design process to develop instruction.

Rather than beginning the planning process with activities, materials, or textbook content, backward design begins with identifying the desired long-term results sought.
The question of the desired accomplishments serves as the focal point for the planning
of all curriculum, instruction, and assessment and helps avoid superficial coverage.

What does the “backwards design” of UbD look like?

Implementing the backwards design process includes three stages:
• Stage 1: identify desired results of instruction
• Stage 2: determine acceptable evidence
• Stage 3: plan learning experiences and instruction

Understanding by Design An Overview (Or what happened to the orange cones?)

"To understand a topic or subject is to use knowledge and skill in sophisticated, flexible ways. Knowledge and skill, then, are necessary elements of understanding, but they are not synonymous with understanding. Matters of understanding require more: Students need to make conscious sense and apt use of the knowledge they are learning and the principles underlying it." – Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe

Drills and rote memorization have their place in education, but they do not prepare students for real-life. The Understanding by Design principles challenge students to be critical thinkers, to look for connections, to apply their learing to new situations. Imagine the soccer coach who has prepared his players all week with drills and then watches his team get beat. When he asks his players what happened, they reply that there weren't any orange cones on the field.

Planning the Learning Experience

To achieve both content mastery and “understanding,” a curriculum design must take into account the following goals:

• Engages students in inquiry
• Promotes the transfer of learning
• Provides a conceptual framework for helping students make sense of discrete facts and skills
• Uncovers the “Big Ideas” of the content
• Develops appropriate assessment methods to determine the degree of student understanding,
knowledge, and skills
• Considers student misunderstanding or biases that may interfere with instruction

How Does Pearson Literature Support Understanding by Design?

• Essential questions that open up each unit, chapter, and or lesson
• Customizable teaching, planning, and assessment tools to design the most effective instruction
• Inquiry-based approach to engage students in uncovering the “Big Idea”
• Real-world connections, activities, and inquiries that make material relevant and meaningful
• Pedagogy and content that help students connect key concepts, identify patterns, and predict outcomes to support enduring understanding.
• A variety of authentic assessment options offered throughout the lesson that effectively measure the degree of understanding
• Meaningful extensions to technology

Where can I find more information?

• http://www.grantwiggins.org/ubd.html Links to a variety of valuable resources.
• Publications can be purchased via http://www.ascd.org/

Glossary of Terms

Authentic assessment task: A task designed to simulate or replicate important, real-world challenges, such as asking a student to use knowledge in contexts where the purposes, audiences, and situational variables are genuine.

Backward design: A process for designing a curriculum or unit by beginning with the end in mind and designing toward that end.

Big ideas: The core concepts, principles, theories, and processes that should serve as the focal point of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.

Enduring understandings: The important ideas or core processes that have lasting value beyond the classroom.

Essential question: A provocative question designed to engage student interest and guide inquiry into the important ideas in a field of study.

Facets of understanding: The six different kinds of understanding identified in Understanding by Design: explanation, interpretation, application, perspective, empathy, and self-knowledge.

The definitions are adapted from the Glossary contained in The Understanding by Design Handbook (Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe), 1999, pp. 273-283.

Pearson Launches Powerful Online Essay Scorer

2009-03-26T13:38:00.000-07:00

Pearson's new Online Essay Scorer powered with WriteToLearn technologies is an important component of the new California Literature program.

WriteToLearn is a complete writing skills and reading comprehension development tool.

WriteToLearn combines the simplicity of Knowledge Technologies' (KT) and the depth of KT's Intelligent Essay Assessor™ into one Web-based product that allows educators to evaluate and teach both writing skills and reading comprehension.

WriteToLearn is based on the KAT™ engine, which uses a proprietary application of the mathematical approach known as Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). The KAT engine is a unique automated assessment technology for written language that evaluates the meaning of text, not simply grammatical correctness, spelling or other surface elements.

WriteToLearn provides at-a-glance reporting for students and teachers about assignments and progress via easy-to-understand, visually appealing tutorial feedback and status reports. Teachers have flexible scoring options through adjustable passing thresholds and the ability to hide one or more areas of scoring feedback so students can focus on specific areas.
WriteToLearn also offers assignment flexibility thanks to a wide variety of essay prompts and readings to be summarized (identified by subject and grade level) with different scoring options for different classes.

From a single-screen visual scoreboard, teachers can view classes, assignments and progress. And WriteToLearn provides easy drill down to student score detail and writing portfolios.

Click on the following link for a demonstration:

http://www.essayscorer.com/ph/demo

You think English is easy???

2009-03-20T17:17:00.000-07:00

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass head was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham?

If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, two geese. So one moose, two meese?

If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all.

This Month's Big Question (February)

2009-02-05T16:21:00.001-08:00

What role should TECHNOLOGY play in education?

All eligible responders will be entered in a monthly drawing to recieve a collection of the top 25 novels for middle school or high school students. Click below to respond. Then please create a blogger account and respond with your name, school, and city.

5 Reasons to Consider Pearson Literature

2009-02-05T16:07:00.000-08:00

1. Understanding by Design: Grant Wiggins promotes the transfer of learning developed through a carefully crafted Big Question. These timeless unit-based Big Questions invite all students to bring their personal backgrounds and experiences into the daily learning process. Pearson remains true to Understanding by Design principals, allowing for teachers to build connections with rich selections, non-fiction pieces, novels, writing, and conventions.

2. Paired, Leveled Selections: Pearson offers choice for your diverse students; one more accessible selection and one more challenging selection that each focus on the same California standards (reading, writing, grammar, listening, and speaking skills) regardless of which leveled selection was chosen. The way Pearson Literature organizes its selections allows for true differentiation to take place whole class or in small groups. Teachers are given back the power of choice.

3. Reality Central: We’re proud to offer a complete set of non-fiction, issue-based articles that align directly to each core selection of the Literature program. Our series of articles act an an anticipatory set, provoking student discussion and debate with issues today’s 21st-Century students live, while motivating them to read the connected selection in the anthology.

4. Language Central: (Program II) ELD support is available with direct concept and skill alignment to the core program with a full-color, visual student work text; complete Teacher’s Edition; full kit of digital and ancillary support; and systematic 5-day plans.

5. PHLitOnline.com: This dynamic, interactive site contains all print and activity-based materials PLUS engaging videos, animations, interactive practice activities, songs, and full audio.

BILL OF RIGHTS for English Language Learners

2009-01-31T12:18:00.000-08:00

More than 25 percent of California’s school students speak English as their second language – and that number is rising every day. That’s an estimated 1.6 million students from kindergarten through high school who speak more than 100 different languages, many with multiple dialects.

So it’s imperative that as a society, we develop a common code and understanding of the challenges for these students in their efforts to master English at the same time they are learning their core subjects. To help focus public attention on the needs of this booming California student population, Pearson has announced a “Bill of Rights for English Learners” containing seven guiding principles:

English Learners benefit from a learning environment in which they feel respected, safe and secure;

English Learners should be treated equitably in terms of time spent meeting their individual needs;

English Learners benefi t from focused instruction from teachers who have specialized training and understanding necessary to effectively teach students whose fi rst language is not English;

English Learners benefi t from curriculum and instructional materials that are: academically challenging, possess age-appropriate content, and include subject matter that is at grade level;

English Learners benefit from access to instructional materials that make the necessary accommodations for the varying levels of English proficiency;

English Learners benefit from being taught in a way that allows them to transfer and apply knowledge of their culture and native language to the study of English;

English Learners benefit from attending schools with the resources and expertise necessary to meet their needs.

These principles will assist California and its dedicated principals, teachers, and parents in meeting the challenges of educating the nation’s most ethnically and linguistically diverse student population.

This Month's Big Question (November - December)

2008-11-17T13:58:00.000-08:00

What CHALLENGES are faced in teaching language arts to the modern student?

All eligible responders will be entered in a monthly drawing to recieve a collection of the top 25 novels for middle school or high school students.

Click below to respond. Then please create a blogger account and respond with your name, school, and city.

Boys & Reading

2008-11-11T14:56:00.000-08:00

As the father of a four year-old boy and a former 7th grade language arts teacher, I have become concerned about an alarming trend that has developed regarding our children’s reading abilities.

The U.S. Department of Education reading tests for the last 30 years show boys scoring worse than girls in every age group, every year:
• Eighth grade boys are 50 percent more likely to be held back than girls.
• Two-thirds of Special Education Students in high school are boys.
• Overall college enrollment is higher for girls than boys.

WHY ARE BOYS UNDERPERFORMING?

Jon Scieszka, author of children’s books such as The Stinky Cheese Man and the Time Warp Trio series, believes that boys are slower to develop than girls biologically and therefore often have early struggles with reading and writing skills. On his website www.guysread.com, he also says that the male way of learning, which tends to be action oriented and competitive, works against boys in many classrooms.

“Boys like to read for a purpose, to find out how to do things, like how to build a dirt bike or skateboard. That’s just not encouraged enough,” Scieszka says. “Nonfiction reading is reading. Magazines, newspapers, websites, biographies, science books, comic books, graphic novels are all reading material, he adds.

• Boys generally take longer than girls to develop comparable literacy skills. What is considered a grade level appropriate reading skill for a girl cannot always be considered the same for a boy.

• Boys generally need more instructional time than girls do. In the larger, time limited classes of middle and high school teachers are unable to give boys as much one-on-one time. Therefore, they do not make as much progress in reading as girls do.

• Boys of all ages generally read less than girls.

• Middle school aged boys indicate that they believe reading is much harder than it was in elementary school.

• Boys claim reading becomes less enjoyable as they become older.

• Many adolescent boys fail to see real life applications in what they read. Literature read in Language Arts classes tells “stories” rather than providing useful information. Some boys stop reading because they think there is no practical value in reading.

• As they reach adolescence more and more boys stop considering themselves readers. Research on the reading attitudes of middle school boys shows that many consider themselves “non-readers”.

• Reading is sometimes stereotyped as a “feminine” activity. When boys reach adolescence their gender identification becomes more important. If they believe reading is not a masculine activity, they will abandon it in order to demonstrate their masculinity.

BOYS & READING IN THE NEWS
The following provides some links to recent news coverage on the topic of boys and reading:

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Family Education Network: www.fen.com
Guys Read: www.guysread.com

GREAT BOOKS FOR BOYS

2008-11-10T18:03:00.000-08:00

Here’s a recommended reading list for boys taken from the Family Education Network http://school.familyeducation.com/reading/fiction/37734.html Parents and teachers should review the books to make sure they are age appropriate.

Night Driving, by John Coy
As father and son drive into the night, they watch the sunset, talk
about baseball, sing cowboy songs, and even change a flat tire before
pitching camp at daybreak.

The Stories Julian Tells, by Ann Cameron
Julian, that quick fibber and wishful thinker, is great at telling stories. He
can make people – especially his younger brother, Huey – believe just
about anything. But some stories can get you into a pack of trouble,
and that’s exactly where Julian and Huey find themselves all too often.

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, by Jon Scieszka
Wonderfully quirky, this book breathes new life into traditional children’s
stories. In these irreverent variations on well-known themes, the ugly
duckling grows up to be an ugly duck, and the princess who kisses the
frog wins only a mouthful of amphibian slime!

The Stupids Step Out, by Harry Allard
The Stupid family and their dog Kitty have a fun-filled day doing
ridiculous things.

The Adventures of Captain Underpants, by Dav Pilkey
When George and Harold hypnotize their principal into thinking he’s
the superhero Captain Underpants, he leads them to the lair of the
nefarious Dr. Diaper, where they must defeat his evil robot henchmen.

Holes, by Louis Sachar
As further evidence of his family’s bad fortune (which started with
a curse on a distant relative), Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish
correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend,
a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, by J. K. Rowling
Rescued from the outrageous neglect of his aunt and uncle, a young
boy with a great destiny proves his worth while attending Hogwarts
School for Wizards and Witches.

My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George
A young boy relates his adventures during the year he spends
living alone in the Catskill Mountains, including his struggle for
survival, his dependence on nature, his animal friends, and his ultimate
realization that he needs human companionship.

There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom, by Louis Sachar
An unmanageable, but lovable, 11-year-old misfit learns to believe in
himself when he gets to know the new school counselor, who is a sort
of misfit, too.

Encyclopedia Brown, by Donald J. Sobol
Whenever ten-year-old Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown’s father, the Chief
of Police of Idaville, had a difficult case, Encyclopedia always managed
to solve it at the dinner table. So, he decided to open his own detective
agency.

James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl
For young James Henry Trotter, life with the exceedingly nasty Aunt
Sponge and Aunt Spiker is pure misery. James dreams of a better life,
but he’s totally unprepared for the wild adventures ahead when he
drops the magic crystals he receives from a strange old man. Before
long, James is off on a weird, wonderful journey inside a giant peach
with a bizarre group of companions!

Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen
After a plane crash, 13-year-old Brian spends 54 days in the wilderness,
learning to survive with only the aid of a hatchet given him by his
mother – and learning to survive his parents’ divorce.

Crash, by Jerry Spinelli
Seventh-grader John “Crash” Coogan has
always been comfortable with his tough,
aggressive behavior, until his relationship
with an unusual Quaker boy and his
grandfather’s stroke make him consider
the meaning of friendship and the
importance of family.

Welcome!

2008-11-08T14:00:00.000-08:00

With all means of a warm and friendly greeting, I take pleasure in welcoming all visitors –educators, colleagues, family, and friends – to my new web log. As a representative of Pearson Education I am eager to participate in educational discussions.

This page has been launched with the objective of providing information and discussions in arenas concerning educational needs, professional development, and trends in learning with a focus on reading instruction.

Furthermore, the site will offer information about product availability, new educational technologies, universal access strategies, and lesson planning. I thank you in advance for your valuable contributions to this post.

Kirk Van Wagoner

kirk.vanwagoner@pearson.com