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Research Question: When using priming in the classroom, does the type of prime(in terms of style and content) affect its effectiveness? Priming for teaching is a strategy which previews difficult content or concepts(there are actually 6 variants of priming, but will not be discussed here, as most aren't as applicable in a classroom context.) in order to prepare students to be able to more effectively think when working on those content/concepts later in the lesson. The existence of the phenomena has been known and used in various fields for much of the past decade. It is primarily seen in advertisements, but its usefulness in teaching is only started seeing interest at the end of the 21st century. Currently, most research focuses on conceptual priming, with the major seminal study done by Harris et al. in which food consumption was monitored after a prime was given, one group was given a prime for eating healthily, the other prime looked at snacking as a fun activity. It was fo...
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Writing Well

There is no single skill more important, more powerful in its ability to shake the foundations of our world than the ability to write well. There are several factors that affect peoples inability to see this truth, as they often don't consider the knock-on effects of writing, or the sheer variety of skills that writing well encompasses. Writing well helps us consider, reflect, and organize our thoughts. It lets us write our speeches, revise them, and turn them into powerful orations capable of toppling entire regimes. It helps us remember key details and important facts, learn how to use persuasive appeals, touch the heartstrings of those we so desperately want attention from. It informs and persuades our potential employers, helps us communicate with loved ones on a daily basis, even helps us mend our own souls through reflection. What's most amazing is that writing well is an even more necessary skill in today's global environment. We are competing on a scale never see...
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Classroom context: Ningbo Xiaoshi High School, number 86 ranked public school in China by their dept. of Education. Student backgrounds are native Chinese who have at least conversational English, and are preparing to attend universities in the west in which English is the language of instruction. Economic background is at least middle class, usually upper-class. I am currently teaching Grade 11, DP1 (grade 12), and Extended Essay workshops. I am teaching IBDP1 Language B, which is a synthesis of a literature class and an ESL class. Students still need practice speaking and using a variety of sentence structures, along with the the more basic literature skill-sets of taking notes, annotating, summarizing, interpreting, analyzing, etc. My Philosophy of Reading and Writing instruction: I definitely consider myself a social constructionist, in that meaning is created through social contexts and is developed holistically. As a result, my philosophy is much in the same vei...
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Whole Language Learning

Classroom context: Ningbo Xiaoshi High School, number 86 ranked public school in China by their dept. of Education. Student backgrounds are native Chinese who have at least conversational English, and are preparing to attend universities in the west in which English is the language of instruction. Economic background is at least middle class, usually upper-class. I am currently teaching Grade 11, DP1 (grade 12), and Extended Essay workshops. I am teaching IBDP1 Language B, which is a synthesis of a literature class and an ESL class. Students still need practice speaking and using a variety of sentence structures, along with the the more basic literature skill-sets of taking notes, annotating, summarizing, interpreting, analyzing, etc. Whole language Learning is extremely important, especially in the classes I’m teaching now. Since students are very capable and motivated high level students, they mostly need to simply improve their vocabulary to perform well on their e...
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Teacher Evaluations

There are a few different approaches for teacher evaluations for schools, but two ways are the most common; observations and formative assessment results. The IB school I taught at in Malaysia used the observation method. Once a semester, the HOD would observe one of my classes. The HOD would have a checklist that the school used for all classes tailored to IB classes that had about 17 different points on it. The observation would be done without warning, and after the lesson later that day we would sit down and talk about how it went and the HOD's comments/concerns. There are a few benefits to this type of assessment- it allows the HOD to have her finger on the pulse so to speak of the classroom environment- if students aren't usually organized or used to turn-taking or raising their hands, they won't be able to adapt on the fly, so often an observation can be a very accurate snapshot of the teachers rapport with students and progress in implementing classroom policies ...
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Pre-assessment

The blog is a well-developed and well-written presentation that includes a discussion of the pre-assessment, innovative differentiation strategy, and assessments for tracking learning without grammatical/spelling errors For my DP1 students, we spend one quarter on Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita". In order to get the most out of the students right from the start, I will create a preassessment that can be used in the first week which will allow me to divide the students into three groups.  I have chosen to create a written quiz pre-assessment as it will allow me to understand the depth of student understanding- for example, one of my questions asks about ways to interpret a text. I expect that some students will know we can interpret a text culturally, but most of them won't be able to list more than one or two ways. Those students who have a developed enough understanding of a high concept question like this will undoubtedly be well versed in my more basic questions, wh...
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High stakes assessments are a contentious issue around the world, and for good reason. By definition, a high stakes test requires there to be significant consequences, thus the “high stakes”. The stakes can be broken down into three main areas of effect- on the students, teachers, or schools. For students, they can be used as the determining factor in  graduation, advancement to the next grade level, or placement/qualification for universities(Think SAT, or Gaokao). For teachers, the scores can be used to track teaching- whether they are adequately following the curriculum, whether their teaching is impactful in terms of minorities and other at risk groups, and can even be used to determine salary and raises. For schools, these tests are often used to determine funding, as well as checking for bias; for example the No Child Left Behind Act requires schools to submit minority test scores separately from others to make sure that discrimination isn’t adversely affecting the students....
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