Today we chat about a 2008 article in Teaching and Teacher Education- "A Review of Research on the Impact of Professional Learning Communities on Teaching Practice and Student Learning" by Vescio, Ross, & Adams. The article can be accessed here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0742051X07000066
What makes an official PLC? Does the focus have to be academic learning? We share our thoughts in response to this research.

We tackle the issue of effective use of technology in teaching through discussion of Liz Kolb's article Smart Classroom Tech Integration from the Educational Leadership publication.
You can find the article through this link: http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/feb19/vol76/num05/Smart_Classroom-Tech_Integration.aspx

In this episode, Erin Wibbens and I discuss the article What Shall we do about Grit? by Marcus Créde. We unpack the construct of grit and how it is similar to other ideas like persistence and resilience. We explore problems with measuring grit, interventions to improve grit, and why we feel that other constructs have more promise.
The article can be found here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X18801322

Homework might be one of the more contentious issues in education. How much homework should students have? Should homework be graded? For completion or accuracy? In this episode, we share our thoughts on these and other questions as we discuss a chapter on the role and use of homework in school from Tom Schimmer’s book Grading from the Outside In.
The book can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1936763850/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_DPtBCbT3BB9GS

Elementary teachers will be familiar with the tried-and-true practice of assigning students to reading groups and texts based on their demonstrated level of reading ability. But this practice has come under fire in some recent research. In this episode, we discuss the article: “What If ‘Just Right’ Is Just Wrong? The Unintended Consequences of Leveling Readers” by James Hoffman in The Reading Teacher, November/December 2017 (Vol. 71, #3, p. 265-273), http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1002/trtr.1611/full;