Teaching Unscripted

By Heinemann PublishingEducation How To Courses

Teaching Unscripted episodes

January 20, 2017 Writing the 4th Edition of Making The Journey
It’s not often your favorite author asks you to co-write their next book, but that’s exactly what happened to Ken Lindblom when he met Leila Christenbury at a NCTE lunch a couple of years ago. Ken was telling Leila how influential her book, Making the Journey, had been to him as he started his teaching career and then to his education students. Leila suggested that with the right partner a new edition might be possible and from there, the duo teamed up. Listen as Leila and Ken offer up timeless advice, humorous anecdotes, and stories of successes and failures in the classroom that they have infused into the 4th edition of Making the Journey. They instill confidence in soon-to-be English teachers, and that’s where we started our conversation.
Copyright Heinemann Publishing 2017
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
30 min
January 20, 2017 The Heinemann Podcast: Writing the 4th Edition of Making The Journey

It’s not often your favorite author asks you to co-write their next book, but that’s exactly what happened to Ken Lindblom when he met Leila Christenbury at a NCTE lunch a couple of years ago. Ken was telling Leila how influential her book, Making the Journey, had been to him as he started his teaching career and then to his education students. Leila suggested that with the right partner a new edition might be possible and from there, the duo teamed up. Listen as Leila and Ken offer up timeless advice, humorous anecdotes, and stories of successes and failures in the classroom that they have infused into the 4th edition of Making the Journey. They instill confidence in soon-to-be English teachers, and that’s where we started our conversation.

See below for the full transcript of this podcast:

Brett:              What would you say are some of the biggest changes you've seen in teacher education programs since the previous edition of Making the Journey?

Leila C.:                       I think one of the biggest changes is the presence of media. We’ve certainly seen media’s power and changing platforms for a long while. In the year since the third edition and the fourth edition, media has truly exploded. The use of Twitter, the use of social media, entrance into schools, into the curriculum has really been something that I don’t think any of us anticipated, and I don’t think it’s represented, it couldn’t be represented in the third edition. I think it is represented in the fourth edition.

                                    I certainly would say that one of the best things about the fourth edition is Ken’s presence, because this is an area with which he’s very comfortable. I think the parts in the fourth edition of Making the Journey that Ken has written really provide a lot of support for teachers, and also really make clear the context of social media and media in teacher preparation, and also for novice teachers. I do.

Ken Lindblom:              Leila, you’re exactly right, especially about the platforms. It wasn’t that long ago that texting was brand-new and seemed like a passing fad frankly. Teachers were most worried about the fact that texting language was interfering with the way the students were using standardized English. That was an enormous fight that we barely hear anymore. Then Twitter, and Facebook really started to change the way that students talk to each other. Snapchat, Instagram-

Leila C.:                       Tumblr.

Ken Lindblom:              Right, Tumblr, the blogging program. There is a lot of ways that students are talking to each other now. Powerful, important ways that have impact, and now it’s well beyond young people. Now it’s the entire globe speaking to each other using these platforms, and they’re very different in terms of the kind of information that people share with them, the amount of information they can share, the linking possibilities,
30 min
January 13, 2017 Choice Time with Renée Dinnerstein
How do you define play and choice time in early childhood classrooms? According to Renée Dinnerstein, play is an engine that drives learning. She writes, "during choice time, children choose to play in a variety of centers that have been carefully designed and equipped to scaffold children’s natural instinct for play.” In her book Choice Time, Renée gives us everything we need to set up choice-time centers that promote inquiry-based, guided play in a classroom. Renée also summarizes the research, describing the different kinds of play and why they are important. She says by giving your students choice time, and allowing them to engage in joyful, important, playful, age-appropriate work will empower them to become lifelong learners.
We started our conversation on the different kinds of play...
Copyright Heinemann Publishing 2017
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
14 min
January 13, 2017 The Heinemann Podcast: Choice Time

How do you define play and choice time in early childhood classrooms? According to Renée Dinnerstein, play is an engine that drives learning. She writes, "during choice time, children choose to play in a variety of centers that have been carefully designed and equipped to scaffold children’s natural instinct for play.” In her book Choice Time, Renée gives us everything we need to set up choice-time centers that promote inquiry-based, guided play in a classroom. Renée also summarizes the research, describing the different kinds of play and why they are important. She says by giving your students choice time, and allowing them to engage in joyful, important, playful, age-appropriate work will empower them to become lifelong learners.

We started our conversation on the different kinds of play (see below for a full transcript of our conversation):

Renee:             Well, when I think about choice time, first I think about children and play. When children play, there are basically two different kinds of play. One play is free play. The other play is guided play. Free play is when children are out in the schoolyard and they're running around and someone picks up a stick and the stick becomes a sword or it becomes a magic wand. They have their own agenda. Nobody else is involved with that agenda other than the children. That's their agenda.

                        Guided play is when the teacher sets up different centers for play and investigation. The teacher decides what the room is going to look like, what the center is going to look like, how much space she or he is going to allot for the center, what materials will go in the center. Then what happens in that center is up to the children. The children are not guided in what they do. It's totally up to them, but the teacher has a very important role in setting up a play environment, an investigation environment, an exploration environment for the children.

Brett:       Why are choice time and play so important?

Renee:             Play is what drives children's learning. First of all, it's joyful. We want children to have joy in their life. That's really important. It's important to me as a teacher. Lev Vygotsky, the Russian psychologist, I'm going to read something that he said. "In play, the child is always behaving beyond his age, above his usual everyday behavior. In play, he is, as it were, a head above himself." Children grow in play. They do things that extend their learning. It's an engine for driving the learning that children have. In choice time play, the children are able to actually incorporate all the other things that they've done all day, all through the week, and bring it with them into these centers that they have. What's really interesting is that when children are playing they get to practice what they think it's like to be an adult. Sometimes for an adult it's funny to watch it because it's taking it and twisting it a bit. It's the way that they think.

                        For example, in my book I talked about how children were playing doctor and mother came with a very sick baby. Jeffrey the doctor said, "Don't worry. Don't worry." He took out his injection needle and he jabbed the baby doll. The mother said,
14 min
January 06, 2017 Argument in the Real World with Kristen Hawley Turner and Troy Hicks
How can we help students think critically about the community they’re speaking to online while giving them a real voice? How do we help our students create coherent arguments through social media? Kristen Hawley Turner and Troy Hicks say it’s not just about creating a podcast or blog, it’s about building an argument. On today’s podcast we’re hearing from co-authors Kristen Turner and Troy Hicks as they tackle these questions and more in their new book Argument in the Real World: Teaching Adolescents to Read and Write Digital Texts.
Every day, our students are inundated by information—as well as opinions and misinformation—on their devices. These digital texts influence them. In Argument in the Real World, Kristen and Troy share a wealth of insights and practical strategies for teaching students the logic of argument. Wherever arguments are streaming in through - Snapchat, viral videos, internet memes, or links to other blogs or websites, Kristen and Troy guide us on how to engage with and create digital arguments.
We started out our conversation on what real world arguments are?
Copyright Heinemann Publishing 2017
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
19 min
January 06, 2017 The Heinemann Podcast: Argument in the Real World

How can we help students think critically about the community they’re speaking to online while giving them a real voice? How do we help our students create coherent arguments through social media? Kristen Hawley Turner and Troy Hicks say it’s not just about creating a podcast or blog, it’s about building an argument. On today’s podcast we’re hearing from co-authors Kristen Turner and Troy Hicks as they tackle these questions and more in their new book Argument in the Real World: Teaching Adolescents to Read and Write Digital Texts.

Every day, our students are inundated by information—as well as opinions and misinformation—on their devices. These digital texts influence them. In Argument in the Real World, Kristen and Troy share a wealth of insights and practical strategies for teaching students the logic of argument. Wherever arguments are streaming in through – Snapchat, viral videos, internet memes, or links to other blogs or websites, Kristen and Troy guide us on how to engage with and create digital arguments.

We started out our conversation on what real world arguments are?

See below for a full transcript of our conversation:

Well, they are surrounding us everyday. Especially in this season, it's interesting to think about the ways in which images, crafts, videos, commercials, clips that people have created on their own from Facebook Live or Twitter's Periscope, up to blog post, up to full reports and things coming from think tanks, Congressional Budget Office, anywhere. Real world arguments are surrounding us everyday. We have to think about the context and think critically about who's sharing that argument, what their stance is, and the ways in which we read. We write arguments and put those arguments of our own back out into the real world and understand what the intentional and sometimes, unintentional consequences of those arguments are.

I think it's important to understand that argument is not about arguing with somebody or getting in someone's face or anything like that. There's a structure to an argument where you make a claim and you provide evidence for that claim and that there is a belief system or a background understanding that allows you to have a civilized conversation with argument.



Well, in picking up on that idea of evidence, I have started asking students to think about what counts as evidence, for whom, and in what context. Because we know that there are different kinds of evidence that count differently for different people, in different spaces, and in different ways. Until you have that conversation about what counts and you're talking about the warrants and the underlying assumptions that go with the evidence you're presenting, you're probably not going to be able to have a very strong conversation about what a good argument is. It's really about having those conversations about what counts as evidence. In the digital space, that gets complicated not only by the facts but by …

   The hyperlinks. … colors, fonts, links, images, memes, all those types of things.



Well, on that point, you're both specifically right to the fact that we can't teach it the same way we always have before in the past. Things are different now.

   Yes. Texts are different now because we have hyperlinked text. In the past,
19 min
December 09, 2016 NCTE16 Don Graves Breakfast Podcast
Today on the Heinemann Podcast, we're exploring credo.
In 2013, Heinemann celebrated the legacy of Don Graves at a special breakfast during the National Council of Teachers of English conference in Boston. Three years later, at the 2016 NCTE conference, we wanted to reprise this moment by inviting those in attendance to consider the theme of credo. The event was hosted by Tom Newkirk and Penny Kittle and featured Heinemann authors Katherine Bomer, Smokey Daniels, Georgia Heard Allison Marchetti, Rebekah O’Dell, Cornelius Minor and Heinemann Fellow, Kimberly Parker. We began the event with a welcome from Heinemann’s General Manager, Vicki Boyd.
Copyright Heinemann Publishing 2016
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
46 min
November 07, 2016 Bullying Hurts Podcast: Part 2
While Bullying Awareness month may be over, the need certainly is still with us. In today’s podcast we continue our conversation on the resource, Bullying Hurts. In part 2 of our conversation, co-author Lester Laminack says that the term bullying is in danger of being overused which could cause it to lose its effectiveness. He says there’s a difference between a student who is being rude and bullying. We started our conversation on the need to work towards kindness not only in our classrooms, but in the world.
Copyright Heinemann Publishing 2016
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
19 min
November 07, 2016 The Heinemann Podcast: Bullying Hurts Part 2

While Bullying Awareness month may be over, the need certainly is still with us. In today’s podcast we continue our conversation on the resource, Bullying Hurts. In part 2 of our conversation, co-author Lester Laminack says that the term bullying is in danger of being overused which could cause it to lose its effectiveness. He says there’s a difference between a student who is being rude and bullying. We started our conversation on the need to work towards kindness not only in our classrooms, but in the world.

See below for the full transcript of the conversation:

Lester: Let's think about working towards kindness in general. If we try a certain type of thing to do in the classroom versus a certain type of thing to do outside the home, if you make those differentiated, I think we're missing the point. Kindness is kindness, and I think we've reached a point in the country where we need to just be conscious of our actions and our words, the things we post on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. It appears to me that we've reached a place where lot of people, adults and children, respond in a knee jerk fashion to an issue or an idea in a very one sided kind of way.

I think that the place we need to start is just being mindful, being conscious of ourselves and how our actions and reactions either make the life of another person more stressful or less stressful. I mean this for everything, not just in our teaching lives, but also in our daily lives. Our moment by moment existence, just being conscious and mindful of our own behaviors. I don't think it's that difficult to be conscious, to be present and aware of your own thoughts and your own feelings, your emotions, and when an issue comes up.

Mr Rogers told us you're entitled to feel any of the human emotions, that's part of being human. What we have to guard against is how we react to those emotions. It's fine to feel angry or indignant, but to behave, speak without reflection is dangerous. I think the idea of being kind, and how we worked towards being kind, is to help children be conscious of what they're feeling in the moment, to be conscious of the notion that what they say and how they act has an impact on the other people around them. It helps build the notion of who they are in the minds of the people they interact with. It's building your identity, and I think just being conscious, and then helping everyone work toward that. That makes seem trite, but I think it's true, that if we just simply pause and ask ourselves, "Will this help another? Will it harm or hinder another? Is it necessary? Is it something I would want everyone else to do?" then I think that's like the first, and probably most important step.

Brett: Throughout Bullying Hurts, you write about the importance of Read Aloud. Can you talk a little bit why they're such an important part of the process?

Lester: Years ago, Rudine Sims Bishop wrote about literature as having the power to do windows, mirrors or doors. Read Aloud is an opportunity for us to hold up examples of kindness and unkindness, conscious choice and unconscious actions so that we can see ourselves in situations that perhaps we don't see ourselves in in the moment. We may not actually be conscious that our actions are harming another person, we're simply reacting on the gut level in a visceral way, just out of impulse, without being thoughtful about it.

Using Read Aloud allows us to take a situation and look at the situation,
19 min
October 28, 2016 Bullying Hurts Podcast: Part 1
Recent research shows that punishing students who bully is not enough and that we must begin every child’s education by establishing relationship skills and building empathy among students. October is National Bullying Prevention Month and all month long on the Heinemann blog we’ve been sharing blogs, resources and articles from Heinemann authors Lester Laminack and Reba Wadsworth. In 2012, Lester and Reba co-authored the book Bullying Hurts.
Copyright Heinemann Publishing 2016
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
19 min