Roxborough Review Newspaper

Roxborough Review Newspaper

Roxborough Review Newspaper

Posted on: January 17, 2012 - 3:43 pm
by Admin

One of the primary grievances educators have with the No Child Left Behind mandate is the focus on assessment. Does extreme focus on National Standards stand in the way of creative lesson plans that also encourage imagination? Sometimes. Can a committed English or language arts teachers promote imagination and critical thinking while ensuring that students also make adequate yearly progress in literacy? Absolutely! However, in order to ensure that students have every opportunity to meet content standards, lesson plans must grow out of state and national benchmarks for reading and writing. Likewise, assessment rubrics must be an absolute extension of the National Standards.

A classroom newspaper is a perfect opportunity for students to reflect on reading, engage in process writing across the curriculum, practice grammatical skills, share learning with a student and parent audience, and learn cooperative and leadership skills within the context of the classroom. Best of all, students and teacher will have the hands-on satisfaction of documenting a year’s worth of learning.