PO Box 1092
New York, NY 10025
ph: 917-284-0614
jtoomer
The mission of the Nationbuilders Collegiate Charter Academy for Service and Leadership is to empower students to become leaders through a college preparatory education, a strong literacy foundation and concrete social action that builds bridges between and among multiple communities. The rigorous eduational program, leadership courses and comprehensive literacy initiative work together to engage and challenge all students to develop lifelong skills in exercising social responsibility in public and private enterprise.
The Nationbuilders Collegiate Charter Academy is a small, professional learning community that encourages all students to achieve academic excellence. The school offers a multi-grade sequence of service leadership building workshops and courses, extended class time in English and Math for first year students, an adult Trailblazer Mentoring component, a bridge class with ESL curricula, differentiated instruction, literacy across the curriculum and classroom libraries.
Our planning team is submitting its charter school application to the New York State Department of Education in June. We'd like to hear your suggestions and/or feedback about our program.
Please fill out your information below and tell us what you think about the Nationbuilders Collegiate Charter Academy for Service and Leadership.
We can visit your Parents' Association or community organization to present more information about our educational program, to listen to your concerns and to answer questions. If interested, let us know who to contact and when to schedule a meeting.
Writing Tips for Teachers
Recommended by Jeanette Toomer
You can do this by either writing it as a model during the mini-lesson before the work period, or distribute copies of a it (for example, a summary) and read it aloud with the the students showing how it captures the main idea, key words, topics and important details.
In your mini-lesson use underlining or circling to teach students how to mark important facts, reasons, examples or details that they use as textual evidence when they write about the article or textbook passage.
and/or write opinions about what they’ve learned in a lesson.
Example of Exit Writes: (Debriefing Tool)
What is one thing I learned today that I’d like to remember?
Why is summarizing a helpful writing skill?
Make writing a group activity.
Have students work together in small groups and have each
student write a paragraph in a five-paragraph essay. Then
they read it aloud with their partners. Have them share with another
group.
Writing takes practice and more practice!
Writing is a craft. To become good at it takes practice.
Incorporate a writing activity in each lesson. Praise their efforts!
how to prewrite in order to develop ideas for writing assignments.
Trouble the Waters
By Jeanette Toomer
This is a riveting award-winning documentary of devastation and emotional trauma of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005. Filmed by Katrina survivors and novice filmmakers this film captures the damaging effects of Katrina on a black family and community in New Orleans.
Recently, I had the opportunity to view this compelling documentary at BAAD Theater in the Bronx. It disturbed me that so many people, predominantly black citizens, had to struggle to survive in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina flooding New Orleans.
DDL maintains a blog at dramadiscoveryand learning.com/blog.html. Feel free to write in your response to queries or entries.
Join NCTE in Celebrating Literacy Education Advocacy Month
The NCTE Literacy Education Advocacy Calendarlists possibilities, from sharing NCTE positions with your colleagues to visiting your state lawmakers while they're home in April to taking part in NCTE's Advocacy Day in Washington, D.C., on April 19.
Using NCTE's 2009 Legislative Platform to Influence Literacy Education
by Kent Williamson, NCTE Executive Director
If there was any doubt that change was in the air on Capitol Hill shortly after the inauguration ceremonies, those doubts were blown away in the first hours of meetings between the NCTE Government Relations Platform Writing Team and key legislative staffers on January 29. After three days of meetings and careful drafting to zero in on the issues where Council action can prove influential, the 2012 Legislative Platformwas ready.
Platform Highlights: The thrust of our platform is to encourage Congress to take a comprehensive approach to supporting literacy learning. It is grounded in the need to provide every student with the kinds of rich learning challenges that will imbue them with the critical communicative and analytic abilities referenced in our definition of 21st century literacies. To accomplish this, it sets out ambitious literacy education reform criteria for Congress and other federal authorities in the areas of
assessment;
an inclusive definition of scientifically valid research;
writing and reading as equal, interdependent components of literacy development;
support for English Language Learners and the youngest literacy learners (those under age five); and
job-embedded professional development.
Making it Happen: With these powerful goals established, there are three primary pillars to our government relations strategy this year:
1. Work with allied literacy groups to put together a bill (either as a component of reform of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act or as a free-standing measure) that funds comprehensive literacy planning at the state and district levels.
2. Inform our members and their departments/districts of how the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding (stimulus monies) and other sources of federal support can be used to access NCTE resources and other high quality teacher learning materials.
3. Build broad support for a congressional measure to establish October 20, 2009 as the National Day on Writing.
For more information on the National Council of Teachers of English literacy education platform and activities, visit their website at ncte.org. Their annual conference is scheduled for mid-November in Las Vegas, Nevada.
DDL Copyright 2000 All rights reserved.
PO Box 1092
New York, NY 10025
ph: 917-284-0614
jtoomer