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The Specificity of Words: Research Methods
America’s Test Kitchen (https://www.americastestkitchen.com) provides a scientific analysis of cooking various foods (meats, dishes, fish, breads, etc.) as well as cooking products in a series of seasons and episodes. In a recent review of baking stones and steels for making pizza that is just like the professionals, Lisa McManus describes how they tested several products.…
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The Structure of Writing: Shapes Control the Flow of Traffic
“Signs convey information to travelers not only by their messages and color, but through their shape as well. Special shapes are specifically assigned to certain types of signs so that travelers can recognize them quickly and react appropriately. In general, the greater number of sides on a sign, the more critical a message it conveys”…
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Transition Words and Phrases: Avoiding Box Car Writing
If you stand next to the tracks when a train is traveling by it’s likely to make you dizzy (particularly if you stand too close). Pretty soon, the monotony of box cars or oil tanks, passing in front of you, one after the other, creates a lull on thinking. You could try to count them,…
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Feedback on Student Writing: The Proverbial Chicken
Needless to say, which came first is impossible to answer, so we’ll arbitrarily claim it was the chicken. Otherwise, how did the egg get laid? Of course, this begs the question on the arrival of the chicken, but we’ll leave that to the dinosaur experts. Given this chicken sitting in my classroom, let’s get started.…
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Revisions for Student Writing: The Proverbial Egg
In an earlier blog, we reviewed the chicken and egg dilemma: Which came first, with the argument presented that it was the chicken. Well, here’s the egg. Once feedback is provided, the obvious expectation is what to do with it. Presumably, students would take the feedback and make revisions. This model, often referred to as…
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Effectively Reporting Outcomes: Lessons from Mona Chalabi
In this goofy TED Talk (https://www.ted.com/speakers/mona_chalabi), Mona Chalabi focuses on finding and questioning the data used to make informed decision. Like a person adrift at sea, surrounded by water and yet perishing for lack of (fresh) water, teachers and administrators are being swamped by data and yet almost frozen in making decisions. The three significant…