Learning Strategies

Recent Posts - page 99

• The true spirit of Christmas?

  By ljd42 on December 6, 2009

  

  Note the combo of decorations in front of this house on Furnace Brook Parkway in Quincy:

• Traumatized for life

  By ljd42 on December 5, 2009

  Some of us can barely remember anything from third grade, but last night at a restaurant in Dorchester I met someone my age who was truly traumatized for life by a single experience way back in third grade. We’ll call… Read More ›

• The Writing Class

  By ljd42 on December 4, 2009

  The Writing Class, by Jincy Willett, might make a good companion volume to The Jane Austen Book Club. Though much lighter — with no pretense of being serious literature — this mystery novel also deals with a group of adult… Read More ›

• Defining a trapezoid

  By ljd42 on December 3, 2009

  This is the cue for my students to roll their eyes… Yesterday I got into a heated discussion with another math teacher about an important issue: how to define a trapezoid. He was arguing in favor of the position that… Read More ›

• Paper clip update

  By ljd42 on December 2, 2009

  

  Paper clips are up to 25 now: Getting closer to donuts.

• Comic Sans Redux

  By ljd42 on December 1, 2009

  If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, you will recall that I wrote a post four years ago entitled, “Ban Comic Sans!”, in which I linked to the ban comic sans site. Now Gizmodo has a new take on… Read More ›

• Finally, The Lion King

  By ljd42 on November 30, 2009

  Somehow this post got delayed from earlier in the year. Oh, well…hakuna matata. Anyway, earlier in this calendar year — but it was last academic year — two of my Weston sophomores were aghast to hear that I had never… Read More ›

• The Jane Austen Book Club: the book and the movie

  By ljd42 on November 29, 2009

  Two and a half years ago I read Karen Joy Fowler’s novel, The Jane Austen Book Club, and I am surprised that I didn’t write a review of it at the time. I no longer remember why. Perhaps I was… Read More ›

• A wandering past participle, or a new idiom?

  By ljd42 on November 28, 2009

  Maybe I am inadvertently committing the Recency Fallacy, but it seems to me that up until last year or so the past participle of pet was petted: “Where do your cats like to be petted?” <http://www.mihav.com/en/forum/share-amp-chat/where-do-your-cats-like-to-162014&gt; “pet; petted; petting” <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pet>&#8230; Read More ›

• Friday cat blogging

  By ljd42 on November 27, 2009

  

  This is William of Orange, who seems to think that a plastic bucket in an old bathtub is a perfectly reasonable place in which to sit:

• Pie for Thanksgiving? No, a pie chart from Fox News

  By ljd42 on November 26, 2009

  This pie chart from Fox News speaks for itself:

• Are you smarter than a fifth-grader?

  By ljd42 on November 25, 2009

  “Do you know about the Xerox Alto and Xerox Star computers from back in the ’70s?” asked one of my fifth-graders in The Saturday Course. “Yes,” I replied, “but I’ve never before met a fifth-grader who knows about them!” This… Read More ›

• An interview in Wildcat Tracks

  By ljd42 on November 24, 2009

  Junior Lauren Avery, one of the editors of Weston High School’s student newspaper, Wildcat Tracks, asked if she could interview me. Of course I said yes, and the result was a half-page article that focused on my transition from linguistics… Read More ›

• Roadside Crosses

  By ljd42 on November 23, 2009

  Although Jeffery Deaver’s Roadside Crosses is far from one of his best novels, it’s still worth reading — or listening to on audiobook, as I did. As with all of his works, the plotting is clever, starting with an opening… Read More ›

• dBar revisited

  By ljd42 on November 22, 2009

  I’ve written about dBar twice before: on January 17, 2006, and on February 15, 2008. It has maintained its high standards. Barbara had mussels, followed by steak tacos, and she reports that both were excellent. I started with a scrumptious… Read More ›

• The Good Woman of Setzuan

  By ljd42 on November 21, 2009

  Congratulations to the Weston High School Theater Company for another first-rate production! The last time I saw Bertolt Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan must have been at least 20 years ago, so I didn’t remember much about it except… Read More ›

• Friday Cat Blogging

  By ljd42 on November 20, 2009

  Vincent posed specially for this photo, because he liked his contribution to all the strong vertical lines — particularly the line from his right ear through his front paws, the nearly vertical sweep of his tail, and of course all… Read More ›

• Struggle

  By ljd42 on November 19, 2009

  At this week’s Math Department meeting, we spent the first 15 minutes or so discussing what we do to help “struggling students” succeed in our courses — particularly what resources we provide. Something was bothering me about the whole discussion,… Read More ›

• The early bird gets the…copies?

  By ljd42 on November 18, 2009

  You have to get up early in the morning to get ahead of the rest of the Weston faculty. (No slackers here!) I got to school at 6:30 this morning, figuring that I could use the photocopier without competition… but… Read More ›

• Before and after

  By ljd42 on November 17, 2009

  

  A major topic of high-school math is the study of transformations. My colleague, Jim McLaughlin, wants you to know that his desk has somehow undergone a miraculous transformation: Before After

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