This weekend an interesting blog post popped up on Scientific American: Using Pop Culture to Practice Productive Disagreement.  In a nutshell, the blog states that when children share opinions about movies, their favorite characters, shows, books, etc., we are gifted some real teachable moments. The blogger makes the case that how we respond to children's opinions shapes their future questioning and openness to assert and support their views and counterpoints in productive ways.

The statistics are staggering.  Approximately 70 percent of students in grades four, eight and twelve did not meet even basic proficiency goals in writing as set forth by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in 2002 (Persky, Daane, & Jin, 2003). In 2005, American College Testing reported that almost a third of high school students intending to attend college needed to enroll in a remedial English composition class before being judged competent to take a college-level course. American businesses also spent almost $31 billion dollars in 2005 on basic, on-the-job writing remediation for its workforce (National Commission on Writing, 2004). These figures are even worse for certain ethnic groups.

Graphic organizers have been broadly researched, and their effectiveness in improving learning outcomes for both students with disabilities and general education students has been widely demonstrated (see, for instance, Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001). Because much of my work centers on improving literacy outcomes, I was particularly interested to learn that there is solid research evidence that graphic organizers promote both comprehension and vocabulary development.