Monthly Archives: February 2019

Reading Portraiture

After our trip to the VMFA yesterday, I’m reminded of some of the wonderful resources at the National Portrait Gallery for interpreting works of art. You will find the downloadable teacher’s guide entitled “Reading Portraiture” to be particularly helpful.

What is a Green Book?

So you stayed up late on Sunday to see the big winners at the Oscars. If you haven’t seen Green Book, you may not know what a Green Book is. Here’s a description.

First published in 1937 by Victor H. Green & Company, The Negro Motorist Green Book provided African American travelers with a national guidebook for navigating segregated facilities on US highways, including hotels, restaurants, and gas stations. The Green Book (later renamed The Negro Travelers’ Green Book) became an essential reference for African Americans to travel more safely and comfortably during the Jim Crow era, when black travelers were regularly denied services, treated with hostility, and threatened with physical harm simply for seeking accommodations, food, or gas from white providers. The guidebook included recommendations and warnings for every state, highlighting the fact that racism made travel dangerous across the country, not just in the segregated south. The last guidebook was published in 1966.

You can view a Green Book at the Digital Public Library of America.

Here’s a good piece from the NYTimes.
The Open Road Wasn’t Quite Open to All

Here’s a great post you may find useful.
Pairing Picture Books and Primary Sources: Ruth and the Green Book by Calvin Alexander Ramsey

Single Point Rubrics

In commenting on blogs this week, I mentioned single point rubrics to a number of folks who commented that analytic rubrics with lots of categories and criteria seemed confusing. I like single point rubrics because they focus students only on the expected performance for grade-level.

Today, one of the bloggers I follow wrote about using single point rubrics in her class. I thought you might be interested, as she refers to the article I shared in several of my comments.

Using the Single Point Rubric for Better Assessment Conversations

A Terrible 400 Year Anniversary

1919 marks 400 years since the first enslaved Africans were brought to North America. Our history is forever entwined with this event. The history of slavery is the history of America. Much of this nation was built on the backs of slaves.

Read this piece for a bit of history.
1619: 400 years ago, a ship arrived in Virginia, bearing human cargo