A war of words against the achievement gap

05-03-2010

By Emily Alpert/Voice of San Diego

The dictionary was out of sight as Tara Malm quizzed her fifth grade class about vocabulary. The kids had already learned one meaning of "critical" -- careful and thoughtful deliberation, as in "critical thinking." But Malm asked them where else they'd heard the word and what else it might mean. "Oh!" exclaimed 12-year-old Latrell Judge. "Sometimes after a movie comes out there are critics." Slowly the kids cobbled together that a critic is someone who judges things, so being critical could mean judging things. Malm took it a step further and explained that more specifically, it means when someone believes that people or things are bad. "Like Simon Cowell on American Idol," Latrell added. (more...)

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A war of words against the achievement gap

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