Several people have requested the list of "best practices" by Harvey
Daniels.
He is quite a comical and entertaining speaker. I fail to get his web site
address where he told us not to bother and take notes since all his handouts
were on line for us.  So if anyone out there saw him in conference in
Columbia,SC, Oct 17th. The sessions overlapped and I had to leave his about
fifteen minutes early and missed the web address.

Here are some of his main points as interpreted by yours truly.

First he began with explaining that his new book on reading in the content
area is at the publishers and will be out soon.

He has written Methods That Matter, Best Practice: and was truly concerned
about how many resources write and title their methods as "Best Practices"
yet they truly are not, so the term "Best Practice" had made what he termed
has a
"terminology drift".
Consequently, he felt the need to address what constitutes "Best Practice"
as he tours and speaks and recapture this term to mean:

Best Practice is NOT:
worksheets: here he featured a short story about ML King and five questions
beneath that a student could answer parroting the facts just read.

Literature circle handout was shown next where students were ask to answer
from a ready make checklist how the character feels in the story.  Just put
a check by the feelings the character had.  A real prescriptive, brief
artifact used as a Literature Circle role sheet.  He said this was a
classroom management instrument, NOT invoking thinking.

Then he said, "Lets do what REAL readers do"  Practices that are:
Student Centered
Experimental
Expressive in their own writing
Reflective
Authentic
Holistic
Cognitive based
Developmental
Constructivist
Challenging

He brought out that every discipline, National organizations for Science,
Social Studies, Language Arts, etc had a list of National Standards, many
books are published and titled "Meeting ...Standards" and so he and a group
of colleagues sat down and compared and reviewed these standards and these
terms above were the common threads in them all.

As I think about the overhead handouts just demonstrated  by Debbie Miller
in her talk the day before, the response type that invoke thinking, and show
the teacher "tracks" of student thinking, as well as help students monitor
their own thinking or lack of thinking, the differences in the "NOT" best
practice handouts and her handouts were crystal clear.

He had the crowd work through one activity that he demonstrated as "Best
Practice" methods:written conversations with a peer.  I had tried this
before and didn't think I would learn anything new, but the way he explained
this was different.  Instead of swapping the same paper back and forth
between two people as they exchange written dialog, he had us watch a short
segment of high school kids in Literature Circles and with a partner make a
quick write response to what you saw [time keeping here is very important]
no oral conversation, only writing.  Then, swap papers and respond to your
partners comments, and this was different then I'd tried before since no one
is sitting waiting on the paper to come back to them, but both partner are
reading and writing, yet in tune with others ideas and responding.  Then of
course, they're were opportunities for whole group to share some responses.
This certainly requires Listening, Viewing, Thinking, Writing,  and
Speaking, holistic literacy.  It seems to me that any activity that requires
holistic Literacy practice like this can meet all of the criterion above for
"Best Practice" and serve as tracks of thinking and evidence of content
understanding.

One last point he made that I think is worth repeating. Nat'l Reading Panel
says that Independent reading doesn't work to grow kids in reading and they
site research on this as the reason for this conclusion.  However, he said
they are not excepting correlational research as a consideration at all. His
strong point on this was the fact that it was correlational research used in
the tobacco law suit that changed the law in our society recording smoking.
That Non-believers in time on task, independently reading, don't accept
correlational research, but it is clear that this society uses this research
to make important decisions.  He showed a graph where a group of kids who
read for fun scored 20% higher on a national test, NAP, then those who did
not.

This is the conclusion of my notes on his whole group presentation, entirely
too long for a email, sorry.  So I'll conclude here, but there are a few
more points he made in a break out session on reading in the content areas
if someone is interested, they can email me.
In the meantime, I plan to contact someone in the Writing Improvement
Network to see if I can get the web site for his handouts on this session.

Nelle

and from Carolyn:

Nelle,

After reading your email I did a quick google search to find some
information you requested. Although I could not find Harvey Daniel's
website, I did find the handouts to which he referred from a previous
conference. 

You may find his handouts at this website:
http://www.walloon.com/conference_handouts.asp

Hope that helps!
Carolyn Booth