Dollar Street and Gapminder - We will miss you, Hans Rosling!

"In the news, people in other cultures seem stranger than they are. We visited 240 families in 46 countries and collected 30,000 photos.  We sorted the photos by income, from left to right."

Visit, and invite your students to visit, Dollar Street, invented by Anna Rosling Rönnlund at Gapminder.  

"For 15 years she spent her workdays making global public data easier to understand and use. Over time her frustration grew: carefully selecting data to present it in colorful and moving charts made overall global trends and patterns easier to understand. But it did not make everyday life on different income levels understandable. Especially not in places far from home. “People in other cultures are often portrayed as scary or exotic.” Anna explains: “This has to change. We want to show how people really live. It seemed natural to use photos as data so people can see for themselves what life looks like on different income levels. Dollar Street lets you visit many, many homes all over the world. Without travelling.”

This post is dedicated to Hans Rosling, creator of Gapminder,  (I invite you and your students to visit this incredible website too!) who died this week at the age of 68.  Hans Rosling was an inspiring information warrior and "edutainer", dedicated to "unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact-based world view."

Rigor vs. Ease: What Should Adolescents Read?

          "Many of today's standards require students not only to engage with rigorous texts but also to develop the higher order thinking skills needed to analyze and interpret such texts. The drive to increase the rigor contrasts with the traditional view of matching students with instructional-level texts, which are characterized by word recognition from 95%-98% and comprehension from 75%-89%. This level has long been thought to ensure success and avoid frustration.
          As a secondary school literacy coach guiding teachers in all content areas, I felt confused. Do students need to read texts at their level, or do they need to read challenging texts?  What about struggling readers?"

          The rest of this article by Sarah Lupo, from the January/February 2017 issue of Literacy Today explains why students need both, and offers 2 scenarios (one from an English class and one from a science class) that illustrate ways to approach this - integrating experience with instructional level texts and more challenging text.  You can read the whole article here:
Rigor vs. Ease: What Should Adolescents Read?