Faculty Blog

For years  I’ve wondered, Why do boys  insist on wearing shorts when it's freezing outside? Just the other day, as snow and ice covered the ground, I saw a boy trudging through the snow in shorts on the way to his van.

Is there something going on internally that makes them warmer than the rest of us? Technically, yes. Males tend to have a steady and more complete distribution of body heat than women. On the other hand, they may be trying to be their own person; a show of independence from the adults in their lives.

It drives teachers and parents crazy, though it probably …

I met a fellow educator at the International Boys’ School Coalition in New York City at the Buckley School. We often share resources focused on boys and best literacy practice. Recently, he sent me a resource from a document released by the province of Ontario, Me Read? And How! Many of the teaching strategies described are often used in Fenn classrooms to encourage and support our boy writers: 

1. Boys who are allowed to choose writing topics show increased motivation and engagement.  p .10

2. Boys are helped by experiencing examples of different text forms. …

The quote below is the reason for encouraging boys to read what they love. Every week, I ask my students to look at the reading they enjoy and name the wow factor. What is it specifically that makes you want to curl up in a corner with a book and get lost in it? Sometimes the answer is simply, “I liked the way he wrote the action,” and we try to nail it down further. Does the author use descriptive action words or lots of setting changes? If the action is so easy to visualize, why?

Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. ……