Links I Loved Last Week: A Round-Up of Online Reading 3/8/15

Kelly Barnhill makes a brilliant Modest Proposal: spend the 1.7 billion we now spend on testing on things that actually matter for educating kids!

Used Books in Class personalizes the destructive side of testing by sharing the story of her niece’s experience of being labeled with a score.

Got another snow day this week? Shana at Three Teachers Talk has 6 suggestions for how to spend your snow day happily and productively.

Tammy Mulligan shares 10 tips for getting students to talk about their reading.

Katherine Sokolowski celebrates the importance of conversation.

If you like cats, this is a must-see timelapse video showing eight of them pursuing their sunbeam.

Kelsey writes about the bad part of teaching–feeling like you have no choice but to comply with bad teaching and bad policies.

Jackie Gerstein has an interesting post about how we might apply the science of how our brains learn to actual classroom practices.

My favorite of the many new picture books I read this week was Julie Paschkis’s P. Zonka Lays an Egg. I enjoyed this interview with the author/illustrator (and will be bookmarking her Seattle recommendations for my next trip!)