Group items tagged

"For example, ask questions to clarify if the student is asserting a fact, a feeling or an argument. How do we know it is a fact? A fact is a specific detail based on an objective truth. A feeling or an opinion is a value judgement that can neither be proven nor disproven. An argument is a way to utilize facts to validate your opinions, it can be considered a fact-filled opinion. Again, using these concepts as scaffolds and requiring the identification of the building blocks of successful argumentation will keep the peace when the blood is boiling."

"Do you know what the most common electronic device that college student's possess? According to Joshua Bolkan, a multimedia editor for Campus Technology and The Journal, "85% of college students own laptops while smartphones come in second at 65%". If technology is becoming a common practice among our students, what are we doing as professors to incorporate it into our classrooms? How can students use technology to reflect on their work? How can instructors use technology as a supplement in reading and writing courses? How can technology be used to deepen our student's critical thinking skills? These are questions we should be asking ourselves in a world where technology is paving the way to learning. "

"Genius Hour is exciting. Instead of giving students assignments with predetermined topics and step-by-step instructions, teachers set aside a designated amount of time during the week for students to engage in self-directed projects that allow them to pursue their own questions, interests, and passions."

"If kids had less homework, would they spend more time with family or in front of the television? Would they suffer on standardized tests because they lack practice, or would they thrive because they haven't gotten burned out? In the debate over the merits of sending kids home for a "second shift" of school, these are the questions that plague parents and school officials."

Blended learning perspectives...

Having devices in your classroom for students to use, whether you have carts of computers, iPads, or Chromebooks; a 1:1 program; or a BYOD initiative, can be exciting and overwhelming at the same time. Using these devices to provide content support and differentiation for each student is not hard to do. You have long been supplying material for your students at all levels to both remediate and expand their knowledge base. But what about designing formative and summative assessments that use technology and target higher-order thinking skills? Teachers should ask themselves this question, as well as how to develop tasks that transform what goes on in the classroom.

"If you want to move learners forward, they've got to know where they're starting. It's a simple truth but not one we tend to follow when it comes to professional learning for teachers. The ways in which we assess these learning experiences for educators often fall short of the realities of their contexts. Take, for example, the common practice of ending a session with evaluation forms largely devoted to measuring teachers' level of happiness with a token question intended to gauge the likelihood of someone taking an idea from the workshop and using it next week. These vanity metrics for the professional learning providers give little indication of the impact of their work and at best communicate a very surface set of goals we're striving to achieve as a group learning together. Why are we even attempting to measure impact before we give educators an opportunity to implement what they've learned? "

"At the time of this writing, we are in the second year of a sixth-grade project-based learning program in a public school setting. In our two years of working to implement PBL, we have fielded a multitude of questions ranging from positive support to queries about the efficacy of policies that we feel best support PBL (grading for mastery, group work, etc.). Our experiences have taught us that district administration can fill three distinct roles to help streamline the PBL implementation process, which we'll discuss in this post."

"This week's question is How would you define "teacher leadership" and what does it look like in practice? In Part One, Regie Routman, Aubrie Rojee, Megan M. Allen, Shane Safir, Sean Slade, and Barnett Berry shared their thoughts on teacher leadership. You can also listen to a ten-minute conversation I had with Suzie and Ken on my BAM! Radio Show. You can find a list of, and links to, previous shows here. Today, Laura Robb, Kylene Beers, Susan Chenelle, ReLeah Cossett Lent, Christopher Lehman, Matt Townsley, Anthony Cody, Patricia O'Grady contribute their ideas. I've also included comments from readers."

"Education has to focus on learning how to learn - metacognition. School will still be important, but not to impart what happened during the Revolutionary War or to teach the quadratic formula. School, he said, should focus on teaching young people the intangibles, the things that make humans unique: relationships, flexibility, humanity, how to make discriminating decisions, resilience, innovation, adaptability, wisdom, ethics, curiosity, how to ask good questions, synthesizing and integrating information, and of course, creating. "

"Every year we built a community that modeled what all of us wished for in the wider world. We created a working campus where everyone had a job. All of these jobs were non-trivial, adult roles. If any role were not fulfilled, the well-being of the campus and the community would suffer. On many days, when we concluded our activities and jobs, we met in a circle and asked ourselves: What should we stop doing? What should we start doing? What should we continue doing?"

"Common Core Basics Teaching Channel Video" - Simplifying Text Complexity"