Group items tagged

"Expecting students to read deeply and draw meaningful conclusions is at the heart of the Common Core ELA standards. Students are asked to read closely, cite evidence, and make evidence based inferences when they read. They are expected to deepen their learning by valuing textual evidence and reading critically. Annotating text is one way students can cite textual evidence, infer and deepen meaning as they read.. "

"A free new social networking platform aims to encourage elementary school children to read more books. BiblioNasium is a pilot virtual reading village for children aged 6-12 and their friends, parents, and teachers. The site enables young readers to catalogue, share, and exchange their book recommendations. It also offers reading-level-appropriate book recommendations using the Lexile Framework for Reading."

"Many students face the same strange situation when learning to read. There are plenty of hours allotted for reading instruction-far more than for writing, science, art, or even math-yet a child can go through an entire day without holding an actual book in her hands."

"Adults forget all that they do while reading. We are predicting, making connections, contextualizing, critiquing, and already plotting how we might use any new insights or information. Yep, we do all that when we read. As teachers, we need to train students in each of these skills, and begin to do so early on. I was recently in a second-grade classroom where 70 percent instruction was in English and 30 percent in Spanish. Most of the children spoke Spanish as their first or home language. "

"Using Google to look for text is simple enough, but not until recently did I realize you could use it to search by reading level. And it typical Google fashion, it's slightly more convoluted a process than it needs to be, but is otherwise dead simple."

"ASCD, the global leader in developing and delivering innovative programs, products, and services that empower educators to support the success of each learner, has compiled a summer reading list for administrators, teacher leaders, and classroom educators interested in low-cost, high-impact professional development. All of the titles below-along with more than 300 other ASCD books-are available in print and various e-book formats in the ASCD Store."

"Shanahan on Literacy - nformation for teachers and parents on teaching and assessing reading, writing, and literacy, and information on Timothy Shanahan's upcoming professional appearances and publications."

"When teachers read professional books, the majority of interaction around the content is based solely on our interpretation and its application to our work. While we know discussing the content with others would allow us to gain a new perspective on the material, finding time for a book study seems nearly impossible; and particularly with this subject, finding someone who would love to read and engage in discussions around a math book is often difficult."

"Text sets are resources of different reading levels, genres, and media that offer perspectives on a theme. By collecting materials ranging from fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to maps, charts, historical documents, photographs, songs, and paintings, teachers can add voices and perspectives to the study of any complex issue. This is especially important in classrooms where the whole class is using a single textbook or novel. Putting together a text set also provides all students -- regardless of reading level or learning style -- with a "way in" to a subject."

"Even before the invention of photography, certain images have gained iconic status in human culture. Our history and art textbooks are full of examples and many of them are etched in our memories. 440px-Join_or_DieBenjamin Franklin's "Join or Die" snake image, said to be the first American political cartoon, originally appeared during the French and Indian War, was repurposed by Paul Revere in 1775, and continues to be a powerful representation of the movement toward U.S. independence and nationhood. More recent visual texts, from the Hindenburg disaster, to Iwo Jima, to MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech, to the haunting images of September 11, help us understand what "iconic" means in terms of cultural memory and messaging."

"DoodleBuzz is a new way to read the news through an experimental interface that allows you to create typographic maps of current news stories."

"At Harriet Tubman Elementary in Newark, New Jersey, 5th grade teacher Yvonne Copprue-McLeod teaches a lesson about reading comprehension and answering open-ended questions using textual evidence. Ms. Copprue-McLeod's strategy for her lesson is to have students work in groups, using specific details from the text to draw inferences and answer questions about the main character in the text. This lesson is aligned with multiple 5th grade Common Core ELA standards (RL.5.1, RF.5.4, SL.5.1, SL.5.4)."

"As seventh grade students at Mt. Ararat Middle School finish reading a memoir by a former Afghan refugee, they had an opportunity to delve deeper into the narrative Friday by communicating electronically with one of the key characters via Skype. Using Skype, an online videoconferencing tool, the students conversed with Alyce Litz, who plays a prominent role in the book "The Other Side Of The Sky: A Memoir" by Farah Ahmedi. The book was previously published in 2005 as "The Story Of My Life, An Afghan Girl On The Other Side Of The Sky."

"Annotating tools are a must have for every teacher. I personally can't imagine myself surfing online with no web tools to help me annotate, highlight, clip, and share parts or segments of the web content I find interesting. Most of the browsers nowadays particularly Chrome and Firefox have specific extensions for this purpose. All you need to do is install one of them and there you go, with one click you can master the information you read."

"A new museum devoted to math (CBS News) Take an unpopular academic subject, a dedicated visionary, and $23 three million, and what have you got? Why, it all adds up to the museum our Mo Rocca's about to guide us through: Math. The very word conjures painful memories: long division . . . Square roots . . . The quadratic equation. Not only do most of us not like it; we're also not very good at it. In an international test of 15-year-olds, the U.S. placed 24th out of 64 countries. "We don't currently, in this country, have a cultural expectation that yeah, you're going to learn math just like you're going to learn reading," said Glen Whitney. "It's okay to not be good at math." Glen Whitney is good at math."

"The Common Core State Standards recognize that to thrive in the newly wired world, students need to master new ways of reading and writing."

"he Someday/Monday dichotomy captures one of the core challenges in teacher professional development around education technology. On the one hand, deep integration of new learning technologies into classrooms requires substantially rethinking pedagogy, curriculum, assessment, and teacher practice (someday). For technology to make a real difference in student learning, it can't just be an add-on. On the other hand, teachers need to start somewhere (Monday), and one of the easiest ways for teachers to get experience with emerging tools is to play and experiment in lightweight ways: to use technology as an add-on. Teachers need to imagine a new future-to build towards Someday-and teachers also need new activities and strategies to try out on Monday. Both pathways are important to teacher growth and meaningful, sustained changes in teaching and learning."

"What is the best approach teachers can take towards homework? I think the guest responses today, along with numerous reader comments, provide a great perspective on the topic. If you'd like to read more research and discover additional ideas, you might want to explore my collection at The Best Resources For Learning About Homework Issues. Todays guests are educator/authors Dr. Cathy Vatterott and Bryan Harris. Reader suggestions follow their contributions."

"'We must reimagine middle school science and math not as a way to prepare students for high school, but as a place where students are inventors, scientists, and mathematicians today.' So say Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager in this exciting guest article about the Maker Movement and its implications for kids, schools and STEM studies. Martinez and Stager are the authors of a must-read book, Invent To Learn: Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom. In this informative post, they encourage STEM educators, school leaders and teachers across the curriculum to transform our classrooms into centers of innovative thinking and experimenting. ~ Anne Jolly"

"In math, the Rule of Three is a method of finding a ratio. In English essay writing, the Rule of Three states that things are more interesting to read in triads. In presentations, the Rule of Three comes in handy to keep the audience engaged, and in entertainment, the idea of trebling makes jokes and gags funnier. As it turns out, economists, chemists, aviators, and scuba divers use the Rule of Three (even Agatha Christie did when she wrote a series of plays entitled, The Rule of Three). Although it has not been labeled as the Rule of Three, great educators have used it in classrooms since Aristotle (ever heard of syllogisms?). So what is the Rule of Three for learning? Well it is as simple as one, two, three (not kidding). The Rule of Three for learning basically establishes the requirement that students be given the opportunity to learn something at least three times before they are expected to know it and apply it."