Group items tagged

"In a given subject, standards or benchmarks-and potentially state curriculum-there are skills and content students must master. Within a given curriculum map, the trick is to identify what skills and content students need to learn, and then identify where students will have the freedom to construct inquiry on their own. If the goal of an activity is acquisition of content knowledge, perhaps you can vary the presentation method. For example, students could have a checklist of information about a particular historical era and then choose a specific medium for sharing those facts with the general public-essay, slideshow, podcast, video, and exhibit being just a few of the options. Alternately, if the goal is skill mastery, students can apply the specified skill to problems and situations that they select on their own, such as applying the same mathematical formulas to analyze statistical data on a topic or field of their choice, be it professional sports or neighborhood crime. The most advanced students can be offered control over both content and methods-what's important to learn, and how to present it."

Blended learning perspectives...

"By setting up ways to get frequent feedback from students' works in progress, we can find out what they need-before it's too late. Several years ago, I decided that if I were going to spend time writing comments on my students' writing work or on assignments connected to their in-class reading, those comments had to do more than justify a grade. They had to give targeted feedback that would show students how to improve the quality of their work. I'd been finding the hours I spent writing feedback on students' work discouraging. For one thing, students didn't pay attention to my comments, and, for another, the quality of their work wasn't improving. A change in how I responded to their work was necessary. If I wanted my comments to fuel improvement, I realized, I had to build in time for learners to revise their work after receiving my suggestions. Not only did I change the timing of my feedback, but I also streamlined my process of writing comments, allowing myself more time to shift instruction in response to what I'd learned from reviewing work"

"A while back, I was asked, "What engages students?" Sure, I could respond, sharing anecdotes about what I believed to be engaging, but I thought it would be so much better to lob that question to my own eighth graders. The responses I received from all 220 of them seemed to fall under 10 categories, representing reoccurring themes that appeared again and again. So, from the mouths of babes, here are my students' answers to the question: "What engages students?" "

"When students write a paper, it goes without saying that they must cite the sources that they use in creating it. For generations, students have created note cards to document and organize these resources and/or submitted a bibliography page with their finished work. In the modern classroom, student research and creation has taken on a new look. Before, when students created a poster, and then separately handed in a bibliography page to the teacher, justice was done and fair credit was given for the ideas used."

"At the end of a project-based learning (PBL) experience, students typically share what they have learned or discovered with an audience. Depending on the project, students might publish their work online, make presentations at a public event, or pitch their ideas to a panel of judges. For veteran PBL teacher Don Wettrick, "nothing is better than a project that gets community buy-in." Connecting students with an authentic audience is key, he says, to driving engagement and helping students relate what they are learning to the real world. "My top two goals are to help students find great opportunities [for real-world problem solving], and then cheerlead them to a great audience." "

"3.Feelings of belonging help retention: Most students perform better and are more satisfied in their online learning experience if the institution cultivates positive working and social relations among learners, says the report. To build a stronger sense of belonging or relatedness to students part of online learning, the researchers recommend Thornberg's four metaphors enabling engagement in online spaces: 1) Caves, where distance learners can find time to reflect and come in to contact with themselves; 2) Campfires, or formal environments where students have the opportunity to listen to stories from which they construct knowledge from those with expertise and wisdom; 3) Watering Holes, or informal environments where students gather at a central source to discuss information and create meaning with their peers; and 4) Mountain Tops, where students celebrate their findings and present their ideas to an audience.

"In the fall of 2006, Clarence R. Edwards Middle School ("the Edwards" as it is known locally within Boston Public Schools) became one of the first schools in the state of Massachusetts to implement the Expanded Learning Time (ELT) Initiative. The reasons why were simple: we were not making Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) and we wanted to make significant academic gains with our students. As it turned out, making our school day longer was one of the best things we could have done to help reform our school model and improve student outcomes. Our statewide exam scores, student enrollment, daily student attendance rate, community and family engagement, and time for team teaching/collaboration all improved as a result of ELT. "

Because of these experiences, I have a firm belief that my students also grow and achieve more when they learn to overcome obstacles and persevere. One way to encourage that can-do attitude is to invite others to recognize my students for their effort and success. Recognition from outside the classroom sparks something in students that leads to bigger and better things. I want to share a story about how that happened for me and my students this year.

"This conversation is starting to get old. It is 2011, not 1875. It's time we collectively got our heads out of our filters and prepare students properly for the world they will graduate into, not the world we grew up in. Everyone needs to be vocal, everyone needs to be an advocate for students in the 21st Century. I've written about this before, but the message is still not getting through. The red tape and fears are mounting and students are suffering in the wake of ill-informed adults. The Internet filters, in their current state, have got to go. Protecting students is one thing; a blanket denial of modern learning is another."

"Editor's Note: Matt Weyers and co-author Jen Dole, teachers at Byron Middle School in Byron, Minnesota, present the seventh installment in a year-long series documenting their experience of launching a PBL pilot program. Project-based learning is a complex teaching method that, in our experience, requires a clear and established workflow to seamlessly accommodate the needs of teachers, parents, and students. Throughout this school year, we have found several apps, add-ons, and programs that have helped us best manage our workflow. Before we provide brief descriptions and links to each of them, it is important to state the current situation in our classroom: Students in our classes have individual iPads to use during the school day (they stay at school). Every student has a school-generated Gmail account. The majority of students have access to the internet outside of the school setting."

"Principal Kamar Samuels had a problem: how to reach the most disaffected students at Bronx Writing Academy, a middle school serving mostly low-income students. The usual discipline methods weren't working and Samuels knew that if he could figure out how to engage his toughest students, he'd have a playbook to reach them all. So, he decided to make those students his focus group, asking them what they liked about school, and really listened to the answers. That technique is part of a user-centered design approach he's trying out in order to tackle some of the age-old problems in education, like low achievement for Latino and African-American boys, with a new lens."

"Overview | What would schools look like if students developed their own curriculum? How would education and the experience of being in school differ for students if they had more power to direct their learning? In this lesson, students consider an experiment in public education in which a small group of high school students planned and executed a model for their own learning. They then develop and implement their own self-directed projects and reflect on the results. "

"The practice also makes student learning visible and provides a valuable formative assessment tool. If a student sketches an interesting side note in the lesson, but misses the big themes, that will show up in her drawing. And when students share their drawings with one another, they have the chance to fill in the gaps in their knowledge, and drawings, while discussing the key ideas. Going over the drawings also solidifies the information for students."

"3.Feelings of belonging help retention: Most students perform better and are more satisfied in their online learning experience if the institution cultivates positive working and social relations among learners, says the report. To build a stronger sense of belonging or relatedness to students part of online learning, the researchers recommend Thornberg's four metaphors enabling engagement in online spaces: 1) Caves, where distance learners can find time to reflect and come in to contact with themselves; 2) Campfires, or formal environments where students have the opportunity to listen to stories from which they construct knowledge from those with expertise and wisdom; 3) Watering Holes, or informal environments where students gather at a central source to discuss information and create meaning with their peers; and 4) Mountain Tops,"

"All educators care deeply about their students' motivation. They want them to love learning, and to be resourceful and persistent in the face of learning challenges. They don't want their students to lose heart when they get stuck, make mistakes, or receive disappointing grades. In this context, the growth mindset entered the scene. A growth mindset is the belief that you can develop your talents and abilities through hard work, good strategies, and help from others. It stands in opposition to a fixed mindset, which is the belief that talents and abilities are unalterable traits, ones that can never be improved. Research has shown (and continues to show) that a growth mindset can have a profound effect on students' motivation, enabling them to focus on learning, persist more, learn more, and do better in school. Significantly, when students are taught a growth mindset, they begin to show more of these qualities."

"During last year's edJEWcon conference (a Teaching & Learning Institute for Jewish Educators, which I help organize with Andrea Hernandez and Jon Mitzmacher), we invited our Middle School students to attend our keynote session with Heidi Hayes Jacobs. We all watched magic happen, when students (without being asked) created their own backchannel and added their perspective to the conversation about THEIR learning."

"But what was so different about how these women learned math in high school? How did their math teachers form bonds so strong that years later they were attending students' weddings in Mexico? The answer: Complex Instruction. This pedagogy is not specific to math and has been in the literature for decades, originally researched by Elizabeth Cohen and Rachel Lotan at Stanford University. Teachers at Railside High discovered the methodology when they were undergoing an accreditation review and were told they needed to drastically change something to improve their results. The ultimatum prompted teachers to try something different - heterogeneous classes, high expectations for all students and, above all, approaching math with an eye to students' strengths."

"As a student, I would study for a test (most likely the day before or, I confess, even the period before), take the assessment, and then, much like a person who is done with a document on their desktop, my brain would simply "Empty Trash." To avoid this same scenario happening to my own students, I use assessments formatively. That is, I have designed a series of activities that routinely follow each test that help guide my students to learn from the results of their formal assessments."

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.