Group items tagged

"Having the "same" text written for different levels of English comprehension can be a life-saver for a multi-level class of English Language Learners or for a teacher with a mainstream class that includes some students that are facing other challenges. They can be an important tool for differentiation."

"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 By collecting materials ranging from fiction, nonfiction, and poetry to maps, charts, historical documents, photographs, songs, and paintings, teachers can add voices and perspectives to the study of any complex issue.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."

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

"The Common Core Learning Standards describe the importance of teaching students how to comprehend informational text. They are asked to read closely, make inferences, cite evidence, analyze arguments and interpret words and phrases as they are used in a text. Primary source documents are artifacts created by individuals during a particular period in history. This could be a letter, speech, photograph or journal entry. If you're looking to integrate social studies into your literacy block, try out one of these resources for primary source documents. "

"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)."

"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."

"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."

"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.. "

"One of my favorite education books is The Courage to Teach. In that text, Parker Palmer explores teaching as a daily exercise in vulnerability. As teachers, we expose ourselves, and often the content we love, to an at-times unforgiving world. Difficult students, dud lessons, doubting colleagues, short-sighted initiatives, all exacerbated by the challenges of our lives outside the classroom, can eventually harden a teacher. And that skepticism can make it a lot harder to take the risks necessary to get better."

"Complete state results will become publicly available this fall for California and New York, and the entire library will be online in 2017, said Daniel Lewis, chief executive and co-founder of Ravel Law, a commercial start-up in California that has teamed up with Harvard Law for the project. The cases will be available at www.ravellaw.com. Ravel is paying millions of dollars to support the scanning. The cases will be accessible in a searchable format and, along with the texts, they will be presented with visual maps developed by the company, which graphically show the evolution through cases of a judicial concept and how each key decision is cited in others."

"One small change in the classroom can make a big difference. And the same is true when it comes to professional development. In the past year, the switch to visual note taking has impacted my thinking. Visual note taking, also known as sketch noting, is taking down notes and information using both words and pictures. When listening to a speaker or reading text, we naturally form mental images. In sketch noting, the note taker captures those images and creates sketches and doodles on paper or a digital device, such as a tablet."