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Gayle Cole

Third, Fourth, and Fifth Grade Math Differentiation | The 1:1 Classroom - 0 views

mrpullen.wordpress.com/...fth-grade-math-differentiation

differentiation

shared by Gayle Cole on 19 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Use pretests.  Break the pretest up into subcategories that align with what you’ll be teaching in this unit.  Any student who gets 90% or higher in a subcategory does not need to complete the regular assignments on that topic and instead goes right to challenge work when you are focusing on that material.
  • Many online games are easy to differentiate, as they offer a variety of levels of gameplay.  You can assign the proper level to your students or once again allow the students to find their level of best fit.
  • If you need more problems for your top students, check out the fun  competitions at www.onlinemathleague.com, work on differentiated basic fact practice at www.themathfacts.com, or allow students to work on specific levels on www.ixl.com. Whatever you do, do something to ensure that all of your students are working on something they don’t already have mastered.
Gayle Cole

Educational Leadership:Promoting Respectful Schools:Bullying-And the Power of Peers - 0 views

www.ascd.org/...%94And-the-Power-of-Peers.aspx

bullying

shared by Gayle Cole on 18 May 13 - No Cached
  • In a disturbing number of cases, aggressive boys harass girls (Berger & Rodkin, 2009; Rodkin & Berger, 2008; Veenstra et al., 2007). Sixty percent of 5th to 7th grade girls whom Olweus (1993) reported as being harassed said that they were bullied by boys
  • A colleague and I have referred to socially connected bullies as "hidden in plain sight" (Rodkin & Karimpour, 2008) because they are more socially prominent than marginalized bullies, yet less likely to be recognized as bullies or at risk. Because socially connected bullies affiliate with a wide variety of peers, there is an unhealthy potential for widespread acceptance of bullying in some classrooms and schools. This is what Debra Pepler and colleagues call the theater of bullying (Pepler, Craig, & O'Connell, 2010), which encompasses not only the bully-victim dyad, but also children who encourage and reinforce bullies (or become bullies themselves); others who silently witness harassment and abuse; and still others who intervene to support children being harassed (see also Salmivalli et al., 2010).
  • One good friend can make a crucial difference to children who are harassed. Victims who are friends with a nonvictimized peer are less likely to internalize problems as a result of the victimization—for example, being sad, depressed, or anxious
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  • . Peers who do intervene in bullying can make a real difference. These defenders may be successful in more than 50 percent of such attempts, but unfortunately they stand up in fewer than 20 percent of bullying incidents
  • Victimization was lowest in groups with a democratic atmosphere, where relationships with group leaders were more egalitarian and cohesive.
  • interventions that involve peers, such as using students as peer mediators or engaging bystanders to disapprove of bullying and support victims of harassment, were associated with increases in victimization!
  • Some of the most innovative, intensive, grassroots uses of peer relationships to reduce bullying, such as the You Have the Power! program in Montgomery County, Maryland, have not been scientifically evaluated. The final verdict awaits on some promising programs that take advantage of peer relationships to combat bullying, such as the Finnish program KiVa (Salmivalli et al., 2010), which has a strong emphasis on influencing onlookers to support the victim rather than encourage the bully, and the Steps to Respect program (Frey et al., 2010), which works at the elementary school level.
  • . A strong step educators could take would be to periodically ask students about bullying and their social relationships. (See "What Teachers Can Do")
  • Consider what bullying accomplishes for a bully. Does the bully want to gain status? Does the bully use aggression to control others?
  • School staff members vary widely in their knowledge of students' relationships and tend to undere
  • Antibullying interventions can be successful, but there are significant caveats.1  Some bullies would benefit from services that go beyond bullying-reduction programs. Some programs work well in Europe, but not as well in the United States.2  Most antibullying programs have not been rigorously evaluated, so be an informed consumer when investigating claims of success. Even with a well-developed antibullying curriculum, understanding students' relationships at your school is crucial.
  • Implement an intellectually challenging character education or socioemotional learning curriculum. Teach students how to achieve their goals by being assertive rather than aggressive. Always resolve conflicts with civility among and between staff and students. Involve families.
Gayle Cole

Why I Gave Up Flipped Instruction - 0 views

plpnetwork.com/...flip-love-affair

flipped instruction flipping inspiration reform

shared by Gayle Cole on 10 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • the flip wasn’t the same economic and political entity then that it is now
  • my brief love affair with the flip has ended. It simply didn’t produce the tranformative learning experience I knew I wanted for my students .
  • The flipped classroom essentially reverses traditional teaching. Instead of lectures occurring in the classroom and assignments being done at home, the opposite occurs.
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  • I imagined the flip as a stepping stone to a fully realized inquiry/PBL classroom.
  • progression from a teacher-centred classroom to a student-centred one.
  • my students began to do lots of their their own research. Sometimes this resulted in them teaching each other. Sometimes they created a project with the knowledge they were acquiring. But the bottom line was that their learning had a purpose that was apparent to them, beyond simply passing the unit exam.
  • . My goal as a teacher shifted from information-giver and gatekeeper to someone who was determined to work myself out of a job by the time my students graduated.
  • I would never resurrect it. Here’s why:
  • Mostly I talked about inquiry learning and student choice.
  • “If you think it’s only about the videos, then you have a really shallow definition of what this could be. The real power is when students take responsibility for their own learning.”
  • When we shifted to a student-centred classroom, my students took control of their learning, and I quit lecturing. I haven’t lectured in almost two years.
  •   It’s been stated that “At its most basic level, the flipped classroom gives students more control over their educations, allowing them to start and stop or rewind important lectures to focus on key points.”  To me, this isn’t giving students control over their education, although it may be creating new markets for content-oriented videos and related materials.
  • What are you going to learn? How are you going to learn it? How are you going to show me your learning? This became our mantra — our framework for learning.  This is what it means to give students “control over their education.”
  • My students chose the resources that helped them learn best. Throughout the 8 weeks, students sent me the ones they considered “best of the best,” and they were added to our online textbook. And it really was “ours.”
  • Others needed to hunker down to really grasp them. My students differentiated their own instruction.
  • I talked to every student every day. I could look at their work, have them articulate their thinking process, and see where they were struggling.
  • cognitive dissonance, and when they do, we talk about that in the context of their brain development.
  • , they needed to construct theories as to how stoichiometry works, rather than watching a video and memorizing the equation.
  • Alfie Kohn states, a learning environment that promotes constructing knowledge “treats students as meaning makers and offers carefully calibrated challenges that help them to develop increasingly sophisticated theories. The point is for them to understand ideas from the inside out.”
  • my students created flexible groups, depending on what they were working on. They found peers who were working on the same concept they were, so that they could help each other. Sometimes they realized who they couldn’t work with on a particular day, and found a different group of peers to work with instead.
  • For the first time, none of my students were left behind. Everyone learned Chemistry. Everyone
Jill Bergeron

Time - The finite resource - 0 views

thelearnersway.net/ideas

thinking time Making Thinking Visible

shared by Jill Bergeron on 16 May 16 - No Cached
  • As time is such a valuable resource its allocation to particular aspects of teaching and learning signifies their value. If we give time to content and memorisation of facts, we signal to our students that this is what we value. Likewise, if we remind our students that time is short and work must be completed quickly we should not be surprised when our students see tasks as work to be done rather than learning to be mastered. A more effective distribution of our time will see students being given time to think deeply and truly engage with the problems they are asked to solve.
  • The importance of these soft-skills including important aspects of socio-emotional learning, creativity and even critical thinking are often not given the time they deserve.
  • Ritchhart (2015) quotes research that reveals the power of wait time and thinking time with the quality and quantity of student thinking increasing by 300% to 700% when additional time is given to thinking within class discussion. Wait time or thinking time combined with strategies such as those from ‘Making Thinking Visible’ signify to students that what is wanted is not a speedy response but a well considered one. Wait time and thinking time according to Ritchhart combat the habit many students develop of guessing what the teacher wants as a response.
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  • Self-determination Theory (SDT) as described by Ryan & Deci (2000) and as discussed in Daniel Pink’s (2009) work on motivation reveals three drives that help us engage and maintain enthusiasm. Autonomy or a sense of control is a part of this triad and although we may not be able to decide which tasks we complete or not we can probably determine the order they are approached. Scheduling tasks which give us a boost of energy early in the day might help us move through the challenging middle period while finishing with a task we enjoy can be a positive ending. Putting off the tasks we enjoy least, those which offer the leas rewards until the end of the day is a recipe for disaster.
  • The other two drives identified by SDT are purpose and mastery. These too are linked to time and shape our perception of a task as a positive or negative experience. The perceived purpose of a task, the degree to which a task is important to us, the intrinsic enjoyment that a task has play an important part in how we value the time we spend on it. If a task is closely connected to our core purposes it is likely to be valued and time spent on is hardly noticed.
  • Within SDT the desire to master a task is the third drive. Mastery in most instances takes time and situations which prevent us from achieving mastery can lead to negative feelings. Being realistic with our mastery goals and recognising that true mastery is only achieved after significant time may reduce feeling of anxiety when confronted by situations where mastery is the goal but success is difficult to achieve.
  • His time management matrix shows a correlation between a task's perceived importance and its urgency with tasks deemed important but not-urgent being the ones which allow us to produce our best work. This concept is similar to the idea of wait time or thinking time and the ideas are linked together in Ritchhart’s writing.
  • Collaborative planning, reflection, problem identification and solution are areas that demand our best thinking but are not always given the time they demand. What this reveals is that the problem many schools face is not one of quantity of time but rather allocation of time.
  • By talking about how we use time, where we need more time, how we may better distribute our use of time to signal importance and provide opportunities for students and teachers to achieve their best with the time they have we begin to move things forward. Being open to new solutions, breaking with tradition and valuing time as we value money are steps towards a better model for time management in schools, one that has benefits for all.
  • Jill Bergeron on 16 May 16
     
    This blog post shares how the amount of time we give students to think and answer questions can have a great impact on the quality of response we receive. By giving students wait time and thinking time, the quantity and quality of student thinking increased by 300-700%.
Jill Bergeron

Why making, coding, and online learning are the real trends to watch | eSchool News - 0 views

www.eschoolnews.com/...ine-learning-real-trends-watch

coding making AI

shared by Jill Bergeron on 20 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • By contrast, the report’s short-term developments, online learning and makerspaces, have a distinct yesterday’s news vibe about them. But make no mistake, they still hold some of the biggest long-term promise in the report.
  • six trends, six challenges, and six so-called important developments.
  • Take online learning and makerspaces for example, which are now expected to find their way into even more classrooms during the next year.
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  • In the next year, coding as literacy and students as creators are listed as two major drivers. Are the panelists trying to tell us that some combination of physical-digital making is likely in our short-term future?
  • It’s not hard to envision individual elements, such as makerspaces or even coding, losing steam over the next few years as new technologies and trendy teaching styles enter the conversation. But it’s much harder to imagine student creation disappearing entirely.
  • Certainly coding and content creation are currently driving tech adoption in schools, and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Assuming that holds true, collaborative and deeper learning (the trends expected to drive tech adoption for the next three to five years) appear a natural progression as schools look to capitalize on the creative mindsets they’ve helped foster.
Jill Bergeron

6 ways to bolster STEM education for the future | eSchool News - 0 views

www.eschoolnews.com/...2

stem STEAM

shared by Jill Bergeron on 20 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • analysts predict that over the next five years, major American companies will need to add to their workforce a total of nearly 1.6 million employees versed in STEM: 945,000 who possess basic STEM literacy and 635,000 who demonstrate advanced STEM knowledge. Other data suggest that at least 20 percent of U.S. jobs require a high level of knowledge in at least one STEM field, according to the report.
  • Accessible learning activities that invite intentional play and risk.
  • Flexible and inclusive learning spaces. Teachers and students need flexibility in structures, equipment and access to materials in both the classroom and the natural world, as well as environments augmented by virtual and technology-based platforms.
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  • Educational experiences that include interdisciplinary approaches to solving “grand challenges.”
  • Innovative and accessible measures of learning.
  • Societal and cultural images and environments that promote diversity and opportunity in STEM.
  • Jill Bergeron on 20 Sep 16
     
    This article summarizes a report that stipulates there will be an increased demand for STEM professionals over the next 10 years. It offers six broad ideas about how to bolster STEM education.
Jill Bergeron

The Marshall Memo Admin - Issues - 0 views

www.marshallmemo.com/issue.php

empathy management leadership gratitude generosity evaluation check-in collaboration parent-teacher conferences PLC English poetry math election 2016

shared by Jill Bergeron on 20 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • “While people usually gain power through traits and actions that advance the interests of others, such as empathy, collaboration, openness, fairness, and sharing, when they start to feel powerful or enjoy a position of privilege, those qualities begin to fade.”
  • Behaviors like these undermine leaders’ effectiveness by depressing the performance of those around them, and are ultimately self-defeating.
  • power puts us in something like a manic state, making us feel expansive, energized, omnipotent, hungry for rewards, and immune to risk – which opens us up to rash, rude, and unethical actions.” But it turns out that simply being aware of those feelings – “Hey, I’m feeling as if I should rule the world right now” – and monitoring impulses to behave inappropriately helps keep those behaviors in check.
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  • When Keltner works with up-and-coming executives, he counsels them to remember and repeat the virtuous behaviors that helped them rise in the first place and develop three essential practices: empathy, gratitude, and generosity.
  • To practice empathy: -   Ask a question or two in every interaction, showing genuine interest in the subject. -   Paraphrase important points made by others. -   Listen with gusto, orienting your body and eyes toward the person speaking and verbally showing interest and engagement. -   When someone comes to you with a problem, don’t jump right to judgment and advice but say something like, “That’s really tough” or “I’m sorry.” -   Before a meeting, take a moment to think about the person you’ll be with and what’s happening in his or her life.
  • The alternative mindset is that people can grow professionally and managers can change the way people perform through effective coaching, management, and intrinsic rewards like personal development and making a difference.
  • “From Silicon Valley to New York, and in offices across the world, firms are replacing annual reviews with frequent, informal check-ins between managers and employees.”
  • One observer called the traditional performance evaluation a “rite of corporate kabuki” that restricted creativity, generated mountains of paperwork, and served no real purpose. It was also an incentive to put off bad news until the end of the year, at which point both manager and employee may have forgotten what the problem was.
  • There’s one more reason: once-a-year reviews focus on past performance rather than encouraging current work and grooming talent for the future.
  • To practice gratitude: -   Make thoughtful thank-yous a part of how you communicate with others. -   Send colleagues specific and timely e-mails or notes of appreciation for a job well done. -   Publicly acknowledge the value that each person contributes to the team, including support staff. -   Use the right kind of touch – pats on the back, fist bumps, high-fives – to celebrate success. • To practice generosity: -   Seek opportunities to spend a little one-on-one time with people you lead. -   Delegate some important and high-profile responsibilities. -   Give praise generously. -   Share the limelight – give credit to all who contribute to the success of your team and your organization.
  • employees, especially recent college graduates, learn faster from frequent, detailed feedback from mentors and superiors. Second, companies realized they needed to be agile to survive and thrive in the competitive, ever-changing marketplace and real-time performance monitoring and feedback led to more rapid adaptations. And third, managers saw that teamwork was key to innovation and productivity and moving from forced annual ranking to frequent individual accountability was more conducive to teamwork and better results.
  • Studies of the workplace show that the time employees spend helping others is as important to their evaluations and chances of promotion as how they do their jobs. And Grant’s own research on “givers” (who enjoy helping others) and “takers” (who are focused on coming out ahead) shows that givers consistently achieve better results.
  • on the most difficult part of his exams – the multiple choice section – if a student was unsure of an question, he or she wrote down the name of another student who might know the answer – like asking for a lifeline on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” If the classmate had it right, they both earned points; one person’s success also benefited a classmate. Grant reports that this made a big difference – more students joined study groups, the groups pooled their knowledge, and the class’s average score went up 2 percentage points compared to the previous year. Why? Because one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to someone else, and that’s what was going on in the groups.
  • There was something else going on in the lifeline idea: transactive memory, or knowing who knows best and taking advantage of their knowledge. It’s easier to get help if you know where to look.
  • In this Chronicle of Higher Education article, Ellen Boucher (Amherst College) says the “pressure of perfection” is causing lots of stress for students in their teens and twenties, contributing to the rising suicide rate in this age bracket.
  • The burden of multiple obligations can seem insurmountable.”
  • Sociologists have shown that students from less-privileged backgrounds often have trouble understanding the unwritten rules of college life – the so-called hidden curriculum… [A]sking a professor for an extension doesn’t always come naturally. It might not even occur to them as an option.”
  • all students can elect to take a two-day grace period on any paper, with no questions asked.
  • “Since changing my policy, I’ve seen higher-quality work, less anxiety, and fewer cases of burnout.
  • Rebrand. A more inviting name for these perennial meetings is “progress conferences.” This is more positive and doesn’t seem to exclude foster parents and guardians.
  • Finesse the childcare issue. “To pay a babysitter to watch your three younger siblings so a parent can attend a conference is not going to happen,” says Ohio high-school teacher Allison Ricket. She invites parents to bring along other children and provides crayons and paper in an area at the back of her classroom where they can entertain themselves during conferences.
  • Accommodate. Some parents need an interpreter (children shouldn’t be asked to translate) and support with disabilities.
  • Change the dynamic. It makes a difference if a teacher sits side by side with family members and doesn’t hold a clipboard or pad of paper; open hands suggest an open mind.
  • Involve students. Progress conferences are much more helpful when students are at the table reporting on their progress, challenges, and goals. Advisory group meetings focus on preparing students to lead parent conferences and lobby their parents to attend.
  • • Listen. “Parents usually come in having an idea of what they want to talk about, so I like to be open and ready for whatever they need,” says Ricket. Although she has students’ grades and portfolios on hand, she lets parents go first and is careful to empathize with any concerns they have.
  • “mathematics is better taught when everyone shares in consistent language, symbols and notation, models and schema, and rules that support developing learners. The idea behind this comprehensive agreement is not unlike a schoolwide behavior management policy – whereby children hear the same phrases, share identical expectations, and experience practices that are common and consistent year after year across classrooms and throughout the school.”
  • Language – Moving from less conceptual language – borrowing, carrying, reducing fractions, the “Ring around the Rosie” property – to more mathematically appropriate language – regrouping, simplifying fractions to the lowest terms.
  • Symbols and notation – For example, writing fractions with a slanted bar 3/8 may confuse students who think the bar is the numeral 1 and think it’s 318.
  • Models and schema
  • Number lines or graphics should be consistent through the grades, for example, a graphic showing two parts next to one whole.
  • Rules
  • “This unified approach is particularly helpful for students who struggle,” conclude Karp, Bush, and Dougherty, “as it provides a recognizable component to new content. Additionally, all learners in a school can make connections among ideas in a unified and collaborative culture that promotes stronger learning in mathematics.”
  • Jill Bergeron on 20 Sep 16
     
    "Online Resources for Teaching About the Presidential Campaign             In this article in Education Week, Madeline Will shares five free classroom resources for teaching and discussing this year's election: -   Letters to the Next President 2.0 www.letters2president.org - Students' letters to the 45th president will be published by PBS member station KQED and the National Writing Project. -   Teaching Tolerance Election 2016 Resources www.tolerance.org/election2016 - These include a civility contract, civic activities, and PD webinars. -   iCivics www.icivics.org/election_resources_2016 - Materials on the basics of democracy, with an interactive digital game in which students manage their own presidential campaign. -   C-Span Classroom www.c-spanclassroom.org/campaign-2016.aspx - Primary sources with historical and contemporary video clips and related discussion questions, handouts, and activity ideas. -   Join the Debates www.jointhedebates.org - Curriculum materials for collaborative discussions on issues in the campaign and debates.   "Educators Grapple with Election 2016" by Madeline Will in Education Week, September 14, 2016 (Vol. 36, #4, p. 1, 12-13), www.edweek.org "
Jill Bergeron

An Inside Look at an Award-Winning Maker Program | Edutopia - 0 views

www.edutopia.org/...ng-maker-program-kevin-jarrett

maker makered design thinking pbl

shared by Jill Bergeron on 14 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • Making matters. And design thinking matters to makers.
  • Eleven students, including four who had just graduated eighth grade, would spend the weekend explaining how design thinking drove our program’s work and their learning. Kids used student-built prototypes to explain how they employed design thinking to solve problems and make the world a better place.
  • We set up stations where Faire attendees got to experience prototyping for themselves, tackling design challenges based on the Extraordinaires Design Studio and expertly explained by our kids.
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  • students would work with JeffDESIGN over the summer to learn valuable lessons about what it takes to get an idea from concept to production in the real world.
  • We have adopted the free and fabulous EPICS—Engineering Projects In Community Service—as the heart and soul of our program this year.
  • I love that the EPICS framework is just that—a framework. It provides a flexible structure I can modify as necessary to suit our processes and needs.
  • When we are done, we’ll have a powerful, document-driven, human-centered methodology to guide our work in design.
  • The new school year has gotten off to a good start. We’re creating an entirely new understanding of design thinking in Digital Shop, an amalgam of our shared past experiences and the practices of some of the world’s best design thinking practitioners. It’s ridiculously hard work, alternatively frustrating and exhilarating, but totally worth it.
  • Jill Bergeron on 14 Dec 16
     
    This article gives a good idea of how to scaffold a maker program and it is chock full of resources we can use to support those initiatives.
Jill Bergeron

The Marshall Memo Admin - Issues - 0 views

www.marshallmemo.com/issue.php

coaching instructional coaching writing comments grading pre-assessments

shared by Jill Bergeron on 26 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • “Improvement [in writing] starts with volume. Volume suffers if I have to grade everything. Grading doesn’t make kids better. Volume, choice, and conferring makes kids better.”
  • “Give students daily opportunities to leave tracks of their thinking, use those tracks to notice patterns, and adjust instruction on the basis of what kids know and what they need. Repeat cycle.”
  • “Pre-assessment without associated action is like eating without digestion.”
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  • So far, says Sternberg, all the ways we’ve tried to measure raw intelligence haven’t worked.
  • No existing IQ or other test can separate past opportunities from test performance.
  • “If you understand the child’s knowledge and cognitive skills in a domain that is really meaningful to the child,” says Sternberg, “you will learn what the student is capable of doing in other domains, if only motivated to pursue those other domains.”
  • you cannot cleanly separate out measurement of intelligence from measurement of reading (obviously, a verbal skill). The same holds for other content domains.”
  • The coach’s role, she says, “is not to fix lessons or teachers but to support teachers’ abilities to meet students’ needs.
  • Let the teacher “drive” the process.
  • the coach’s job in goal-setting is to search for points of agreement with the teacher and to direct her in ways likely to produce positive results.”
  • “The coach also needs to respect the teacher’s autonomy by offering feedback only on agreed-upon goals,” adds Finkelstein. “As tempting as it can be for coaches to identify areas for improvement, unsolicited suggestions can arouse defensiveness.”
  • “Improvement starts with volume. Volume suffers if I have to grade everything. Grading doesn’t make kids better. Volume, choice, and conferring makes kids better.” This helped Tovani realize that she didn’t have to assess every piece of student writing, which allowed her to grade less and assess more: “I don’t have to always write the perfect comment or give a grade,” she says. “[W]hat’s most essential to improving the quality of students’ work is collecting feedback for ourselves from that work and noticing patterns in students’ skills (or lack thereof) that we can use to determine our next instructional moves.”
  • This view is critical to mitigating teacher resistance to feedback, which most teachers expect will be evaluative.” A smart strategy is to focus on what students have learned rather than the teacher’s skill executing lessons. “Collaboratively examining student performance can provide an effective third space for this kind of non-evaluative feedback,” she says.
  • “It is the coach’s responsibility to dispel any perception that her job is easier or more relaxed than the teacher’s.” This means writing lesson plans, citing standards, teaching lessons, collecting books and materials, helping with assessments, doing grading, and helping with other paperwork.
  • At the same time, the coach needs to think strategically about the teacher’s growth and development and ultimate independence.
  • “Coaches also walk the walk by using their access to authority in schools to advocate for teachers,”
  • Communicate clearly and transparently. Right from the start, coaches need to spell out key details of the partnership, including: -   The goals and time frame; -   When, why, and how the coach will observe in the classroom; -   What non-evaluative feedback will look and sound like; -   With whom the coach will (and will not) share feedback.
  • “Coaches must be particularly sensitive about writing down anything while visiting a classroom,”
  • There are plenty of reasons for resistance to being “helped” by an instructional coach, she says, often manifested in shallow acquiescence, avoidance, or overt hostility: -   Teachers believing (not without reason) that they’ve been singled out as deficient; -   Fear of being judged and exposed as ineffective with students; -   Fear that deficiencies unrelated to the presenting issue will be revealed; -   A belief that the instructional coach may report on them to the principal; -   Worries about being admonished by the principal; -   Discomfort examining their own practice; -   Anxiety about having to change.
  • Spend less time writing comments. -   Modify instruction based on what’s learned from students’ work. -   Build in time for students to revise their work based on feedback and self-assessment.
  • “Students compare my criteria of success with their performance,” she says, “and reflect on how my responses are alike or different from theirs.” If students do poorly on one of her quizzes, she’ll go over items in class, giving students a chance to add points by showing improvement.
  • share with the teacher any notes taken during observations.
  • Exit tickets – At the end of class, students jot one thing they figured out and one thing they’re wondering about. Tovani spreads these out on a table and draws conclusions about the next day’s lesson. “I don’t waste time writing comments,” she says. “I simply look for patterns, and when I’ve figured out a few, I throw the tickets away.”
  • Response journals – In individual composition notebooks, students reflect on their learning for the day. Tovani reads a third of these each day during her planning period, takes a third home, and reads the rest the next morning. “I limit my comments and challenge myself to identify patterns,” she says.
  • While commenting, she records her observations in four columns: students’ use of skills and strategies; confusing vocabulary; students’ questions related to the reading; and how skillfully students are dealing with a genre or text structure. She gives feedback or a quick correction to individual students or to the whole class.
  • “If pre-assessments simply demonstrate to students how little they know, this exercise may negatively affect their disposition toward the upcoming event,”
  • Teachers’ messaging needs to emphasize that a pre-assessment won’t count against students and the purpose is to help make lessons more effective and fun, highlight what’s going to be learned, and allow students to set goals.
  • To avoid giving pre-assessments that add little value, teachers should use them only when necessary, keep them short, using multiple-choice questions where possible, and limit questions to areas where the teacher genuinely doesn’t know how students will perform.
  • A thorough unit pre-assessment might well reveal four levels of student preparation in a single classroom: students who know the intended outcomes up front; students who have partial knowledge; students who have little or no knowledge; and students who have significant misconceptions. Trying to differentiate for all these students is a classroom management nightmare for even the most creative teacher. Guskey and McTighe suggest a compromise, with some highly engaging whole-class presentations and then significant decentralization and choice with frequent checks for understanding.
  • When possible, teachers should gather pre-assessment data with individual student dry-erase boards, clickers, or other methods that allow for rapid student input and teacher analysis and decision-making.
  • three guidelines to ensure that pre-assessments are practical, provide useful data, and enhance student learning:
  • Teachers should be clear about the purpose, both for themselves and their students. What new and helpful data will be gathered? Do students know why they are doing the pre-assessment?
  • Decide how the information will be used.
  • Possible follow-ups include reviewing essential knowledge and skills with the whole class, addressing misconceptions, providing targeted instruction, linking content to students’ interests, and differentiating for individuals or groups.
  • They’re not necessary for every new unit, say the authors – only when they can really add value and only if they’re short and can produce data that can be assessed quickly.
  • Taking three or more related courses in one career area boosted students’ chances of graduating from high school on time by 21 percent.
Jill Bergeron

The Value of Guided Projects in Makerspaces | Renovated Learning - 0 views

renovatedlearning.com/...ue-guided-projects-makerspaces

projects maker makerspace makered maker movement pbl

shared by Jill Bergeron on 26 Jan 16 - No Cached
  • Working through guided projects can help students to develop the skills that they need to further explore creatively.  It’s true that some students can just figure it out, but most need that gentle push to get them started.
  • Following patterns to the letter when I first got started helped me to learn the skills that I needed to be creative in my knitting.
  • The problem comes when all we ever do are guided projects.  Sylvia Martinez and Gary Stager warn against the “20 identical birdhouses” style class projects, where there is zero creativity involved.  It’s very easy to fall into the trap of focusing too much on standards, rubrics and guided projects and zapping all the fun and creativity out, turning a makerspace into nothing more than another classroom.  It’s tempting for many educators to just print out a list of instructions, sit students down in front of a “maker kit” and check their e-mail while students work through the steps one by one.  This is obviously not what we want in our makerspaces.
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  • Providing some limitations, guidelines, restrictions can actually make us more creative, as we have to figure out how to make things work with what we’re given.
  • Giving them a little bit of guidance and limitation still providing plenty of room for creativity and imagination.
  • We have to find a balance between open-ended, free range exploration and guided learning in our makerspaces.  It can be tricky to figure out sometimes, but it’s worth putting the effort in.  A well-crafted design challenge can inspire amazing creativity.  Free-range learning gives students opportunities for imaginative play.  Both are crucial for creating an environment where students can discover, learn and grow.
Jill Bergeron

Boys Will Be Boys - Reading By Example - 0 views

readingbyexample.com/...boys-will-be-boys

boys gender behavior discipline adhd differentiation

shared by Jill Bergeron on 14 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • If a school were to alter their approach for teaching boys, a priority would have to be placed on hands-on experiences, constructing knowledge at their pace, and not placing such a premium on assignment deadlines or the printed and written word.
  • Another idea is to allow students to dictate their writing using voice recognition software. This circumvents the oft-cited complaint of boys that they hate the physical act of putting words on paper. This deficit is supported by research that shows boys develop more slowly than girls in fine motor skills, a critical skill for writing.
  • we need to rebuild schools and make them more accommodating for how boys learn.
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  • The best part of this approach? That both genders would benefit from changes that would be made if educators more closely considered the needs and interests of males in the learning process.
  • Offering appropriate challenges, lots of choice, reasonable accommodations, and opportunities to be active are strategies that allow for all learners to be more successful and less frustrated with school.
  • Jill Bergeron on 14 Mar 16
     
    This article looks at how school might lead to more behavior problems with boys because it doesn't meet their needs as learners.
Jill Bergeron

Teaching Why Facts Still Matter | Edutopia - 0 views

www.edutopia.org/...acts-still-matter-david-cutler

critical thinking media literacy

shared by Jill Bergeron on 14 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • When politicians and thought leaders can’t or won’t agree on a basic set of facts, how can we motivate students for the noble pursuit of truth and help them see why it still matters?
  • An unavoidable challenge arises when students realize that no matter how many facts support a certain conclusion, denial and dissent remain.
  • “You have to trust [that] the best information, the truth, will always prevail,” he said, though “that’s tough when you face a crowd of people screaming at you on Twitter in probably not the nicest way.”
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  • history tends to prove his assertion right.
  • “I think we are losing the graces of dialogue and respect, and the ability of at least listening to one another a little bit,” he said, reminding me that truth affects people differently. It would be hard to dispute that coal contributes to global warming, for example, but it’s also true that efforts to stop its production place jobs in jeopardy.
  • discuss the truth and its ramifications from multiple angles
  • students should read broadly from individuals across the political spectrum. “Then, it’s important that they have a chance to test those opinions, and their ability to express them in discussions—both with their peers and with knowledgeable others,”
Jill Bergeron

PBL Teachers Need Time to Reflect, Too | Edutopia - 0 views

www.edutopia.org/...-teacher-reflection-suzie-boss

PBL reflection edutopia steam STEM new teacher PD

shared by Jill Bergeron on 15 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • "We do not learn from experience . . . we learn from reflecting on experience."
  • Reflection not only makes learning stick at the end of a project but also helps students think about what's working well and what's not during PBL.
  • The same holds true for teachers.
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  • Perhaps you're scrambling to coordinate project showcase events before the holiday break. But it's well worth your time, while your memory's fresh, to make some notes and gather information about how things went this time around.
  • Don't rely on your own impressions. Ask students to share their insights about the strengths and weaknesses of a project.
  • By inviting student feedback, you demonstrate respect for their opinions and underscore the value of student voice.
  • Be sure to ask open-ended questions
  • Some PBL teachers make reflection a habit by blogging about projects as they unfold. In the process, they create an archive of observations that they can refer back to later.
  • While individual teacher reflection is valuable, reflecting with colleagues can be even better.
  • Think of yourselves as doctors on rounds, suggests the Coalition of Essential Schools (11), as you look closely for evidence of student learning.
  • In "Wild About Cramlington," (12) teacher Darren Mead describes the challenge of giving his students an experience with "just enough failure to act and think in a way different from the normal school day."
  • Jill Bergeron on 15 Jan 14
     
    Helpful article for considering how teachers can learn from their own lessons. The samples from current teacher blogs are very impactful.
Jill Bergeron

Creativity Becomes an Academic Discipline - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...es-an-academic-discipline.html

creativity teaching education

shared by Jill Bergeron on 11 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • Traditional academic disciplines still matter, but as content knowledge evolves at lightning speed, educators are talking more and more about “process skills,” strategies to reframe challenges and extrapolate and transform information, and to accept and deal with ambiguity.
  • Creative studies is popping up on course lists and as a credential.
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