Group items tagged

"Let's start by agreeing that scaffolding a lesson and differentiating instruction are two different things. Scaffolding is breaking up the learning into chunks and then providing a tool, or structure, with each chunk. When scaffolding reading, for example, you might preview the text and discuss key vocabulary, or chunk the text and read and discuss as you go. With differentiation, you may give a child an entirely different piece of text to read, you might shorten the text or alter it, and you may modify the writing assignment that follows."

"In September we introduced the new curriculum across all subjects and all of our school. This was scaffolding using the Chris Quigley's Essentials materials, during the previous year we had used a numeracy curriculum created by teachers within the Deal Learning Alliance, which a great source and piece of collaborative work in its own right, held too many links back to APP statement and old national curriculum levels. As as school we were finding that the DLA maths document did not provide the scaffold for the raised expectations in mathematics primary curriculum, furthermore, the deeper into the curriculum we delved, the harder it seemed to make the teaching, learning and assessment work efficiently."

My thoughts on how to improve teacher capacity in ICT through better Professional development at both school and system level

Using Vygotsky's theory of the Zone of Proximal Development and scaffolding, one district moved their Prof. Development plan toward a more differentiated model. Read the article, "Individualized Technology Goals for Teachers" for a detailed explanation of it's evolution and practice. http://goo.gl/BJfZIQ

Using Vygotsky's theory of the Zone of Proximal Development and scaffolding, one district moved their Prof. Development plan toward a more differentiated model.

Maker Ed - Genius Hour - Thinkering Studio Scaffolding for: - 3D Printing - Animation & Stop Motion - Digital Photography - Digital Video - Electronics - Game Making - Guitar - Podcasting - Programming - and more

What are the mindful habits of successful learners and how can an understanding of these habits help us better achieve our learning goals? This is the question Art Costa Bena Kallick set out to answer with their study of the Habits of Mind. In 'Learning and Leading with Habits of Mind' Costa and Kallick identify sixteen habits which when utilised promote deeper understanding, unlock creativity, encourage reflective thinking and scaffold problem solving for individuals and groups. 

What should our goal for student thinking be? How do we scaffold student thinking in ways that are meaningful while developing autonomy and encouraging students to think effectively when we are not there? What would success with thinking strategies look like? These were the challenging questions that Mark Church presented to teachers at the most recent 'Cultures of Thinking Teach Meet' hosted by Masada College.

Model School Library Standards for CA - great resource for information literacy scaffolding.

Tools to help students engage in rigorous thinking, organize complex ideas, and scaffold their ineractions with texts. Not to be used simply as worksheets or activities for their own sake.

The framework is expressed as eight interconnected pedagogies involving narrative-driven learning, visualised learning plans, hands-on/reflective techniques, use of symbols/metaphors, land-based learning, indirect/synergistic logic, modelled/scaffolded genre mastery, and connectedness to community. But these can change in different settings.

This is an interesting way to think about how to update the good KWL strategy. It expands the scaffolding process to include things that would be the focus of how to go about answering the quesitons you've genereated & where you'd look to find the info.

Very nifty way of changing something old into an even more effective strategy.

Both schools have been supporters of the "Drop Everything and Read" concept. Observations over time have been that it has become a relatively passive activity - a good one - but still in need of something. So, they're going to experiment with a concept that they're calling "Drop Everything and Blog". The logic is one of scaffolding the concept. You can't really blog unless you have something to blog about. So, the initial attempt will be to have students and teachers blog about favourite books that they've read. Once blogged, classmates will be encouraged to read the original post and comment on it.

Bring your "drop everything and read" literacy sessions up a notch -- how about "stop everything and blog". My personal suggestion with this -- use Google Documents and allow the option of simultaneous collaboration.

Dendrimers are well-defined, versatile polymeric architecture with properties resembling biomolecules. Dendritic polymers emerged as outstanding carrier in modern medicine system because of its derivatisable branched architecture and flexibility in modifying it in numerous ways. Dendritic scaffold has been found to be suitable carrier for a variety of drugs including anticancer, anti-viral, anti-bacterial, antitubercular etc., with capacity to improve solubility and bioavailability of poorly soluble drugs. In spite of extensive applicability in pharmaceutical field, the use of dendrimers in biological system is constrained because of inherent toxicity associated with them. This toxicity is attributed to the interaction of surface cationic charge of dendrimers with negatively charged biological membranes in vivo. Interaction of dendrimers with biological membranes results in membrane disruption via nanohole formation, membrane thinning and erosion.

Genius Hour - The idea is simple, identify a block of time and give it over to the students as an opportunity for them to create a learning experience of their own. But while the idea is simple implementing such a plan can be challenging and there are aspects of such a project that require careful planning and a clear philosophical understanding before you begin.

Grades K-2nd - "HappyNumbers.com is an online resource that brings math to life through high-quality graphics and animation combined with clear, simple instructions and immediate feedback. Our interactive, individualized lessons use a scaffolded approach to reinforce all aspects of elementary-level numeracy and operations. HappyNumbers is compatible with most internet-enabled devices, such as IWBs, PCs, Macs, iPads, and Android tablets."

Despite this being a 'thinking' conference, despite us all being advocates for structured and scaffolded models of thinking, not one group had applied any thinking routines, utilised a collaborative planning protocol or talked about applying an inquiry model or design thinking cycle. It wasn't that we didn't know about them. It wasn't that we don't know how to use them. It wasn't that we don't value them. We had all the knowledge we could desire on the how to and the why of a broad set of thinking tools and anyone of these would have enhanced the process, but we did not use any of them. Why was this the case and what does this reveal about our teaching of these methods to our students?