Group items tagged

Parents and teachers expend a lot of energy getting kids to pay attention, concentrate, and focus on the task in front of them. What adults don't do, according to University of Southern California education professor Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, is teach children the value of the more diffuse mental activity that characterizes our inner lives: daydreaming, remembering, reflecting.

We all want our students to do the reading, and we all want them to come to class ready to discuss what they've read. Making that happen, however, is often a difficult proposition. Fernald and Swope provide techniques that take two tasks that most instructors dislike-administering pop quizzes and "cold calling on students"-and place them in the hands of the gods of probability.

"Ever wondered how your local schools were doing? Trying to sift through the data that is publicly available is an enormous task. The information is not easy to find and rarely has context to help you understand what the statistics mean for your student, your school, your district, the state you live in, and the rest of the country."

When we distill schools into "one easy click", students are reduced to a single number, ranked on a ladder of life.

How much we're distracted: now there's an app to help us (and our students) stay on task!

Ongoing problem with techno distraction, productivity and learning. This is now being solved with some pretty cool techno fixes, such as AntiSocial (http://anti-social.cc/) and SelfControl (http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/31289/selfcontrol#ratings). Both apps do the same thing. Here's the AntoSocial blurb: "Anti-Social is . . . a productivity application for Macs that turns off the social parts of the internet. When Anti-Social is running, you're locked away from distracting social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter and other sites you specify. With Anti-Social, you'll be amazed how much you get done when you turn off your friends."

This site is a great online calendar tool for juggling life's tasks and events. Create and manage multiple calendars to view individually or on the same page. http://www.dayviewer.com/

The benefits of embedding the teaching of writing into the curriculum have been advocated by educators and researchers. However, there is currently little evidence of embedded writing instruction in the UK's higher education context. In this article, we present a case study in which we report the design, implementation and evaluation of an academic writing intervention with first-year undergraduate students in an applied linguistics programme. Our objectives were to try a combination of embedded instructional methods and provide an example that can be followed by lecturers across disciplines and institutions. Through the integration of in-class and online writing tasks and assessment feedback in a first-term module, we supported students' writing development throughout the first term. We evaluated the effects of the intervention through the analysis of notes on classroom interaction, a student questionnaire and interviews, and a text analysis of students' writing and the feedback comments over time. The evaluation findings provide insights into the feasibility and effectiveness of this approach. The embedded writing instruction was perceived as useful by both students and teachers. The assessment feedback, whilst being the most work-intensive method for the teachers, was valued most by the students and led to substantial improvements in the writing of some. These findings suggest that embedded writing instruction could be usefully applied in other higher education contexts.

Web 2.0 List, Web 2 Tools by Task, 100+ Google Tricks

the tools, and add notes. Register Now Learn how to implement instructional resources that support the use of formative assessments in the secondary math classroom, as well as design your own literacy template tasks that create high-quality and engaging student assignments. The EduCore platform is specifically dedicated to providing secondary teachers with high-quality teaching and learning resources aligned to the Common Core. The Math and Literacy Tools on this site have been designed with you, the teacher, and your students in mind. Strong Student-Teacher Relationships Within the Common Core, students and teachers become partners in the teaching and learning process. 123

One way of structuring your research task

Identifying what our children need to learn is one of the most important processes within education. For the teacher this is the question they engage with as they design their teaching and learning units. By no means is this an easy task and the teacher must balance multiple factors to ensure that the programmes they design provide their students with the learning they require. Even the most effective sequence of lessons is of little value if what it sets out to teach has little importance in the lives our learners are likely to lead. 

"End of lesson task to allow pupils to reflect on how the lesson went via the medium of Emoji."

"Reflecting on what has been learnt (or not learnt) is vital for our pupils to know where to focus their efforts next. In the same way, reflecting upon one's teaching craft is vital to improvement. Yet too many of us feel we do not have time to reflect because we have to move onto the next lesson or admin task. How can we create the time to pick apart our lessons and what are the best methods to do so?"

"Working within the education sector invariably throws together so many tasks that producing a simple to-do list is sometimes just not enough. When faced with a complex to-do list, the usual temptation can be to procrastinate, leaving the important and urgent items on the list festering away until last-minute panic sets in."

When we approach this task with key questions in mind, we focus our thinking on how we might plan learning experiences and opportunities that will have the impact we desire.

To ensure reflective practice is more than an activity added to our schedule, we need to take a reflective stance. Too often, reflection becomes the thing we do at the end of a task or the end of the day. We look back and contemplate what was, and with that in mind, we look forward to what we might do differently next time. It is in this way a very reactionary process. By all means, this form of reflection has its place, and it can be a powerful strategy to deploy as we seek to learn from experience. If we value reflective practice, we will be sure to set aside time for this form of reflection on a routine basis. By engaging in reflection habitually, we ensure that it is a routine part of our day. But adopting a reflective stance can make this more powerful.

A superb set of maths games and activities on topics across the maths curriculum. Guide your character around the town exploring buildings and jobs by completing maths tasks. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/Maths