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"A strategy to support pupils improve their spelling strategies, by circling words which they think require attention. The Standards & Testing Agency have in some ways made the marking of spellings more problematic than it's ever been. They state quite clearly, that individual spellings should no longer be pointed out to children if you wish to mark it as an independent piece. This, coupled with Ofsted's move away from heavy amounts of marking needing to be seen in books, could make the marking of spelling seem tricky."

"Genius Hour: From discussions with Primary school teacher friends of mine it was pointed out that something happened in Year 7 that changed students from the risk taking and independent learners that they were in Year 6 into passive learners by the end of Year 7. I had noticed the same thing with my own niece as she transitioned from primary to secondary, so I started to think about what was causing it. The more I looked the more I noticed that in secondary there is very little opportunity for students to make choices or take ownership of their learning and I wanted to change this."

"As a parent, I have always been able to help my children find good sources of information in order to do their homework. How do I know where to find the best information? Do I have some inside knowledge that most parents don't? Yes! How? I am a librarian… I have long believed that if parents knew about the resources available from their school library to support their children's homework they would be relieved and happy. They would be able to guide them to use these good tools without worrying about quality or reliability. Many of our resources go unused for two reasons, firstly, many teachers and students do not know about these resources, how easy they are to use and reference and secondly, parents don't know they exist."

In this webinar, expert in eBooks Meredith Wemhoff discusses ways to engage and support learners with special needs using eBooks and audio. Using the case-study of an independent all-boys school located in Surrey, the school provides special needs students an opportunity to succeed and thrive. Many arrive to the 80-year-old institution with low self-confidence, often due to struggles they faced in traditional educational institutions caused by learning and language difficulties. This means providing a collection that meets the individual learning needs of the school's 470 students, who range in age from 8-18. ​​​​​​​ During this eye-opening webinar, Meredith will share the story of selecting, launching and promoting a digital library service that helps address learning challenges. Attendees will come away with best practices for bringing ebooks and audiobooks to their school and real-life examples of these practices in action. Don't miss out, register today!

"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

Collection of some very cool activities around the fourth of july. Including smoke bomb rings and a patriotic Mentos geyser.

A discussion of, and model for how interactive your classes are - with a bias towards technology but the feet firmly in teaching in general.

Kim Cofino's diagram about The Collaboration Cycle: Building Independence Through Partnership from Coaching and Mentoring to Partial and Full Collaboration.

Collaboration Cycle of PD.

I agree with Jeff Utecht that Kim Cofino is on to something with the collaboration cycle of "building indpendence through partnership" in terms of mentoring and helping teachers with their pd and technology integration.

Published 27th March 2008 On 6th September 2007, the Prime Minister asked me to conduct an independent review looking at the risks to children from exposure to potentially harmful or inappropriate material on the internet and in video games.

Surprising outbreak of common sense from uk govt education dept publishing report of ed.psych. Dr Tanya Byron -- I will blog more when I have read all xx pages of it.

"I've outlined what I believe are the five phases I take my classes through to prepare them for independent, self-directed levels of collaboration. I suspect these ruminations will evolve."

a music site that offers a unique progressive pricing structure that lets you save money for selecting music before it gets popular.When a new song or album is added to the site it's available for free or very cheap (the site doesn't specify a maximum starting price). The price only goes up as demand for a song increases (in terms of total downloads).  The more attuned you are the cheaper your music prices will be. And even if you're late to an artist, the highest price a song can reach is 98 cents (one cent below the starting price for songs on an unnamed service run by a guy who favors mock turtlenecks). The site also rewards users for recommending new music. If you recommend a song that happens to get popular, Amie Street will credit your account as more users download the track (the amount of credit you receive increases as the song gets more popular).

The importance of experimental design in science is that helps students infer about causes or relationships, as opposed to simply describe what happened in a canned experiment. As students learn to develop their own experimental design they must be able to answer the most important question of all regarding the design process.

I learned that students needed to be taught how to make choices. I learned that affect matters as much as cognition. I learned that assessment that supports teaching and learning trumps assessments that label.

Here is another study for literacy people. This report from the UK talks about effective teacher training and good teaching methods but interestingly talks about early reading instruction and the debates surrounding whole language and constructivism.