Group items tagged

Do you teach struggling readers? No matter the content area that you teach, student success is often defined by literacy. Reading comprehension and vocabulary frequently act as roadblocks that prevent students from grasping difficult concepts. Rewordify is a tool that will help you ignore this roadblock, and even teach reading comprehension and vocabulary when used appropriately. I initially read about the tool from this blog post (http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2013/08/rewordify-helps-students-read-complex.html#.UhuJ79KsiSp). If you don't have time to check out that entire post, here is a brief summary of the tool and a few possible uses for it: Tool Description: This online tool allows the user to input a chunk of text and replaces all the "hard words" with synonyms. This seems like a spectacular tool to promote reading comprehension across the content areas. Here a just a couple ways you could use this tool. * Have you found a website with incredible information, but the reading level is way too high for your students? Have the students use Rewordify and make the reading level more appropriate for your students. * This could be a great tool to teach new vocabulary and reading comprehension. Here's one idea on how to do this: o Have students read a passage and highlight/underline/annotate the passage, including making notes of the words that they don't understand. Then, have the students summarize what they have read. Input the same text into rewordify and have the students read and summarize what they have read a second time. Compare the two summaries and discuss any similarities/differences. Now, have the students create definitions for the words that were highlighted (Students cannot use the provided synonym when completing this portion of the activity). William Berry Dept. of Organizational Development, Quality and Innovation Moody Middle School ITRT - (804) 261-5015 http://blogs.henrico.k12.va.us/techtips/ http://blogs.henrico.k12.v

Interesting article that I'm going to share with my English teachers. If they are interested, I'm going to look for/recommend similar functioning tools that they could use with their students. "Instructors at the New Jersey Institute of Technology have been using a program called E-Rater in this fashion since 2009, and they've observed a striking change in student behavior as a result. Andrew Klobucar, associate professor of humanities at NJIT, notes that students almost universally resist going back over material they've written. But, Klobucar told Inside Higher Ed reporter Scott Jaschik, his students are willing to revise their essays, even multiple times, when their work is being reviewed by a computer and not by a human teacher. They end up writing nearly three times as many words in the course of revising as students who are not offered the services of E-Rater, and the quality of their writing improves as a result. Crucially, says Klobucar, students who feel that handing in successive drafts to an instructor wielding a red pen is "corrective, even punitive" do not seem to feel rebuked by similar feedback from a computer."

This seems like a fun and interesting way to discuss/learn several different math topics. Here's a sample lesson plan that popped into my head when I saw this post: 1. Show to students a GoogleMap/GoogleEarth image similar to the one on the website, but more meaningful to you/them. For example, several different grocery stores around your house. 2. Ask the students, "Which one should I go to?" Have the students justify their answers using the image and mathematical topics that they have learned up to this point. 3. With appropriate questioning you could work in several mathematical topics here (I know I'm missing others as well…) a. Overlay a grid on the GoogleMaps and have the students give each of the locations points on an x,y axis. Use this information to determine distance. Have a conversation if this is the best way to determine which location is easiest to access. When students start to bring up the fact that even though some points are technically closer, but could be slower to get to, bring in… b. Rates, ratios, etc. Discuss how fast you could possibly travel on each route according to number of stop signs, streetlights, speed limit etc. Have students use this information to calculate the appropriate answer.

Lesson objective: In this lesson, students use coordinates to compute perimeters of polygons and areas of triangles and rectangles, e.g., using the distance formula. Pretty much all the steps to this lesson are on the website, which also includes a download link with all the materials that you will need. Something to think about if you plan on completing this lesson: When you first pose the problem to the students - Have the students discuss how they could represent the location of the different vertices for the Bermuda triangle. Give the students time to research/explore and find the latitude/longitude on their own rather than giving it to them directly. There are plenty of tools out there that can help the students complete this task, the most common being Google Earth and Google Maps

"There's a contest called Math-O-Vision, which your students should enter. Here's the premise: The Neukom Institute for Computational Science, at Dartmouth College, is offering prizes for high school students who create 4-minute movies that show the world of equations we live in. In 240 seconds, using animation, story-telling, humor, or anything you can think of, show us what you see: the patterns, the abstractions, the patterns within the abstractions." Two interesting things going on in this short blog post: 1. It introduces a contest which might be interesting for some of your students. I looked at the winning video from last year (linked in the post) and know that our students are capable of making something of similar quality. 2. The articles provides an interesting insight on math as a "product." This is quite an interesting discussion when thinking about how/why to assign this type of activity to your students.

"This theory says, "For math to be engaging, it needs to be real. The fake stuff isn't engaging. The real stuff is." This theory argues that the engagingness of the task is directly related to its realness. This is a limited, incomplete theory of engagement. There are loads of "real" tasks that students find boring. (You can find them in your textbook under the heading "Applications.") There are loads of "fake" tasks that students enjoy." I agree completely that there are plenty of REAL tasks that aren't engaging, but in my personal experience as a math student and as a teacher that occasionally creates math lessons, I find the most engaging problems are those that have a real application to my personal interests and life. Personally, I believe that if teachers present "real" tasks to the students that they are passionate about and have fun teaching, that rubs off on the students.

"This could be an interesting tool for creative writing prompts and/or vocabulary work. Here are a couple thoughts on how you could use Endless Interestingness in the classroom: Challenge the students to find a "string" of 5-10 photos in a row and connect those images by writing a creative story that incorporates the subjects, themes, moods, etc. of those photos. Provide the students with a vocabulary word. Have the students go to the website and choose one photo that best represents that word. Students could explain and justify their choice to the rest of the class. A Padlet wall would be a great tool for this assignment, so that all students could quickly share their work and view their classmates' ideas."

"goREACT is a free iPad and Android app from the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. This free iPad app allows students to virtually create chemical reactions. To create the reactions students simply drag elements from the periodic table to the "reaction area." The app features suggested reactions to help students get started. In all there are nearly 300 chemical reactions supported on the app. The app includes pictures and videos related to the reactions that students can virtually create on goREACT."

"FluencyTutor for Google is a new offering from Texthelp. FluencyTutor for Google is a Chrome web app (works on Chromebook, PC, Mac) that allows teachers to share selected reading passages with their students. Students can hear the passages read aloud. The text being read aloud is highlighted to help students follow along with the reading" Might be useful for ESL and SPED classes

"Mark talked about the idea of using Evidence-Based Arguments as a starting point. Every historical investigation needs to begin with a great question. Then they asked kids to do research and create videos. But what they got was disappointing. What they got was basically text with pictures, a script with a background. It wasn't a story, it wasn't engaging, and it often didn't really answer the question.  They begin to realize that they needed to learn more about how to create high-quality documentaries, how to use images and video to actually tell a story. And eventually they came up with a Four Step Process that students work through to create high-quality documentaries:" 4 Step Process for creating HST videos. I don't necessarily agree with the author's thought that tech should not be introduced until step #4, as tech can enhance 1-3 just as well. The teacher just needs to model good behavior and help students develop structures for the work in these phases for it to be successful.

"Just a quick post- we started a unit on percents today.  Found this activity from Illuminations, but I needed it to be a little bit more.  The activity takes the BMIs and weights of season 14′s contestants and students need to find the percent lost for each in order to find out who won the game.  We then had a discussion on why the show does not award the prize to the person with the most weight lost, but the highest percentage." You could find some good video/media to go along with this to hook students - Maybe a before/after picture video which I'm sure you could find online. Have the students use the video to predict the winner then get into the worksheet. There are some pretty good extension activities embedded here as well: Research how BMI is calculated, Determine whether percentage of weight lost is the best method to determine the winner, etc.

A friend shared this with me and it's a good read. It also summarizes the way that many of our teachers think, and could be an interesting article to share with a teacher and have a discussion about. Ultimate, I have a huge problem with the assumptions and conclusions that are being made here: "Now I'm not calling for abuse; I'd be the first to complain if a teacher called my kids names. But the latest evidence backs up my modest proposal. Studies have now shown, among other things, the benefits of moderate childhood stress; how praise kills kids' self-esteem; and why grit is a better predictor of success than SAT scores. All of which flies in the face of the kinder, gentler philosophy that has dominated American education over the past few decades. The conventional wisdom holds that teachers are supposed to tease knowledge out of students, rather than pound it into their heads. Projects and collaborative learning are applauded; traditional methods like lecturing and memorization-derided as "drill and kill"-are frowned upon, dismissed as a surefire way to suck young minds dry of creativity and motivation. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. And the following eight principles-a manifesto if you will, a battle cry inspired by my old teacher and buttressed by new research-explain why." Why are these seen as two completely different and opposing philosophies of education? That's my question. From my experience, teasing knowledge and understanding out of children stresses the hell out of them. They struggle to give you an answer initially, but when when you are unwilling to spoon feed them or provide them with a "drill and kill" answer, they finally make a connection. In doing so you show the students that their grit and determination has helped them gather a better understanding of the material and become a better student and learner in process.

I may write a decent response to this. She plays just about every false argument card in the book. It needs this treatment - http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/10/huntsville_teacher_common_core.html

This take down of Gladwell's dyslexia chapter http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=8123 makes for a similar parallel.

"As brilliant reader John D. asked, how many miles does Mario have to travel before he finally gets to Princess Peach?" This could be a great lesson starter for ratio, proportion, and estimation. Show your students one of the levels, ask them to predict, and then have the students create a process in order to answer the question. Reveal the article after students have made their calculations.

"Solving a math problem means unfolding a mystery, enjoying the pleasure of discovery. But in every geometry lesson that year, I blundered along and blurted out the secret. With a few sentences, I'd manage to ruin the puzzle, ending the feast before it began, as definitively as if I'd spat in my students' soup. Math is a story, and I was giving my kids spoilers." This post speaks directly to math, but can be applied to any content. When we provide students with the answers rather than developing lessons that let the students ask (and answer questions), we take the fun out of learning.

"Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) is a system developed at UCLA for coordinating and evaluating peer reviews of student work. In CPR, students review one another's assignments in an anonymous system, providing feedback to other students while also learning how to recognize strengths and weaknesses of their own efforts. Peer review might hold particular promise for MOOCs and other high-enrollment courses that struggle with assessment and feedback, though the benefits of peer review can apply to any community of learners, large or small. "

ThatQuiz is a free testing service for teachers to use with their classes. Multiple choice tests and math tests can be administered to students using this website. All grades are immediately reported to the students. Teachers receive complete record keeping of test results, including all grades and wrong answers. Teachers can create math assessments with images and video. Students login with a username & password and a code for each assessment. There are some ready-made activities as well.

ThatQuiz is a free testing service for teachers to use with their classes. Multiple choice tests and math tests can be administered to students using this website. All grades are immediately reported to the students. Teachers receive complete record keeping of test results, including all grades and wrong answers. Teachers can create math assessments with images and video. Students login with a username & password and a code for each assessment. There are some ready-made activities as well.

"The point here is that the technology made the conversation easier. Instead of creating 20 different examples of graphs and seeing what happens as each variable is changed, students were able to visualize the changes, both in the graph representation, and in the formula representation. When asked if they noticed anything after the "Point on the line" slider was changed, one student said they noticed the Intercept-slope form of the equation did not change. Another student responded to him with "that form of the line doesn't depend on which points you use.""

"There is a new digital divide on the horizon. It is not based around who has devices and who does not, but instead the new digital divide will be based around students who know how to effectively find and curate information and those who do not."

"Set up a surprise, such that resolution of that becomes the lesson that you intended. Anything that makes students ask the question that you plan to answer in the lesson is good, because answering questions that haven't been asked is inherently uninteresting." This article discusses how to create lessons that provoke student interest and prime them for your lesson. We all know that it is important to have a good introduction or a "hook" for a lesson, but this concept goes one step further. A hook that provides too much information leads to waning engagement. The goal is not just to get the student interested, but to make them curious and ask questions that we plan to answer on that day. Although this particular blog post and the examples within are math related, this technique can be implented in any content area.

"So, what's a leader and the school to do? How do we create "checks" to serve as guideposts toward success?  One potential way may be a novel idea in education.  Use teachers and educators that have experienced success in building instructional capacity to be "scouts" for other teachers and schools that are building capacity in a meaningful way.  What I mean by 'scouts' is that these individuals would be charged with working next to teachers and school leaders to develop and refine instructional capacity, but when "it" shows itself in the form of meaningful and intentional classroom instruction or PLCs that really improve student performance, the 'scouts' chronicle this story.  The 'scouts' dual responsibility is to not only share in the building of the capacity, but to also spread the good news when it's been accomplished. In doing so, the profession of teaching and learning, can begin to articulate and share in these guideposts toward meaningful capacity.  What's missing in this dynamic are the 'scouts' that are embedded in several classrooms, schools and districts simultaneously and use this experience to improve the work simultaneously.  What's crucial about this approach is that it isn't 'helicoptered in' and is never something done 'to' teachers.  The work of the 'scout' is to find, develop, and refine great teaching and learning and use this as a way to scale up the work so that more and more students can have access to highly effective teaching and learning. " This article, specifically this annotated section, really spoke to me and made me think about what the two main initiatives of our department - Henrico 21 and Reflective Friends, should look like. It shouldn't be something that is "helicoptered in" or "done to teachers," but instead should be about developing, refining, promoting, and sharing good teaching.