Group items tagged

Teaching literacy in the high school content areas. Contains research and specific ideas for reading and writing in math, science, social studies, and English. Could be useful for working with students learning to write BCRs.

Questia is a library research tool for students to assist them in writing research papers.  Since most students do not have easy access to databases with more reliable sources, Questia provides students with tools to improve their research skills.  The site also provides students with tutorials to help them improve their writing and researching.  I have begun to implement some resources to help my high schools students improve their research skills, which is an area they often struggle in.  This seems to be the most promising tool for achieving that goal.

I am going to check this out. Thanks Jared - I teach research writing and am always looking for ways to help my learners to organise themselves and ways for me to make the process clearer.

"The results of the research provide a different picture of student learning and different strategies for teaching physics. The recommendations are aimed at changes required for improvement in student performance in physics and science in general. "

Group 9: Claire and Melissa This journal article is accessible thought the link given above by accessing the UMUC library Friedman and Garcia describe a qualitative study wherein they taught a lesson on the 9-11 attacks either through asking them to read transcribed oral history interviews or listen to them with an interactive iPad app called "Explore 9-11." The students who used the "Explore 9-11" app reported greater emotional engagement with the historical actors, leading one student to describe the app as depicting "people with real experiences." Students who used the app reported an overall positive experience of interacting with the various sources and greater historical empathy than students who did not use the app. Resources: "People with Real Experiences:" Using Mobile Devices in High School Social Studies Adam M Friedman & Emily R Garcia ISSN 1933-5415

The article references stats that involve demographics pertaining to elementary reading and math. High school graduation rates and dropout rates amongst minorities in a californian community. The author looks at closing the achievement gap by getting parents involved and placing more emphasis on pre-K programs. The article states that when it comes to intervention, the way to look at it is, the earlier the better. The author provides suggestions to closing the gap.

This article is a case study on how better teacher preparation for instruction and assessment of writing can lead to improved writing instruction.

(Week 4: Frances and Claudio) This article is accessible through the link given above. This article focus on teachers ability to improve their instruction skills by eliminating their weakness to overlook students needs by pretending the problem is non existent. It focus on the inconsistencies of teachers' techniques for class deliverance and the missed learning opportunities for students. The readings present that students are not always given the opportunities to write or be assessed in the context of classroom instruction by teachers who feel uneasy on how they deliver the class subject. Other areas of the article points out that students get low exposure to variety forms of writing and become in prepared when there is a change in writing format.(Graham & Perin, 2007; Hillocks, 2008). Through the SMART goal, Group#4 can utilize some of the examples by providing opportunities to students by offering different writing assignments that are more realistic to meet writing abilities of the students. Students will be more in line with the SMART goal if they are allowed to provide the feedback to the teacher once the assignment is complete so they can see their own improvements. Also, teachers can improve in the teaching efforts and will be able to provide the appropriate assignments to those students who extra help which will move the teachers' uneasiness about their preparation to teach and assess writing at different learning levels. Read, Sylvia and Landon-Hays, Melanie M. (2013) "The Knowing/Doing Gap: Challenges of Effective Writing Instruction in High School," Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education: Vol. 2 : Iss. 2 , Article 3. Available at: http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/wte/vol2/iss2/3

This article discusses the need for implementation of student-involved classroom assessment to aid in closing the achievement gap. The authors discuss how motivation occurs at both ends of the spectrum for learners; high achieving learners are motivated by their continued success while low achieving learners are motivated to give up as they have had few to little successful experiences in the classroom. The article goes on to discuss three methods of embedding students into the learning process that will prove to help them take ownership of their learning experience. The first is student involved classroom assessment. This tool allows students, "under the careful management of their teachers," to give input into how they will be assessed in the classroom. The second is student-involved record keeping. Here students are responsible for tracking their progress, allowing them to see and take charge of their personal growth in the classroom. Finally, student-involved communication is discussed. Students have the opportunity to advocate for themselves in setting such as parent/teacher conferences. The article also discusses four conditions that are necessary, in the opinion of the authors, to assist in closing the achievement gap.

I enjoyed this article, Jason, especially the premise that essentially enforcing the idea that students are underachieving as a whole by a set of arbitrary test scores can, consequently in some empirical cases, produce negative self-fulfilling prophecies in students' beliefs. This promotion of subconscious failing, if replicated and shown to be universally significant, holds dramatic implications. Looking back on my own experiences, Jason, I can remember the pride that I constantly felt in elementary school because we were known to be the leaders in our county; conversely though, if that were not the cause, I think it would be fair to conjecture that a pall of hopelessness may have replaced my academic banner of proverbial pride and high morale.

Week 7: This article by Valerie N. Faulkner that talks about how Common Core has changed how we teach math and would be beneficial to teachers who are trying to get used to the new Common Core curriculum and help build their implementation of language within math instruction.

Week 7: This article by Valerie N. Faulkner that talks about how Common Core has changed how we teach math and would be beneficial to teachers who are trying to get used to the new Common Core curriculum and help build their implementation of language within math instruction.

Amazing site of free lessons created by experts geared toward the Common Core State Standards in Math, Social Studies, and English Language Arts

Amazing site of free lessons created by experts geared toward the Common Core State Standards in Math, Social Studies, and English Language Arts

This artifact is an AVID student handout that explains the Cornell Note Taking Summary Template. It describes step by step how to write a complete summary of your Cornell Notes. Being able to complete a summary will help the students reflect on the information they just acquired and make the connections necessary for understanding the material.

Today's state-of-the-art health education curricula reflect the growing body of research that emphasizes Teaching functional health information (essential knowledge) Shaping personal values and beliefs that support healthy behaviors Shaping group norms that value a healthy lifestyle Developing the essential health skills necessary to adopt, practice, and maintain health-enhancing behaviors. Health teachers are able to use this to develop strategies and use best practice strategies in their own classrooms to assist with teaching in the classroom.

This artifact is an AVID student handout with Costa's 3 Levels of Thinking. It includes key words to use in your questions to help guide you to create different levels of questions ranging from basic remembering and understanding to creating and evaluating. Students will use this handout to develop the questions they create for their class Cornell Notes, Essential Questions and Cornell Notes they write for their homework reading assignments.

This artifact is an AVID student handout that describes the Cornell Note Taking process. The Handout is set up in the template you will use for the note taking process.

Chapter 6 of this book by Pérsida Himmele and William Himmele focuses on Total Participation Techniques that move. Of particular interest to my data team is the section of this chapter on Bounce Cards. This strategy can help all students feel confident and comfortable participating in a group discussion. I think it can be especially helpful to world language teachers looking to encourage students to discuss academic topics in the target language. (Week 9)

Hundreds of games and activities for a variety of subjects (including math, science, language arts) and all grade levels. Many activities include quizzes to check for comprehension.

Slideshows teaching these skills with built in activities for students. Slideshows are in English, but students will need to understand the skill first before they can transfer it to the target language. Teachers can provide French examples to supplement the slideshows.

This article by Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey gives suggestions for meaningful vocabulary instruction. In order for this to occur students need to have opportunities to interact with the words, to make personal connections to the vocabulary and to consolidate their knowledge. Because all teachers, no matter their content area, have to teach vocabulary this article has value for all teachers looking to improve the way they approach vocabulary instruction. (Week 8)

This is a great site for teachers that has free feature and a cheap pay feature. The free feature will still give educators access to worksheets, but with the paid for version you can edit the worksheets to fit more of your classroom style. This helps tie real world problems into the math classroom, helping with the age old question "When will I ever use this." Hopefully this connection will help students not only enjoy math but remember it more too.

This article by Sunday Cummins focuses on teaching students how to self-monitor while reading difficult texts. It suggests teaching students the coding method to help them learn how to self-monitor. Using meaningful symbols to mark up a text students learn how to evaluate what they understand and what they still need to comprehend as well how to go about achieving that deeper comprehension. (Week 7)

This article addresses aspects of my groups exploration of student reading level ability and achievement on state tests on critical reading. In this article, the author suggests the implementation of a coding method while reading in order to teach students how to self-inform their reading in order to improve upon the student's ability to conduct close readings of informational text. This is just the sort of strategy that could assist IEP and ESOL students (2 subset groups of struggling readers) to improve the learning gap when it comes to reading for meaning.

Our group's EQ relates to how ESOL and Special Education students perform on state tests in English. The article here is from Arizona and is a study in how well English Language Learners performed on their state mandated tests. The document outlines the issues that English learners have in their school along with teacher and district recommendations on how to help improve student scores.