Group items tagged

Importance of determining and integrating prior knowledge as an instructional strategy for ELL's.

Phet is a website that provides interactive simulations for science and mathematics. The simulations can be downloaded or used online for instructional, homework or review purposes. They are free and easy to use and a great learning device. An instructor can use the simulations to introduce information to students as well as using them as instructional methods to help students grasp ideas. Having students work on simulations in class or as homework can help enrich understanding.

As an "online work platform with a new take on how everyday work gets done," students could use Podio as a school social network devoted to thier studies. Much like a Facebook account, students would use Podio to complete assignments and discuss classroom content. This collaborative tool can also be used as a place students could use to complete projects and group work assignments. This sort of experience would be effective for teachers looking to have students working with other students from different schools/districts on a common project. This could be useful with Project Based Learning assignments as well.

I see that Podio is targeting higher ed students, and wonder whether it would be to risky to use it in k12. See: http://blog.podio.com/2011/11/16/podios-free-university-program-supports-students-the-real-future-of-work/ There's no teacher control board as there is in Diigo, for example.

One of the biggest pushes in education today is letting students take control of tracking their own data and setting their own goals. To many teachers this task may be overwhelming and leave you trying to figure out the easiest way to implement this in your classroom.

(Week 9: Sarah, Mary and Jessica) This article is accessible through the link provided above. The main focus of this article is the importance of setting goals in the classroom. The teacher who wrote this article wanted to take her students' portfolios and turn them into a student data folder. Within the data folder there are "long term goals (the entire school year), short term goals (monthly, quarterly, weekly), goal reflections, and tracking charts (bar graphs, tables, charts, etc.)" (Harpole, 2013-2015). According to Harpole (2013-2015), "Each assessment would be based on the text we were reading that week in class. It contained four multiple choice questions with an answer justification required and a constructed response question. Students would take their weekly assessments on Friday. During the first ten minutes of class on Mondays, we would pass out data folders and students would record their scores." This allows students to set goals based on their score. Her research did show that the students were focused more on the number grade than any other grade. In turn, "My students set goals during Quarter Four that did not contain letter grades or words like "basic" and "unsatisfactory"( Harpole, 2013-2015). This implementation was very successful in her classroom. The article shows the process that Harpole took to improve her student's data folder. It took her a lot of time to perfect it in order to be able to share with other teachers. This article is a great lesson for all teachers. Every teacher wants to show data in their own way. Sometimes it's hard for teachers in different grade levels to show the data. This teacher came up with a packet that other teachers can use as a guide to help their fellow educators. I know that I would use this data folder for my students and just revamp it so that it's age appropriate for my students. The teachers in my group can use this article as a guide to help their students set goals. At the end, of t

This article is a great way to showcase the student's classroom goals and track student data. It gives the students the responsibility to track their own work and it would be a great tool to send home for their parents to view. The students have ownership of their work and their grade. Having weekly assessments on the content presented allows the students to see what they need to study and to ask the teacher for any help. I personally would keep the student's progress monitoring sheet in their own personal notebooks where they will have a copy of their progress monitoring sheet for them to fill out daily or weekly and their goals taped to the inside of their binder. This way the students can see if they have mastered their goals.

Week 8: "Language plays an important part in math instruction, particularly for ELLs. This article offers some strategies for making language an integral part of math instruction and the tools and language ELLs need to master math." This article delves deeper into the importance of content vocabulary and content knowledge. Often, the foundation and basics of content areas are brushed over creating a gap for many learners. In mathematics, despite the universal language, there are barriers due to language and deficit in content-related knowledge. This article offers strategies to bridge the gap and increase content knowledge to supplement the learning taking place.

Week 9: This is a great website to connect students to real life math problems. By doing math with real life problems students are problem solving like they would in a word problem, sometimes without even knowing it. This site gives sample lessons and projects to help teachers and parents connect math to the real world. Math covers so many topics that hopefully you can connect to your students that like music, design, weather and so much more.

The different resources on this site that give activities and ideas to introduce real world math situations to students gives an alternative way to teach mathematical concepts. Teaching these math concepts from multiple perspectives increases the chance of student success. By connecting math to the real world, students will become more invested in their learning.

This website provides links to many different websites that provide activities that students can participate in that will help them incorporate real world math problems. The article was sectioned off into four distinct sections including collections of real world math problems, online math activities, math collaboration, and more real world math activities. This is certainly a website that is worth saving and coming back to over a course of the year as there are many valuable resources that can be used.

Week 9: The article gives the top 10 evidence based teaching strategies research by Shaun Killian. These 10 strategies gives teachers steps to fine tune lesson plans and SMART goals for your DAP process. Shaun list these practices and gives a brief explanation for each practices. Most teachers care about their students' results, and if you are reading this article, you are undoubtedly one of them. There is no doubt that teachers make a difference to how well their kids do at school. For teaching strategies to be included on this list, they had to: Be supported by hard research, instead of anecdotal case studies or untested theories Have a substantially higher effect on student results than other teaching strategies Be able to be used on a wide range of subjects and in every year level

Response to Intervention's great promise is often undercut by the potential difficulty of implementation. However, evidence based teaching strategies are useful tools for the educator in a system that constantly changes as new theories and standards arise. This article gives an overview of the most effective teaching strategies, of which most can be fairly easily integrated into lessons. Some of the most intriguing strategies, are the ones that do not involve actions to take but an adjustment in teacher focus, such as nurturing metacognition and allowing flexible learning time.This serves as an effective reference and perhaps, reminder of good teaching methods, though a few specific examples would be all the more helpful. In the comments, the author offers a little more clarification about the strategies and their rankings.

Week 7: The site provides a colorful, engaging environment for mastering math skills. You can sign up for an account or 30 day trail. Educators can sign up for full account benefits with (e.g. student progress tracking and reports; and an awards system for learners for completing certain goals). *Very good site for remedial students learning math and language arts. This site also includes a page in Language arts for 2nd to 10th graders.Practice math online with IXL. The site offers thousands of online math practice skills covering pre-K to high school, with questions that adapt to a student's individual proficiency.

I used to use IXL with my students for reinforcement, the only problem I had when using it was it locks students out after a specific number of questions. There was only so much practice for allotted topics which sometimes was not enough extra practice.

Free users I believe get 10 questions a day, but what I like most about this is that when a student gets a question wrong, it provides a pretty in depth explanation. Great resource.

This article describes how teachers use different forms of technology in the classroom to foster students' learning in the area of mathematics. In order to be considered an effective teaching tool, the article explains that instructors need to think about cognitive and mathematical fidelity when determining what computer programs to use in the classroom.