Group items tagged

"a simple and fun way for all students to get a chance to move, think, talk, and learn from others. The teacher first has students model: stand back-to-back with a partner, listen to the question and think, turn face-to-face, taking turns speaking and listening, then turning back-to-back"

This video shows individuals how to use a technique called back to back and face to face. I could use this technique in my classroom for my SMART goals. This would give me a better understanding of my student's ability to hear the sounds of letters. For example, I can say a word like "cat"; then, they can use the back to back and face to face technique to tell each other the first sound they hear in "cat". This would also be a wonderful tool to use for reading comprehension and answering questions during a story.

My SMART goal is by the end of Marking Period 3, English Language Learner (ELL) students identified will be able to explain how to solve for an unknown number in an equation with at least 80% accuracy. The back-to-back and face-to-face strategy is an excellent method for allowing students appropriate wait time to think through their responses, as well as an opportunity to hear model responses from their peers. This might help students develop language skills needed for their mathematical explanations. This could be used during a lesson to have students explain how they would solve an equation with a missing number. Using the planning protocol rubric, this is an effective strategy to increase student engagement during a lesson. I would rate this strategy a four on the rubric because it consists of high engagement for most students. All students have an opportunity to share their thoughts and hear a response from a peer. Rather than calling on one or two students to respond, this is an equitable strategy which involves all learners in the classroom.

This website contains a wide variety of virtual manipulative that can be maneuvered by all learners at all stages. Both students and teachers can use this to demonstrate understanding as well as modeling a strategy. All viewers are able to see concrete place values as well as the composition and decomposition of hundred and ten blocks. It is a great tool for the visual learner and those who are still in the concrete stage in addition/subtraction.

This article details an instructional model called Interactive Learning (IL), which contains ten best practices for educators to follow that must be implemented in all lessons. Using these practices can help student achievement tremendously, as evidenced by the example school, which doubled student achievement in three years using these practices.

This is a informative article about 10 strategies for engaging underperforming students. Since my SMART goal is all about giving additional resources for success to my lowest performing students (students who previously took Biology I) this fits perfectly. This will help me create a plan to reach out and engage each student and write up resources for each of them.

I think these ideas have come a long way and are being implemented in many classrooms. This seems like a norm for my school or even my classroom. Although, I say that and I think it is hard to incorporate all components every day. Especially when I think of student movement. I think this is an excellent article to pinpoint instructional strategies.

"a Chalk Talk protocol allows students to have non-verbal "discussion.""

My group's SMART Target Learning Goal is 75% of students will improve their informational text comprehension by 1 grade level. The Dimension I'm referencing is Technology Integration. Although I feel this is a great tool and has a major impact on student learning, it does lack technology integration. I rate it as a 1. I think it rates off the scales in the other dimensions. Some sort of tech integration would make this a huge win all around.

EDTC615 FALL2018 I have found several dimensions from the Planning Protocol that I could assess this particular under for instance: Depth of Knowledge- The Chalk Talk can be use on a multitude of levels for DOK. From a basic warm up to a well thought out thought provoking silent Socrative seminar, depends on how the teacher want to use the tool in their classroom will determine the DOK. Teacher Friendliness - This instructional tactic is very teacher friendly and low maintenance across the board. you can just use a whiteboard and post it stickies, or chart paper and post it stickies, and just a window/liquid chalk and post it stickies. Rigor and Relevance- Again rigor and relevance is dependent upon how the teacher decides to use this instructional tactic in their classroom. This is a tool that can evoke deep thought or a tool that can be used as a quick response to a warm up question. Possible Technology Integration- Although the video did not depict a technology integration while I was watching the video an idea came to mind to use this idea in conjunction with Padlet app and divide the classroom up into groups with each a different Padlet question or conversation and first each member in the group share to the Padlet and then have the student rotate to each groups table and share a post to each other's Padlet. That is one way to integrate technology into a Chalk Talk discussion. This could be used as an instructional tactic for all our group members as an exit ticket, class survey, check for understanding of the day's lesson, warm-up question, and/or silent Socrative seminar. I can think of endless possibilities with this particular tool based on the dynamics of your student population, skill set, and grade level. Spencer's SMART Goal is 75% of the 24 students with a C or lower to have a B (80%) or higher in my class, by the end of the 1st quarter. Ericka's SMART Goal is By the end of 1st quarter 75% of the LSN Government students will be able to an

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) is a national organization that develops voluntary certification for accomplished teaching.  Look at the Five Core Propositions, which underly all accomplished teaching, and the standards in your specific area. You can use them to reflect on your own teaching. You may also want to apply for National Board Certification, which is a high recognition across the country .

Thanks for sharing KW. I plan on exploring this option as I chart out my career path.

Thanks for sharing! Maybe after my master's is finished I will look into being National Board Certified.

iTunes University is a learning platform for all ages and subjects to utilize. The course manager allows anyone to build and publish their own iTunesU courses. For example, teachers who recognize a learning gap within the intended standards can create a unit plan on iTunes U. Since they become the author of this instructional resource, students can really benefit as learners. iTunes University can also serve as a professional development resource. My colleague Matt and I have even used iTunes U course manager to develop a course for teachers all over the world to use. Check it out here -> https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/digital-writing-resources/id881059679

You can't have a conversation about education reform without the words "achievement gap" coming in at some point, along with specific plans on how to close it. But are policymakers attempting to close it in an effective way? James Boutin, a veteran high school teacher just south of Seattle, Washington, answers in the following post.

I thought this site was interesting for educators. 112 Learners are taking this course and 101 more learners... Review 21st century literacies. Explore free image sites. Create playlists with great video content. Be inspired to create content and contribute to the world. Class recording and slides available to all enrollees Language of Instruction: English Course Description In the 21st century, we are all consumers of digital content.

(Week Nine: Ruchel and Beth) This article is accessible through the UMUC library via Document Express. This journal article is about differentiated instruction when it comes to teaching students the alphabet. The article highlights the fact that "Early literacy experiences vary widely... and children show substantial differences in their alphabet knowledge development. Thus, children in the same early childhood classroom may exhibit differing levels of alphabet knowledge" (Piasta, 2014). Teachers can use this article to further their instructional practice by using the strategies and assessments discussed in the article to work with students in ways that will help the individual child learn all the letters verses a whole class approach to teaching the alphabet. The article discuses how, "The familiarity of children with letters included in their own first names, for example, has long been observed" (Piasta, 2014). But when it comes to teaching the alphabet in a whole class approach teachers are not acknowledging "differences across letters, often providing the same amount and types of instructional activities for each of the 26 letters irrespective of the ease or difficulty of learning a particular letter (Piasta, 2014). The article provides an idea that all "Early childhood educators may wish to assess all the children in their classrooms or may first use established alphabet screening assessments" (Piasta, 2014). It is also helpful for educators "To conduct a diagnostic alphabet assessment, an educator presents a child with each of the 26 letters and asks the child to supply the name and/or sound for each letter. The educator marks whether the child supplied a correct name and/or sound. Although the assessment can be scored in terms of the total number of correct letter names or sounds (i.e., 0 to 26), most important for diagnostic purposes are which letter names and sounds the child knows (Piasta, 2014)...

...The article finds that small group learning "has been demonstrated to be more effective than whole-class or even one-to-one instruction in supporting young children's early literacy development (Piasta, 2014). The article also stresses the fact that educators should "plan and use effective teaching practices to deliver alphabet instruction on the selected letters. Alphabet instruction can take place in many fun, engaging, and authentic contexts" (Piasta, 2014). In closing, "Outside of planned alphabet instruction, educators may also take advantage of additional "teachable moments" to review and reinforce children's alphabet learning whenever these occur" (Piasta, 2014). References Piasta, S. B. (2014). Moving to Assessment-Guided Differentiated Instruction to Support Young Children's Alphabet Knowledge. Reading Teacher, 68(3), 202-211. doi:10.1002/trtr.1316

Week 9: This design model is for all learners fro designing and planning a course. It shares the process and steps for using the A.D.D.I.D model (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate) which serves as a blueprint and "device to help us think through a course's design".

This website aligns to my teams EQ by discussing ways educators can differentiate their instruction ELL students (and all students when we really think about it). The resource created by Karen Ford (2011) talks about "how differentiated instruction is not the same as individualized instruction...it is a matter of presenting the same task in different ways and at different levels, so that all students can approach it in their own ways (Trujo, 2004)." Information is also shared focusing on the ELL population and ways teachers can successfully differentiate to support their learning.

This article discusses the need to create a physical education program that is student-centered as well as standards based. The authors briefly discuss the Integrative Model for Learning and Motivation. This model focuses on three psychological that need to be present in the learning environment for students to achieve: autonomy; competence; relatedness. The thoughts expressed in this brief discussion can be used in all classes to help create an optimal learning environment that motivates students to learn.

Intrinsic motivation is clearly an issue with students in our data. The data shows that they often choose not to participate in assessments, which clearly demonstrates that there is no motivation from within to receive good grades. The models discussed in the article can be used in all classrooms, not just P.E.

Week 9 - Lauren Geier (partner) This article is an important complement to any discussion on assessment: what kind of feedback will help our students improve? Wiggins describes feedback as "information about how we are doing in our efforts to reach a goal' and as such it needs to be goal-referenced, tangible and transparent, actionable, user-friendly, timely, ongoing and consistent. Wiggins elaborates on these key characteristics; often using sport to illustrate his point. He also gives examples to differentiate feedback from advice and evaluation and grades. This is a great article for teachers because it is very concrete and gives us very clear advice on how to improve the efficiency of our feedback. While some of these essentials may seem obvious, the feedback we give our students on a regular base might not meet all these criteria and it is an important read if we want our assessment to really help students progress.

I really like this article because I feel that this is an important topic that every educator should look at. It is very important for students to receive positive and negative feedback because it will only make them better. It will help the students become aware of what is expected of them. Feedback can come from comments verbally or written on rubrics, etc. The students progress will continue to grow when they receive quality feedback.

An explanation of the process called "wireframing," used by web designers to sketch out the framwork of their sites before they begin to code them.  Useful to all who are interested in developing their web-design skills.

Thanks for sharing. I've been looking for tools like these. I'll definitely be revisiting this.

Open Culture defines itself as "The best free cultural & educational media on the Web" [Open Culture. (2013). Home page. Retrieved from www.openculture.com). This site was suggested by one of our students using working on a Diigo account just for world language teachers), but this site seems useful for all subjects, with links to many free videos, K-12 resources, e-books, etc.

"In a jigsaw protocol small groups of students become experts in one section or text and hear oral summaries of the others. The protocol allows students to synthesize across texts and gain new understandings from their classmates about the topic as a whole."

EDTC615 FALL2018 My SMART goal is after one marking period of examining musical examples, 90% of students will be able to recognize musical notes and form. This protocol is going to have a high impact on the student learning because the students are able to discuss and dive deeper into their reading. I can apply this to my music class by handing students a piece of music and having them look for the form of the song and the musical notes. They then pair up with someone with the same song and go over the notes a form together.

Dimension: Student Engagement Rating: 4 - High engagement for most students I particularly enjoyed this strategy presented by fifth-grade teacher Jennifer Dauphinais. The highlights for me were the students engagement from the very beginning in stating the 'Learning Goal.' It's one thing for the teacher to know what the end-goal is, but it strengthens the activity when the student understands the "why." Having students become "experts" in their reading to then discuss details and main ideas in groups is a great recipe for reading comprehension. The students have the ability to hear different perspectives and everyone has a voice. I really enjoyed this. Author Daniel Venables challenges educators in his book, How Teachers Can Turn Data into an Action Plan to "do something different in the classroom" if one approach doesn't materialize student-learning (pp. 60). My gropu's SMART Target Learning Goal is for 75% of students will improve their informational text comprehension by 1 grade level. Dauphinais' 'Jigsaw' method is a fresh approach to literature instruction and could be a great tool for us to get the students to reach this goal. #EDTC615 #Spring2018

(Week 8: Mary, Jessica, and Sarah) This journal article is accessible through the link given above by accessing the UMUC library. This journal article explains the willingness of teachers to differentiate assignments for their mixed-ability students. To show teacher's efficacy to differentiate assignments, a study is conducted between two school districts. The first school district is located in an urban area containing 4,000 students. The second school district is located in a suburban area with many students receiving free and reduced lunches. A Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale is used with the participants to see how often accommodations are made for students. This is a great journal article for all teachers to read! It is important to differentiate assignments for all students. A differentiated classroom is a place where children have resources to learn new information in different ways. As it is stated in the text, "Teachers who differentiate their instruction respond to learner needs in the way content is presented (the content dimension of differentiation), the way content is learned (the process dimension), and the ways students respond to the content (the product dimension). All these adaptations are designed to meet the individual characteristics of learners and to maximize their time in school" (Dixon, F. A., Yssel, N., McConnell, J. M., & Hardin, T., 2014). Through the study conducted in the article, teachers are able to see how important it is to attend professional developments to learn more about differentiation. References Dixon, F. A., Yssel, N., McConnell, J. M., & Hardin, T. (2014). Differentiated Instruction, Professional Development, and Teacher Efficacy. Journal For The Education Of The Gifted, 37(2), 111-127.

@Jessicacarr @sarahdonahey

(Week7: Jim, Sabrina, Jennifer) This Journal article is accessible through the link given above through the UMUC Library The focus of this article is small group alternative lessons that will help with differentiated reading instruction. The article itself identifies how students in the elementary grades struggle with Phonemic Awareness. Specifically in kindergarten and First grade and continuously miss the benchmark when being assessed. The article also Identifies what differentiated instruction looks like in this setting as well as many example activities on guided reading and other strategies to help address students who are struggling. Teachers are able to use this article as a reference for activities that they can incorporate into the classroom during their reading or guided reading block. The 3 members in our team all work in a secondary school and noticed that many of the activities or lessons were really geared toward elementary students. However when reflecting on the struggling students in our own classes on this topic we quickly realized that those students were indeed on an elementary reading level. Therefore we might not use the exact same strategies but rather adapt them as they do in the article to fit the needs of our learners and make them more age appropriate. Reference: Kosanovich, M, Ladinsky, K, Nelson, L, Torgesen, J,. (2007) Differentiated Reading Instruction: Small Group Alternative Lesson Structures for All Students. Guidance Document for Florida "Reading First" Schools. Florida Center for Reading Research ERIC Journal. pp. 11, Retrieved from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED498777.pdf

This article, How We Learn. Ask The Cognitive Scientist. The Usefulness of Brief Instruction in Reading Comprehension Strategies, was found in Diigo. Written by cognitive psychology professor Daniel T. Willingham, he surfaces the importance of teaching reading comprehension strategies that students may benefit and receive all they're supposed to out of their reading.