This is a great website which includes several resources for students and teachers for literature circles. This website has information for teachers to explain how to set up literature circles in your classroom depending on your grade level. The website also gives guidelines for students to participate in literature circles.
Literature Circles. (2010). Retrieved October 16, 2015, from http://www.busyteacherscafe.com/literacy/literature_circles.htm
With all the areas that children are taught in school, the author feels that while trying work at the achievement gap we should look at the engagement gap. The eagerness that children have a young age needs to be maintained. Hands-on learning should be implemented into the lesson.
This article hits the nail on the head! At my school we are redesigning our language program to a more student-centered, hands-on instructional approach. I think it is very important to change up the old ways of teaching and find new ways that really engage students. This year, I took out all the desks in my room. Taking down that physical barrier has helped to improve student engagement. We sit or stand in a circle and students are much more motivated! Including games and activities that connect to students' interest is also important.
This is a great article focusing on engagement in the classroom! It discusses the necessity of hands on learning to maintain students interest. This is important for students of all academic levels. Hands on learning not only engages students because they are "doing", they also are developing critical thinking skills. As a special education teacher, I know that in order to assist my students in learning, I need to keep their attention and provide them with interesting, hands on learning.
I love this article! I have always been a strong believer in hands on learning and I love that they call it an engagement gap! Students get bored when a teacher gets up and lectures them all day. They need to be engaged! The activities need to be purposeful and have a specific meaning but a teacher can make just about any topic engaging just by getting the kids moving and interacting. I 100% agree that students retain information longer when they are engaged and enjoying what they are learning.
With Splashtop software I am able to access my laptop through my iPad. This software allows me to move freely around my classroom and instruct. In our health lessons I am able to display our power points or access online resources on my computer from my iPad. It also has a tool called whiteboard, which allows me to draw, highlight, circle, or point out different things that are displayed on my screen. This could really come in handy when we talk about different muscles in the body and allow me to really point out a specific muscle. This is a great resource for a teacher, but unfortunately is not free.
A useful module that explains how tiering can provide help learners learn better and has videos of examples. This can help improve Smart Goals for improvement in assessments, and homework and classroom performance.
My groups (Group 4, ETDC615) SMART learning goal is "Given 1 month of supplemental biology instruction, students who are currently in AP Biology but took lower level Biology 1, will score at least a 3 on their next unit exam." This EL Education video focuses on using a tiering system of differentiation to make all the content available for all students to learn. Looking at this lesson in terms of impact on learning, it has a potential to have a high impact on student learning. By differentiated the material to different tiers based on students current skills the students are more likely to be successful, because the material will be the right level of engaging/challenging for each student. This lesson method could be used for my groups SMART goal, because I could do a better job to differentiate the material to make up for the learning gaps that students that came from low level biology one have.
Tiering a lesson is the act of differentiating content to create learning opportunities for all students and allow for the accessibility of content to all students. The learning goal for my group is that students will be able to analyze word problems to identify mathematical components needed to solve complex word problems and apply them to real-life problems and scenarios. Because many of my students struggle with extracting information from word problems, which in turn leads them to an incorrect solution, I believe that tiering would help students access problem-solving strategies in a way that is most helpful to them. While there is an emphasis on showing multiple strategies, it may help students to tier the content in a way that makes sense for the student. Having students circle all important numbers only helps if a student understands why those numbers are important. Tiering may be the way to help bring that understanding to them. Tiering is best evaluated using the impact on learning dimension because differentiation does have a high impact on learning. Allowing students better access to content in a way in which they understand, and puts them in control will impact their learning for years to come.
This is a great article for our start goal because it discusses how to help all learners and improve assessments which will help those students in need.
This video about differentiation in teaching provides the dimension of a high impact on learning. The ideal is to provide equivalent learning activities that cater to the students' strengths but bring all of the students to the same learning objective. On one end of the spectrum is the one-size-fits-all learning activity, while on the other end is the completely individualized learning plan for each student. Catering to different students learning styles can help achieve the SMART goal of : By the end of the month, give practice tests the day before exams with at least 75% scoring at least 75%.
I enjoyed the video on Tiering. Our teams' SMART goal is, "Students will be able to solve an on grade level math task, that will require them to respond and defend their work to explain their reasoning 3 out of 5 times by the end of the 1st marking period."
I think an important concept to note, is that this activity has a high Impact on Learning because it differentiates for the particular needs of each student. This process also encourages Student Engagement, which allows for the students to work comfortably in a peer environment. By having more time to plan differentiated work to meet simultaneous goals between students, the teacher is also scaffolding. The teacher is giving support to students who need it and to also challenge those students to maintain interest or to continue the work of those who have mastered a specific skill but may need more advanced strategies to continue the upward curve of learning.
EDTC 615
Fall2018
With the video, the topic of towering the lesson is shown. With my SMART goal focusing on the 11th graders in my health education classes, it I'm important for me to address all the educational needs of my students. Currently, I use DI in my classes and I found a piece of information from the video that can I can begin to implement. The teacher had her students raise their hand with chosen number of fingers in the air. The number represents the level that each student feels they are on in regards to understanding the topic. While the exact way this strategy is used is not something I think will be effective with my high school students, the number system is. I can have my students write and post their perceived number and explain why they chose that number. Then, I can see the comfortability each student has with the topic. THey would have to apply extended reasoning which is a respresentation of depth of knowledge from the planning protocol rubric.
EDTC
Fall2018
EL
This article appeared in the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education so at first I was worried that it would not be applicable; however, I quickly found that it is a fantastic resource for teachers of all ages. My goal is to learn more instructional strategies to facilitate an increase in the frequency of higher-level questioning that I use in the classroom to support the learning gaps that I have identified with my students. This article highlights very important concepts related to my search. I have learned that questioning strategies and using various levels should be done with appropriate timing, as it relates to the depth of instruction, to avoid confusion or discouraging students. It was also emphasized that all levels of questioning should be incorporated into learning situations, but suggested questioning methods to ensure that all levels are utilized. The article provides great detail about facilitating the Socratic method, Question Circles, and Student-generated questions. All of these methods will produce higher-level questioning opportunities to increase student exposure to critical thinking tasks. I would highly recommend this article for review for all levels of educators. I am now hoping to learn more about the Socratic method to incorporate this into my own classroom.
In an 11th-grade English class at Pittsfield Middle High School in rural New Hampshire, Jenny Wellington's students were gathered in a circle debating Henry David Thoreau's positions on personal responsibility. "Do you think Thoreau really was about 'every man for himself'?" asked one 16-year-old boy.
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