Group items tagged

Week 4: This website provides teachers and students with all different resources to solve word problems. It also can help teachers create posters, showcase methods, come up with lesson plans, and generate practice worksheets. This information can be used in a second grade classroom. This tool can help students understand the steps they need to take in order to solve word problems.

Vocabulary instruction is essential to effective math instruction. Not only does it include teaching math-specific terms such as "percent" or "decimal," but it also includes understanding the difference between the mathematical definition of a word and other definitions of that word...

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.

This article is about alphabet knowledge in Pre-kindergarten and Kindergarten classroom. It went over different assessments to use to assess the proper way to demonstrate alphabet knowledge. This a great article to read. It talks about instructional approaches and how to shift to alphabet instruction that aligned with emphasis on assessments and differentiated instruction. I believe that would be good resources to help teach my students' letter sounds. This might also help me achieve my SMART target goal.

This article provides detailed background information regarding explicit writing instruction, especially regarding students with special needs such as ADHD, but the strategies discussed can be adapted and used with all learners regardless of ability or grade level. The article begins with a focus on strategies for providing students with motivational contexts for their writing as well as making writing a routine that they enjoy. The rest of the article is divided into sections based on students' ability/age level (basic skills, revising and editing, and motivation). This article discusses strategies that can help address teachers address students' learning gaps in elaboration and explaining their ideas fully in expository writing tasks. Be sure to click "Single Page" at the bottom right of the article so you can see the entire article on one screen, and explore the links to the left of the article for more information about writing instruction for different populations!

This guide offers five recommendations to help educators effectively use data to monitor students' academic progress and evaluate instructional practices.

I like how this article breaks down five different recommendations and makes it easy for the reader to explore what they choose without overwhelming them. I will be bookmarking this!

My school does not use data for instructional purposes. This is a great guide for us to use in order to start collecting and using data for instructional purposes.

Great article about how different states and communities reduced the achievement gap. It mentions Maryland, and states that MD provides extra instruction for students who are not on track to pass the High School Assessment. But I think it would be a lot more useful to provide extra instruction at lower grades to reduce the achievement gap early on.

I selected this article as it serves as a reminder that as educators we need to look at our instructional techniques and designs to figure out what we can do better in helping our students learn. Sometimes, we get so comfortable with a particular strategy, that we fail to see how it impacts student learning. This article is a reminder that we must vary instruction to promote student learning. Abstract: The problem of achievement gaps among different subgroups of students has been evident in education for many years. This manuscript revisits the work of renowned educator Benjamin S. Bloom, who saw reducing gaps in the achievement of various groups of students as a simple problem of reducing variation in student learning outcomes.

This article written by Colorín Colorado Manager Lydia Breiseth helps educators understand the role that academic language plays in their classrooms and in ELL student success. The article also includes information on social vs. academic language, as well as numerous examples of the different kinds of academic language needed for all students to fully participate in classroom activities and assignments.

(Week 7: Amber, Angela, and Kenneth) This article is accessible through the link given above. The article discuss a research method that is based on student centered teaching rather than teacher centered teaching. The article displays the changes for a teacher design where the teacher leads every activity and shift the focus to the teacher become the facilitator. Instead of having large number in classes, small groups scenarios are shown to be more effective with students learning from their experiences rather than the teacher teaching all the knowledge and content. This shift looks as though it was a two year time span and shows some effective result where student centered teaching where student are active learners. Teachers can use this article to design and implement a different approach to teaching by empowering themselves to switch up the way they teach in the classroom. Instead of lecturing information, they should try to work with their student and create exercises where the student learn from each others and their experiences where the teachers are the facilitator. Barraket (2005) states that student centered approach promotes small group activities that will improve the response of pedagogical challenges of teaching social research methods (Barraket (2005). Reference Barraket, J. (2005). Teaching Research Method Using a Student-Centred Approach? Critical Reflections on Practice. Journal Of University Teaching And Learning Practice, 2(2), Retreived from http://www.eric.ed.gov.ezproxy.umuc.edu/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=EJ1059434

This article focuses on how a multi-strategy approach can assist students in learning new social studies content vocabulary. The article provides a case study that includes three groups of students which focused on different methods of vocabulary acquisition. The article notes that a multi-strategy approach is the best for assisting students in learning new vocabulary.

One of the things I found interesting was "students first learned to ask important questions about the text to guide their thinking and then used questions to help them develop a main-idea statement for a short section of text. They then learned to combine several main idea statements into a longer summary with the aid of a graphic organizer." These strategies were taught and practiced for six weeks at a time, before a new one was introduced.

This site provides templates for several different choice boards, which can be used to integrate more student choice into the work they do for classes. Providing students with a variety of options for how to complete assignments allows for teachers to differentiate instruction and assessment as well, to some degree, and also allows students to feel more in control of their learning.

This article suggests different ways to incorporate student choice into the tasks, assignments, and assessments that we give as teachers. The article mentions that while the idea of there being actual student learning "styles" that teachers should attempt to teach to has been essentially debunked, there is research showing that incorporating choice for students does have a higher impact on their engagement and learning. There are suggestions given in this article about ways to incorporate more student choice, as well as links to other sites with more resources.

Dimension: Impact on learning Rating: 4 I think that including student choice and student agency lets students complete activities that fit their personal interests and learning styles.

(Week 7: Adiatu, Julie, and Heather) This journal article was found by Adiatu on the UMUC Library, and is accessible through the link given above by accessing ERIC. The journal article is based on a study of 132 fourth-graders, and focused on examining the relationship(s) that exists among sustainable attention, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. According to authors Yildiz & Çetinkaya, "Sustainable attention is the type of attention that provides the ability to focus on a task for a long time. It is required to analyze the sentences in reading material and to utilize them actively at different times" ( 2017). The study results showed that students that lacked sustainable attention had poorer reading speed, comprehension, and word recognition. This journal article is useful to teachers because it provides information on useful activities teachers can arrange to increase the attention levels of students. For example, the authors of the journal suggest that teachers record their students' oral readings and play it back for them. This journal article is useful to our group because the teachers' artifacts are based on the reading comprehension and vocabulary gaps of their students, and the authors stress that teachers should strictly monitor the oral reading skills of students that are having reading comprehension difficulties. Reference: Mustafa Yildiz , Ezgi Çetinkaya (2017). The relationship between good readers' attention, reading fluency and reading comprehension. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 5, 366 - 371. doi: 10.13189/ujer.2017.050309., Universal Journal of Educational Research, 2017. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1134476

This article summarizes how one school used a blended differentiated curriculum to reduce the achievemnt gap between poor and wealthy students. What I found interesting about this approach is that the authors said, "That engagement in learning is enhanced when students' interests and choices are considered." This is a different approach to how some schools use differentiation and the change didn't happened over night. The school made a lot of adjustments, including re-writing the curriculum and setting specific learning objectives. However, they were successful because they saw an improvement in student achievement.

This website offers fun, interactive, online games for students to play over the summer to assist in closing their learning gap. This would be a great resource for teachers to give to their students at the end of the school year, or even over long breaks, for them to practice skills they are lacking.

The main takeaway from this resource for me was where the onus falls for the learning gap. Unlike the instruction gap, the learning gap seems more focused on the student needing to bring up their learning to ensure that they maintain over the summer, or reach new levels. The common denominator is that these all seem to take place outside of the classroom. However, I could see a teacher recommend these resources to different groups or having centers set up to ensure that students are working in areas that they need to improve to close their learning gaps during class time.

Resources and exposure to programs like this are imperative for underprivileged students who's family's do not have an understanding of how to maintain and increase their child's educational progress during the summer.