Group items tagged

(Week 8: Maia and Shawntel) This article is accessible through the UMUC library. The focus of this article was to introduce and explain the importance of strategies that motivate and engage students when learning how to solve word problems in algebra classrooms. The author argues that students show more engagement in algebra word problems when they are guided through problems that have real-life problems. The article provided data based on a study where students were given similar problems to solve with real-life and fictional problems. The students trended a preference to the real-life problems while also scoring higher on real-life problems. The authors state, "given a set of word problems covering a variety of application areas, students prefer problems which either generates intrigue or problems to which they can easily relate" (Premadasa and Bhatia, pg 15, 2013). Our group choose this article because of the current situation for the implementation process. The practicing teacher was met with a lot of resistance when introducing the new tactic. This supports our notice and wonder questions that students are not engaged and positive when approaching algebra word problems. The attitude of students directly impacts comprehension of word-problems. Therefore, we used a planning protocol to re-adjust the types of problems that were presented to the students. The practicing teacher found instructional videos that had current and real-life scenarios. Although it is still early in the implementation process, the teacher did notice an attitude change among the students as the proceeded with the material. Premadasa, K., & Bhatia, K. (2013). Real Life Applications in Mathematics: What Do Students Prefer?. International Journal For The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning, 7(2), http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.umuc.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=3&sid=ef4d2731-303f-462b-ba77-64f1a21bc66e%40sessionmgr101

Dimension: Student Engagement Rate: 4 My SMART Target Learning Goal is that 80 % of my Pre-kindergarten class will master their reading foundation skills by the 3rd trimester. This EL Education video introduces the concept of interactive writing. This concept allows students to use spelling patterns and high frequency words. The video demonstrated how all of the students participate in tapping out the letter sounds. The students were engaged in the video and used different techniques were utilized to display how various students were engaged in learning. They used different learning tools including: sky writing, full body movements, body writing, sharing the pens and white boards. This relates to my SMART goal because my students need to be able to master reading foundation skills. This is a key component to reading foundation skills. I practice some of these techniques already but I want to try all of them to see if that will improve my students reading foundation skills.

Dimension: Rigor and Relevance Rate: 4 - students think and work My SMART goal is that 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. This EL Education video shows a great model of how to use interactive writing with younger students. The reason I gave this a score of 4 is because although students are in a whole group setting they still were required to think and work. Students had to think and act out words or spellings. They worked as a class to write the sentence. It required students to think and help! While I think this is a great video, I don't really think it is something that could work for my SMART goal. Yes it relates to writing but I think that my students would need something a little more advanced for 4th graders. I think if students had this lesson taught to them at a younger age it would help them achieve this goal. I don't think this instructional tactic is something that would teach students how to defend and support their answer.

The purpose of this study is to explore how a Pre-Kindergarten teacher makes pedagogical decisions that are known as emotional scaffolding for ELL children. The study describes a teacher who through implementing an optimal environment for her ELL students, was able to fully engage them in Pre-Kindergarten content. The study offers a variety of strategies of what a teacher can do to have a successful ELL early childhood school environment.

Week 8:Theresa Horgan presents this journal about the use of graphic organizers in the classroom. She brings in the technological side of graphic organizers. She explains in her article how graphic organizers can be a useful teaching strategy. They are engaging and help students retain information from their learning. This is important because it helps students visualize and organize their thoughts from the lesson. Teachers can use graphic organizers in ALL subjects!

"ProportionLand," is an online resource that aims to teach middle school students Newton's 2nd Law of motion.  It brings all of the pieces of a good lesson plan together in one medium and strives to keep students actively engaged and interested.  The site is based off of the 5 E's of scientific inquiry, Engage, Explore, Explain, Extend, and Evaluate.  It also provides lesson plans and a suggested pacing guide.

DimensionU creates engaging and interactive multi-player video games that focus on core skills in mathematics and literacy. Our content aligns with the Common Core, state standards and classroom instruction Learn More about DimensionU Comprised of four engaging, multi-player games with access to curriculum in both Math and Literacy, grades 3 - 9. Some available games: * Meltdown is the DimensionU game that offers students a second chance when answering difficult questions, and rewards creative strategies to achieve victory. * Velocity is DimensionU's high-speed obstacle course that ensures players answer questions correctly in order to continue progressing through the race.

This is a website that helps connect students to the real world. It take a wide array of places you use math and sometimes don't think about it, like sports, music, fashion, restaurants and so many more. Videos are shown to show how math and the topic relate to each other and then students are given a task to help figure out using math. Students will be so engaged that they will forget they are even doing math!

This article presents a Texas district's plan on closing the science instructional gap in ethnically diverse students in 2 low socioeconomic elementary schools. Teachers set up a multisensory interactive word walls to teach vocabulary, and designed inquiry science lessons that were aligned with standards and the Texas school district's curriculum framework and pacing guides for science instruction. Purposeful planning gave teachers a chance to become familiar with the progression of instructional goals, and provided time to create activities that fit within the framework and that addressed essential vocabulary. The inquiry science lessons incorporated 5-E: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaboate, and Evaluate, where Engagement is meant to activate prior knowledge, Exploration is hands on inquiry, Explanation involves teacher-guided questions, Elaboration gives students the chance to "solidify" understandin, and Evaluation involves formative and summative assessments. Vocabulary development was achieved with the use of word walls and visuals, sometimes provided by the student to develop familiarity and fluency. Studies showed significant improvement in student achievement. Students reported recognizing science concepts in everyday life, a good sign of true learning. It even benefited the teachers, who reported having "refined" and strengthened science knowledge and teaching strategies as a result of professional development. A balance of focused district standards and teacher-designed interactive lessons using effective research based strategies, seems to have a powerful effect on closing learning and instructional gaps.

This research paper examines a strategy of using concordance lines to assist L2 students in identifying patterns in the written language to help inform a student's overall writing. The research included one control and one experimental group. Each group was taught by the same instructor, given the same amount of time and writing prompts. Students in both groups were given a set of (5) new vocabulary terms. They were each given a writing prompt prior to learning the words, just after learning the words, and a delayed post-test. The only difference between the (2) groups of students was that the control group was permitted to use a dictionary to assist them in understanding the words, and the experimental group was required to engage in a series of condordance learning activities. These activities presented the experimental group with multiple, short statements from real text, which each modeled use of one of the (5) vocab terms. Students engaged in an analysis of how those terms were used. They studied grammatical aspects of the statement directly related to the key term. Research results indicated that there was significant improvement in the experimental grouping of students in their ability to correctly use each of the (5) new vocabulary terms. Data from the pre, immediate post, and delayed post-writing assessments showed a vast improvement by the students in the experimental group. Those students were able to construct much more well-developed, descriptive statements using the key terms. There was a marked difference in their language control and the level of their writing.

The achievement gap can be lowered if children are engaged in high quality play and learning before beginning kindergarten.

Caryn, I really enjoyed this article. It thoughtfully portrayed the fact that the achievement gap often starts long before students ever have their first day of kindergarten. For students who are not read to as young children, or engaged in meaningful play and projects, the first few school years are dramatically more difficult. Victoria

This resource offers a variety of strategies to differentiate the content of the Physical Education curriculum with a focus on making the learning accessible for English Language Learners. Although this resource is targeted to middle school physical education courses, the strategies can easily be adopted to meet the needs of high school ELL students. By implementing these strategies in my physical education classes, students will be engaged in learning and able to apply new skills to further understand the content of the course.

"This protocol is inclusive of all students and promotes collaboration and shared understanding as students either guess or share important words or concepts with their classmates in an interactive way."

Quiz Quiz trade is a great resource that fully involves students. Students are highly engaged in the reading and answering of questions with their classmates. This fits into my SMART goal of getting students to recognize their musical notes and forms because they can practice quizzing each other on different types of notes and songs.

"At the end of class, students write on note cards or slips of paper an important idea they learned, a question they have, a prediction about what will come next, or a thought about the lesson for the day. Alternatively, students could turn-in such a response at the start of the next day-either based on the learning from the day before or the previous night's homework. These quick writes can be used to assess students' knowledge or to make decisions about next teaching steps or points that need clarifying. This reflection helps students to focus as they enter the classroom or solidifies learning before they leave."

Dimension: Depth of Knowledge Rating: 3 - strategic reasoning SMART goal: 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 believe that my team would be able to use this instructional tactic because we could use the exit card to see if students meet the SMART goal. I think that exit cards are a powerful tool for teachers to use because it shows instant data of student performance. It is a quick and informal way to see if students understand the concept or not. This video provides a unique way to students to use/take an exit card in the classroom. We could take ideas from this video and apply to it our own classroom.

I like the fact that students assess themselves (based on the learning target). They also give feedback to one another. In this model teachers can adjust instruction based on how students feel they reached learning targets. I am wondering, though, whether or not young students have enough self-realization to understand how they performed during a given lesson. If we're asking them to rate themselves, we have to hope that they understand how important this is, and what it really means. How does this video address dimensions in the 'Planning Protocol Rubric?' Since most of the dimensions were addressed (in other comments here), I'll comment on this video's ways of addressing 'Technology Integration.' No technology integration seen (though it's certainly possible that it may have occurred during the lesson and before this video was taken). Technology Integration level (based on the available video): 1. My SMART Learning Goal: "After three weeks of targeted instruction--and in concert with the content-area teacher--75% or more of our students will score at least one point higher on their ESOL RELA and ESOL math assessments. (The ESOL RELA [WIDA Access] pre-test was given approximately one month ago, while the baseline math pre-test was developed by our school's math department [and contains test stems from past PARCC exams].)" The 'exit ticket' approach can be used in any classroom, but with ESOL learners it might be more difficult to ascertain whether or not they have understood the question/s on the exit ticket sheet. And again, do they have the skills, understanding and self-realization necessary to rate themselves on how they do in a given classroom on a daily basis?

This video was useful for exploring the dimension of both 'student engagement' and 'depth of knowledge'. The teacher explores ideas and experiments with ways to involve the student into asking themselves what things are relevant to their own learning. This is relevant to my SMART goal of 100% pass rates among my SLO group on their standardized tests because I can have them explore and better understand the language, vocabulary, and contextual reading goals I am setting for them in my class. I think these strategies could be universally effective in nearly all learning environments.

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.

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

"Science talks allow all students to do exactly what scientists do: think about, wonder about, and talk about how things work, the origins of phenomena, and the essence of things."

SMART Goal: 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. Planning Protocol: Student Engagement can be a tactic that my team can use for the SMART goal because students are lacking the ability to defend their reasoning when it comes to writing the information down on paper. If we practice students defend their answers by engaging them in guided questions and discussions (orally) and letting students know what they instructors are looking for, I think it will help students be able to defend their answers when writing them down.

(Week 7: Michelle and Tolu) http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.umuc.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=537ab470-df86-45e4-b0e1-6a514e8ff2f5%40pdc-v-sessmgr05 This journal article is accessible through the link given above by accessing the UMUC library. This article reviews the literature relevant to games and simulation pedagogy in higher education. Two researchers collaborate to apply a qualitative method, coding and synthesizing the results using multiple criteria. The main objective is to study the impact of games and simulations with regard to achieving specific learning objectives. The article indicates that simulations have a positive impact on learning goals. The researchers identify three learning outcomes when integrating games into the learning process: cognitive, behavioral, and affective. This article can further instructional practices by providing g rationale for integrating simulations in academic curricula. Among the many reasons for including simulations in the classroom: they facilitate the transfer of knowledge, stimulate greater student engagement, and strengthen social development of students (Vlachopoulos & Makri, 2017). The article helps to ensure that the simulation is thoughtfully and deliberately introduced to minimize confusion and demonstrate how the simulation will reinforce course goals or objectives. References Vlachopoulos, D., & Makri, A. (2017). The effect of games and simulations on higher education: a systematic literature review [Entire issue]. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-017-0062-1

This article explores the use of mathematical discourse, or misconceptions, to promote student discussions and learning. It goes on to examine the process and best practices of using mathematical discourse to teach students content and practice mathematical vocabulary skills.

This protocol helps students share their opinions by asking them to line up along a continuum based on their position on an issue.

Ericka Posey's Smart Target Learning Goal: By the end of April, 80% of the 10th grade LSN Government students will be able to analyze political cartoons and write accurate BCRs with 75% accuracy for historical content and meaning. This activity will assist my students achieve the goal as it gives students a verbal prompt, gives them a chance to analyze that prompt, take a stand and defend that stance with strong examples. The same skills used in the Take a Stand will assist my students in analyzing a political cartoon, take a stand on the written prompt and defend that prompt with evidence from the political cartoon. The only difference is in the Take A Stand everything is done verbally and in the analysis of the political cartoon and BCR is a written assignment.

My chosen dimension is student engagement, I would consider this activity to be highly engaged with a rating of 4 because of its participation requirement and discussion method among all students. The discussion tactic in this video forces students to share their various perspectives in an open environment. Also, the students can easily see each other's choice before going into detail about why they made that choice. The students learn to value different perspectives and methods from their peers. This tactic works with our SMART goal because it emphasizes critical thinking proof to resolve a real problem. This tactic allows students to know that it is not about having one right answer to the problem, but discovering many strategies and reasons to solve the problem. Also I like that students must use retained information to evaluate their decision and the decision of their peers.