Group items tagged

(Week 9: Shawntel & Maia) This journal article can be accessed through UMUC's library. The focus of the article was to investigate the impact of linguistics in the process of solving math word problems. The article describes as study analysis of the influence of the number of steps and operations as variables that need to be utilized by learners when solving math word problems. The study used a combination of math word problems where some had consistent language and some had inconsistent language. Both focus groups were given the same questions; however, one group the instructor focused on metacognitive strategies to assist with reading comprehension. The group who were taught metacognitive strategies highly outscored the other group. The study showed that effective teaching strategies require the inclusion of metacognitive and self-regulating processes. The article strongly argues that conceptual understanding in mathematics is highly interrelated with reading comprehension. The article discusses three main components of learning, which are cognition, metacognition, and motivation. In other words, reading comprehension equips students with the confident ability to connect previous concepts to current processes the resolve issues on their own. Our group focused on the understood definition of reading comprehension as obtaining the meaning of what has been read based on readers' previous knowledge or background information in order to continue. Therefore, reading comprehension is the most important factor to improving student success when developing strategies to solving math word problems. This article was used to support teacher strategies when facilitating group work. The students were placed in small, mixed groups to discuss the videos to solve a math word problems as suggested in the article. During their collaborative work, the teacher developed more specific metacognitive questions to focus on reading comprehension and not the math technique.

Study involved head start programs and state funded public preschools from both California and New York. The study consist of a pre and post-test. A curriculum was given to the teachers to assist with planning for group activities in school and a manuel with activities that can be done at home. The curriculum includes counting and numbers, arithmetic operations, geometry, patterns, and reasoning. Data was collected twice during the year, once in the fall then again in the spring. The study found significant differences between the control and the intervention group.

This short article discusses strategies for helping adolescents who are reading at low levels.

This article provides information on helping older students who struggle with reading and Word study for adolescents who read at a very low level. It also provides next steps for these students. Even though it is geared toward older students, the strategies can be applied to younger ones as well. My Smart goal, 80% of students will reach level K in reading (lowest grade-appropriate reading level for second grade) by the beginning of the December, can be aided by this strategy. Word Study support can aid in decoding skills, which in turn helps students to become better readers. And once students can decode successfully, they can really focus in on the comprehension skills.

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 article makes a very good argument for incorporating e-mail into the classroom to improve student writing. The author explains how students are often bored with traditional writing assignments and editing/revising sessions using Microsoft Word (even though this is technology, it is less interactive). The author explains how having a second party on the other end of the email who will be reading their work encourages students to carefully proofread and make edits/revisions as necessary on their own before sending the e-mails. Students were also more interesting in the authentic writing tasks that e-mail communication allowed (such as writing to professionals in their fields of study/interest and receiving real responses). The author gives a plethora of ideas for utilizing e-mail to improve student writing in various content classes, including Language Arts, Math, Foreign Language, and Social Studies. Kristine and I found this article and are hoping to work in this strategy/component into our Data Action Plan (although we previously did not list it as a strategy to help with our SMART goals). WEEK 7

Teaching literacy in the high school content areas. Contains research and specific ideas for reading and writing in math, science, social studies, and English. Could be useful for working with students learning to write BCRs.

This article reports the results of a study of grade 2 students 7 - 8 years old) using game technology versus paper/pencil games and the effects of increased use of game technology on assessments. The study found that the students using the game technology had increased performance and that increased use of technology also increased student performance. Shin, N. Sutherland, L. M., Norris, C. A., & Soloway, E. (2012). Effects of game technology on elementary student learning in mathematics. British Journal of Educational Technology, 43(4), 540-560. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2011.01197.x

This is a great resource for teaching students to analyze literature by applying the author's technique to their own writing.

This article includes a research study on digital divide and examine show technology is used in the classroom and home.

This is a research from the 1970s and 1980s on the characteristics of effective elementary school teachers highlighted the importance of a strong academic focus, explicit instruction, and high levels of pupils on task. Extending this earlier research, recent large-scale studies on effective teachers of reading have highlighted the importance of motivating and balanced instruction, the teaching of strategies as well as skills, the encouragement of higher-level thinking, and the use of coaching as children are reading and writing. Common findings across recent studies on effective elementary teachers of reading are highlighted in this research paper. It suggest skills and strategies for teaching reading effectively

This is a very interesting study that shows us that the way we have been taught to learn English influences the way teachers teach English. The study analyzes the stories of four English teachers. I chose this article because I believe that at times, the way we give instructions in the class is informed by the way we received past instructions or would like to receive instructions in the present.

This study examines how the gender differences in class affect the student's performance. The study shows the gap between the genders due to four different reasons. You should read this article the results as are very interesting. I chose this article because one of the result shows that teachers provide instructions differently based on genders and that leads to the instructional gap between the genders in the classroom.

Debategraph is a fantastic tool for individual and group study. It is perfect for organizing thoughts, ideas and facts. You can create bullet points and subcategories of information. On Debategraph you can map your ideas and collaborate with team members. I used Debate graph on my website in 605 as a language arts tool. Its a an ideal tool for brainstorming and organizing a persuasive or informative argument. Students can also present information using the debategraph as a visual. Best, Denee Devenish

Debategraph allows users to map and discuss ideas. EDTC 610

A collection of interactive activities for the K-12 social studies classroom.

This seems like a great resource! Colonial times is a part of my curriculum, and so I definitely plan on integrating this resource into my instruction. There are various features of this website that would motivate and engage students. Great find!

Lesson plan for studying Victor Hugo's Les Misérables with students using novel and character summaries in the target language. While the multiple choice questions in the lesson are mere comprehension questions, some of the discussion questions address main idea and supporting details. Teachers could also develop their own multiple choice questions for the passages to address main idea and supporting details.

This article analyzes how closing the Education gap will lead to a dramatic increase in America's GDP. It was very intriguing to see actual data to support investing in education and the positive economic impact it has.