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PebbleGo is an early childhood research base for young children learning to read. Information is child friendly and includes many pictures and videos to enrich student learning. PebbleGo has a read aloud feature that allows text to be read to the audience, if necessary. It also has online games relating to topics on PebbleGo and printable resources. This resource requires login information and can be purchased as a subscription by an entire school.

Pebble Go is an excellent online resource for student reserach. This site is divided up by category of science, social studies, and biographies. Students use this interactive website to learn about different academic content areas. For each topic, readings, videos, games, and audio recordings are provided. This allows students of all ability levels to be able to access the information and understand the content. My students love this site as it is a great starting point for any reserach project!

Web 2.0 tool that allows you to add content, links, pictures, etc. to primary sources and other written works. This would be especially useful in a Social Studies class to add biographies and links to background information for primary documents. It would also be a good activity to have the students work together to create a cirriculet on a primary source of the time period being studied. I have found this to be very user-friendly.

Bring the past to life and turn your students into historians with the DocsTeach program from the U.S. National Archives. - Click on Activities to create activities you customize for use in the classroom. - Click on Documents to select from thousands of primary source documents from the billions preserved at the National Archives.

I'm trying this again . . . Docs Teach is digital "warehouse" of primary source documents that include interactive activities, such as evaluating evidence to make a case for a particular argument. This is very useful resource for a social studies class.

A great Web 2.0 tool for creative writing. This would be useful in a Social Studies class for students to work together to create a story based on the time period being studied. I have found this very easy to use.

I selected this article because I was curious to learn how the authors investigated the student achievement issue with their student centered (experiment) group and a teacher centered (control) group comparison study; all while being supported by the curriculum, teachers, and professional development. The student centered group engaged in the use of drill and practice of computation based on the school's mathematics curriculum, in addition to an introduction to the use of presentation software. Meanwhile the control group focused only on the teacher instruction. Moreover surprisingly based on the results of the study, the students involved in the Computer-Assisted Instruction (CAI) experiment group did not have a statistically significant positive influence on student achievement. Jennifer Smith

This resource discusses the strategy of Total Physical Response (TPR) used in physical education classes. This strategy will help me reach my SMART target learning goal as students develop vocabulary through integration of words and movement through my implementation of the TPR strategy.

Contains sample lesson plans and narratives explaining the plans. Also includes a Q&A with literacy expert Cynthia Shanahan with information on teaching strategies, differentiation, and vocabulary instruction.

(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

Student Engagement The video is appropriate for grade 9-12 and it covers social studies literacy. Moreover, the video provides strategies that educators can employ to challenge, engage and empower students. This is done by introducing students to topics that affect them every day. This is a good instructional tactics that can be employed by my team. During our review, we realized the important of student's engagement and team work to learning and understating the topics in the assessment data that we reviewed. Having students work in groups and on projects goes a long way to improve collaboration, team building and learning among students. In addition, students were given complex topics to explore and they were introduced to research paper. Educators can use the protocol to determine the level of engagements, design innovative curriculum and instructions, and increase students strategic reasoning skills. For instance, educator may use some assessment tool like quizlet live to build collaborative learning and engagement among students. Student can become innovative through learning from the real-world related concepts or hands-on activities. The protocol can serve as blue print in this regard.

EDTC615 Fall2018 Group1 According to my smart goal: By the end of 1st quarter 75% of the LSN Government students will be able to analyze political cartoons with 75% accuracy for historical content and meaning for the LSN FAST 2 test, my student need to be able to read for accuracy, use effective vocabulary, and understand symbolism of political cartoons. This resources includes a lesson plan which provides strategies for literacy in three stages, before reading, during reading, and after reading. These strategies include a word wall, the first amendment of the Constitution, and the questioning exercise help to prepare the students for reading within the content area and with HIstorical analysis; the major area in which my students struggle. The lesson presented also is in direct correlation with the information that my students need to know as a part of my smart goal.

The National Foundation for Educational Research (UK) conducted a review of research since 2006. Findings of the study were split on the impact of game-based learning, found positive impact on engagement in the short term, and that no studies looked at their impact on learning and achievement.

(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

The use of worked examples when students are learning and/or practicing a math concept involves comparing and contrasting. this article goes to the importance of students referencing their notebook when they are working/practicing in order to analyze their work and make decisions on how to proceed in a process.

Animated Science, Health, Technology, Math, Social Studies, Arts & Music and English movies, quizzes, activity pages and school homework help for K-12 kids, aligned with state standards

This article shares a intervention that was used to help close the vocabulary gap between Latino and Anglo students. A group of 5th graders were taught academically useful words along with some strategies . Those strategies include, "using information from contex, from morphology, from knowledge about multiple meanings, and from cognates to infer word meaning." The students in the the study showed greater growth in vocabuary comprehension than students who were not a part of the study group.

This website is a collection of many science and social studies related math problems. Users connect math to issues like sports, natural disasters, and ancient civilizations, and "hunt" for math answers among various resources. There are lots of opportunities for language-development in the process, too, and its accessible to Intermediate English Language Learners.

This KQED blog post provides information on current and past research that indicates how important movement and the use of our bodies are to learning. This research is called "embodied learning". The discussion on highly decorated classrooms is worth further exploration. This would be another great article for a text-based discussion in a PLC. The math and physics examples can be adapted for other content areas for use as instructional strategies.

(Week 9: Benjamin, Cheney, and Gretchen) This article is accessible through the link provided above. The main focus of this article is to inform educators of the positive effects movement can have on student learning. This article provides a series of studies where students were presented with different problems, mostly math, and encouraged to represent the problems with movement. Students who used physical movement to represent and solve mathematical problems demonstrated higher levels of success than their age-related peers who simply solved by reading a problem to themselves or aloud. This article is useful for all members of my team as it suggests methods for adapting physical movement to all content areas. Within this article it is suggested ""When students use their bodies in the learning process, it can have a big effect, even if it seems silly or unconnected to the learning goal at hand" (Schwartz, 2015). I think most teachers can find reassurance from this research-based article knowing that the implementation of movement doesn't have to fit directly with curriculum unit. The teachers within my specific team can use the practice of movement as an alternative method for instructing desired skills such as decoding strategies for reading or identifying/constructing numbers in base ten. Reference Schwartz, K. (2015, March 26). Why kids need to move, touch, and experience to learn. Retrieved from https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/39684/why-kids-need-to-move-touch-and-experience-to-learn

Without comprehension, reading is a frustrating, pointless exercise in word calling. It is no exaggeration to say that how well students develop the ability to comprehend what they read has a profound effect on their entire lives.1 A major goal of reading comprehension instruction, therefore, is to help students develop the knowledge, skills, and experiences they must have if they are to become competent and enthusiastic readers.

(Week 8: Adiatu, Julie, and Heather) This journal article was found on Diigo by Heather, and is accessible through the link given above. The article was written by the Texas Education Agency, and explored a 1970 classroom study on a reading comprehension strategy taught by teachers where students had to complete an assignment by applying a specific skill mentioned by their teacher. Assessments showed the strategy did not enable comprehension. Following the 1970 study, cognitive scientists found that comprehension is not a skill application. Rather, comprehension is about constructing meaning, which involves interaction, strategy, and adaption. The article is useful to teachers because it suggests activities that teachers can use in the classroom to improve how students construct meaning. For example, having students think aloud as they read. 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 What research tells us about reading, comprehension, and comprehension instruction. (2009, January 2). Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/what-research-tells-us-about-reading-comprehension-and-comprehension-instruction