Group items tagged

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grade LSN Government students will be able to analyze political cartoons and write accurate BCRs with 75% accuracy for historical content and meaning.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.

(Week 7: Cathy, Sheila and Suzanne) This journal article is accessible though the link given above by accessing the UMUC library. This journal article discussed the connection between metacognition and cognitive retention dependent on particular Biology teaching strategies. The article focused on four strategies, Problem-based learning (PBL), Jigsaw, PBL integrated with Jigsaw and direct teaching. The article explained how PBL/Jigsaw leads to greater metacognition skills and therefore the students will be more successful learners. This article can help teachers identify student learning gaps and incorporate learning strategies that aid in metacognitive skills and also increase cognitive retention. It also examines how student motivation and leaning styles and cooperative learning strategies can help self-esteem and student achievement. Palennari wrote that metacognition makes students become independent learners that can manage and plan their learning process. "Self-regulated learners are responsible for their own learning progress and adapt their learning strategies reaching demands completely." (Palennari, 2016) Reference: Palennari, M. (2016). Exploring the correlation between metacognition and cognitive retention of students using some biology teaching strategies. Journal of Baltic Science Education. 15(5). Pp 617-629.

Author Rebecca Alber shares six scaffolding strategies designed to provide successful learning experiences for our students. Teachers can use these to support our diverse learners.

(Week 7: Michele, Ericka and Spencer) This article is accessible through the link --> https://www.edutopia.org/blog/scaffolding-lessons-six-strategies-rebecca-alber. This article focuses on a learning technique called scaffolding. Used as a precursor to differentiated instruction (DI), scaffolding involves chunking the lesson into parts so a higher level of emphasis can be placed on information the teacher desires the students to learn. In the article, the author, Rebecca Alber, provides the reader with 6 strategies to use in their lessons that can incorporate the learning tool scaffolding. To determine the scaffolding strategy, the author emphasizes the use of the zone of proximal development (ZPD). "The ZPD is the distance between what children can do by themselves and the next learning that they can be helped to achieve with competent assistance." Some scaffolding strategies include pre-teaching vocabulary, fishbowl and use of visual aids. Teachers can use scaffolding in class to help encourage higher level thinking which allow students to better understand the information and skills learned in class. Additionally, teachers who do not have the resources to DI (space, time, additional teacher support) can use scaffolding strategies to aid in meeting the educational needs of all their students. Although one strategy does not work, the author emphasizes the importance of trying other. Reference: Alber, R. (2011). 6 scaffolding strategies to use with your students. Retrieved on October 23, 2018 from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/scaffolding-lessons-six-strategies-rebecca-alber EDTC615 Fall2018

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.

("Week 8" Group Members: Beth and Ruchel) The article explores a study conducted to see the patterns of within-group variability in the emergent literacy skills of preschoolers who are at risk for academic difficulties. The study can be used as a helpful resource to determine the relationships between early patterns of literacy performance and later reading achievement.

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.

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.

At the New Mexico School for the Arts, they tried a variety of approaches for using data to improve student achievement, and didn't get it right at first. This article shares what they learned.

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.

I selected this article since I primarily work with college students and need to offer additional support to help students use their self-advocacy skills for their own learning goals. I feel that this would be a good way to address learning gaps by integrating these skills into our instruction. Abstract: Self-advocacy is the ability to communicate one's needs and wants and to make decisions about the supports needed to achieve them (Stodden, Conway, & Chang, 2003). Research shows self-advocacy skills are related to academic performance and successful adaptation to college (Adams & Proctor, 2010; Getzel & Thoma, 2008; Hadley, 2006; Murray, Lombardi, & Kosty, 2014; Thoma & Wehmeyer, 2005).

This article discusses how teachers can help every student move forward and experience success by anticipating possible gaps in knowledge and building scaffolds into each lesson to address these gaps. The author, Pepper Rollins (2016), describes a variety of tools to provide such support.

This is a document provided by the NEA on how schools can improve students reading achievement in school. I like this resource because it breaks down steps school can use from teachers, students and parents to improve reading. It starts by discussing literacy skills taught in kindergarten and goes into talking about text meaning for older students. Great resource!

This article is very timely it talks about the NCLB law and how it isn't working. Threats to teachers firing, closing schools and students still continue to decline. Standardized testing isn't working. This is a great article, must read.

Poverty in America greatly effects our children, in cities like Detroit, Chicago etc. Place and poverty are tightly woven together and add to our problem. This is a good article on our inner city kids.