Group items tagged

This website allows physical educators to browse Free Physical Education Resources, Lesson Plans, Activities, Games, Articles, Videos, Blogs. It is an easy way for teachers to find lessons that they may be struggling with. I like to find lessons and change them to make them work for me. The blog is also helpful because it helps teachers relate to one another, that may be struggling with the same things my team does.

Week 8 Google Scholar is among the best scholarly search engines online yet only a few select of educators know its secrets.As a rule of thumb that applies to all Google products, the effective use of any service from Google s can only be achieved through mastering its deep and hidden features.

The website helps guide teachers as well as parents to focus on the building blocks of reading and writing. This Pre-K guide is designed to walk teachers through several important building blocks, including sounds, print awareness, letters and more. Within each section, you'll find easy to read and use resources for learning more, and for trying some activities within your setting. Short videos bring concepts to life, booklists provide ideas for extension, and we provide guidance about when to have concerns about a child's development.

Week 7 - This is an excellent article for second language teachers who want to be inclusive of all students through digital story telling. Dr. Vinogradova's personal experience affirms the importance of cultural identity integration using technology to achieve pedagogical goals. By Polina Vinogradova, Ph.D, Director of the TESOL Program, Department of World Languages and Cultures, American University....

In this quick article it identifies a formulaic way to create good thesis statements. I love giving students a map or tool to help them remember how to structure a solid thesis statement that anchors a good essay. These four steps are dead on but we will have to adapt it to the 6th grade level for my PLC practice.

Week 7

Teacher resource that shares NSTA's position on how to shift to Next Generation Science Standards. Teachers can use this as a guide for building lesson plans that incorporate activities that adopt these shifts.

Week 8 - Virgil

This blog post by Todd Finley describes what formative assessment is, in particular, what alternative formative assessment (AFA) is and how and why it can be used to advance student learning. Teachers can begin to plan the use of AFA by using the downloadable guide of 53 ways to use AFA. For 615 colleagues, be sure to evaluate any strategy using Venables' Planning Protocol Rubric!

This article talks about the use of technology in the classroom to help student in our culture and our society.

This website aligns to my teams EQ by discussing ways educators can differentiate their instruction ELL students (and all students when we really think about it). The resource created by Karen Ford (2011) talks about "how differentiated instruction is not the same as individualized instruction...it is a matter of presenting the same task in different ways and at different levels, so that all students can approach it in their own ways (Trujo, 2004)." Information is also shared focusing on the ELL population and ways teachers can successfully differentiate to support their learning.

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 is an article from the NY Times about how a school in Wisconsin is utilizing data in every area of the school building. It was very eyeopening how a school embraced the data movement and did not shy away from it. Great read.

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.

Early literacy skills begin developing at a young age, even before kids get to Kindergarten. Therefore it is vital that families consistently read with their children and expose them to text in the home. This article explains the benefits of early literacy in the home and outlines a plan for gaining more parent involvement by creating literacy bags for families to take home and use with their children. The research provided will not only help us to find answers to our exploratory question, but will also give us ideas for action plans that we can put into place in our own schools.

This article provides a wonderful overview of ways to involve families in a learning community at school across multiple subject areas. However, there is a large focus on reading and ways to foster family involvement in developing early literacy skills at home. This will be an excellent resource for our group as we begin to design a plan for supporting students in Kindergarten in their ability to blend words and recall high frequency words in text.

This article details the difference in achievement that has been attained by the KIPP charter schools in Baltimore, especially in middle schools. Although I was interested in how KIPP succeeded where so many others have failed, I realized that there are many differences between these schools and the school I teach in. (Parent & teacher buy-in, selectivity of the students they serve, etc). As such, I don't think the successes described here would be replicated at my school, with my 8th graders.

This is a great article about the late famed educator, Marva Collins, who advocated for less technology and more focus on non-tech problem solving. While not an opponent of using technology, she largely based her outstanding success with children on the following precept: "Though children are exposed to technology (a biology software program is used with four- and five-year-olds, for instance), it is secondary to other lessons. 'I think what most of us fail to understand is there are steps in life,' Collins explains. 'We try to teach children that you cannot skip from step 1 to step 10.'"