Group items tagged

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

(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.

This is a great read for our SMART goal. An assessment is a great way to figure out what the students know, what they want to know, and what interests them the most so we are able to improve and adjust our teaching.

Week 9 Melissa and Claire: This article is accessible using the link above though Diigo Well crafted formative and performance assessments which include setting meaningful goals, and giving students ownership over the process can powerfully and positively affect teaching and learning. The key to good instruction is assessments. Assessments show what students know, what they want to know, it allows us to adjust our instruction to cater to each student. There are 5 keys to an effective assessment: Meaningful unit goals and questions, summative assessment through writing, performance assessment through presentation and portfolio, formative assessment and feedback along the way, and student ownership of assessment process. These methods of assessments are to be done with the students putting a focus on the student and their learning. Resource: The 5 Keys to Successful Comprehensive Assessment in Action By: Andrew Miller

Most teachers believe that students have a fear of word problems, but this article will have you second guessing that. The article will have teachers thinking that word problems should be used from the start of a lesson and not at the very end of a homework assignment. Students normally perform better on word problems then algebraic solving because they have context clues to help them solve the problem.

To sum up this article you can look at the following quote from it; And he warned that the tendency to wait before using word problems could exacerbate gaps for students who struggle with algebra early on, because they may not be exposed to many word problems at all. Students have a fear of word problems because they perceive that they are too hard before they even begin working on them. This combined with the gaps in the vocabulary knowledge are making word problems more difficult for them.

This is an article that explores the strategy of introducing word problems first during math instruction. As a math teacher, I tend to introduce concepts first then build up to applying those concepts to word problems. The strategy of introducing the word problems first acts to help students solve a problem using any method they are comfortable with, without getting bogged down with the math too soon and becoming unwillingly to solve it. This could address the SMART learning goal, by helping us to rethink the way in which students approach word problems.

This article provides detailed background information regarding explicit writing instruction, especially regarding students with special needs such as ADHD, but the strategies discussed can be adapted and used with all learners regardless of ability or grade level. The article begins with a focus on strategies for providing students with motivational contexts for their writing as well as making writing a routine that they enjoy. The rest of the article is divided into sections based on students' ability/age level (basic skills, revising and editing, and motivation). This article discusses strategies that can help address teachers address students' learning gaps in elaboration and explaining their ideas fully in expository writing tasks. Be sure to click "Single Page" at the bottom right of the article so you can see the entire article on one screen, and explore the links to the left of the article for more information about writing instruction for different populations!

This article discusses the need for implementation of student-involved classroom assessment to aid in closing the achievement gap. The authors discuss how motivation occurs at both ends of the spectrum for learners; high achieving learners are motivated by their continued success while low achieving learners are motivated to give up as they have had few to little successful experiences in the classroom. The article goes on to discuss three methods of embedding students into the learning process that will prove to help them take ownership of their learning experience. The first is student involved classroom assessment. This tool allows students, "under the careful management of their teachers," to give input into how they will be assessed in the classroom. The second is student-involved record keeping. Here students are responsible for tracking their progress, allowing them to see and take charge of their personal growth in the classroom. Finally, student-involved communication is discussed. Students have the opportunity to advocate for themselves in setting such as parent/teacher conferences. The article also discusses four conditions that are necessary, in the opinion of the authors, to assist in closing the achievement gap.

I enjoyed this article, Jason, especially the premise that essentially enforcing the idea that students are underachieving as a whole by a set of arbitrary test scores can, consequently in some empirical cases, produce negative self-fulfilling prophecies in students' beliefs. This promotion of subconscious failing, if replicated and shown to be universally significant, holds dramatic implications. Looking back on my own experiences, Jason, I can remember the pride that I constantly felt in elementary school because we were known to be the leaders in our county; conversely though, if that were not the cause, I think it would be fair to conjecture that a pall of hopelessness may have replaced my academic banner of proverbial pride and high morale.

Week 8 This reading selection is for Honors High school Biology students learning about Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. It is an article from CSA Discovery Guides by Deborah M. Whitman titled "Genetically Modified Foods: Harmful or Helpful?" released in 2000. The reading discusses what genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are, what the advantages and criticisms are, how prevalent GM crops are, what plants are involved, and how GM food are regulated and labeled. The assignment for this reading is to: 1. Read the article 2. Take notes on the pros and cons for the use of GMOs (Cornell Notes as part of my data action plan) 3. Choose a side (for /against) 4. Make a claim and justify that claim 5. Create a persuasive poster to support that claim. For differentiation, the article can be shortened and simplified for readers of different levels.

Week 8: In our Data Action meeting we discussed intructional strategies involving simulation and games. This article explain some advantages and fears for educators implementing games into their lesson plans. Matthew Farber Social Studies Teacher, Ed Tech Leadership EdD Candidate, Author In the fall of 2014, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop (a nonprofit founded by Sesame Street creator Joan Ganz Cooney) assessed the impact of the gaming in school settings.

Initially, I was very hesitant to buy into learning through online games. I know that children today spend so much time in front of screens, and I didn't want to contribute to this obsession (for some children it does border on that). I did see that BrainPop, a site which I use frequently, introduced GameUp and Spotify. I figured if BrainPop was okay with gaming for learning, then I had to give it a try. Well, my students will now beg for BrainPop and will do evey activity, quiz and graphic organizer associated with a lesson in order to get to sortify. What a great tool. I am now a firm believer.

I too see the benefits of using these online games within instruction. The games provide students with a means of engagement that we often struggle to provide students. With the growth of technology, students are becoming more in-tune with new technology and are using it more often at home. By connecting technology to instruction, we are able to meet them in the middle. There are so many tools available online that it's a shame not to use them!

(Week 7: Dave and Kristina) This journal article is accessible through the link given above by accessing the UMUC library. This journal article discusses the challenges that nearly all teachers face in classes where there they encounter students of mixed abilities. The article provides solutions such as 'provided specific activities for varying students', and notes that teachers with a 'positive attitude toward mixed abilities' correlate to more positive outcomes within their classrooms (Al-Subaiei, 2017). Teachers in our team can use this information because the problem of having students of mixed abilities is a ubiquitous one. It enlightens the reader that many teachers have not received adequate training regarding differentiation to provide effective lessons to classes that contain learners of mixed abilities. While Al-Subaiei (2017) doesn't offer solutions specific to any particular subject area, it certainly does shine a light and help teachers reflect on an issue that we all face to varying degrees. References Al-Subaiei, M. S. (2017). Challenges in Mixed Ability Classes and Strategies Utilized by ELI Teachers to Cope with Them. English Language Teaching, 10(6), 182-189. Retrieved from http://ezproxy.umuc.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.umuc.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1143456&site=eds-live&scope=site

(Week7: Jim, Sabrina, Jennifer) This Journal article is accessible through the link given above through the UMUC Library The focus of this article is small group alternative lessons that will help with differentiated reading instruction. The article itself identifies how students in the elementary grades struggle with Phonemic Awareness. Specifically in kindergarten and First grade and continuously miss the benchmark when being assessed. The article also Identifies what differentiated instruction looks like in this setting as well as many example activities on guided reading and other strategies to help address students who are struggling. Teachers are able to use this article as a reference for activities that they can incorporate into the classroom during their reading or guided reading block. The 3 members in our team all work in a secondary school and noticed that many of the activities or lessons were really geared toward elementary students. However when reflecting on the struggling students in our own classes on this topic we quickly realized that those students were indeed on an elementary reading level. Therefore we might not use the exact same strategies but rather adapt them as they do in the article to fit the needs of our learners and make them more age appropriate. Reference: Kosanovich, M, Ladinsky, K, Nelson, L, Torgesen, J,. (2007) Differentiated Reading Instruction: Small Group Alternative Lesson Structures for All Students. Guidance Document for Florida "Reading First" Schools. Florida Center for Reading Research ERIC Journal. pp. 11, Retrieved from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED498777.pdf

This is an article about the RTI program and how students who are English Language Learners can benefit from using certain strategies and what areas they might struggle in. Teachers could use this resource as a guide to how to implement their own interventions for their students.

This website gives a good overview of what RTI is, as well as a background and makeup of ESOL learners in the United States. The article also provides teachers with strategies on how to teach certain skills to ESOL students, such as using a table that includes a picture and the word in both English and Spanish. As a user of RTI at my own school, I have seen the positive effects of this tool.

(Week 8: Michele, Ericka and Spencer) This article was retrieved using a search on Diigo. It can be accessed using this link http://www.rtinetwork.org/learn/diversity/response-to-intervention-implications-for-spanish-speaking-english-language-learners In the article, Elsa Hagan provides the reader with insight into ways ELA teachers can improve reading levels of their Spanish-Speaking ELL students. Currently, there is a 29% gap in reading level with Spanish-Speaking ELL students when compared to other ELL students. To help bridge the gap, strategies need to be utilized. One involves the use of Response-to-Intervention (RTI) model to aid in monitoring the individual progress of all ELL students with an extra emphasis placed on the Spanish-Speaking students in the program. This will involve continuous monitoring of the Spanish-Speaking ELL students to ensure they are receiving the appropriate intervention strategies for their current level. Along with using RTI, the author indicates that a Phonological Awareness is needed. By aiding the ELL students ability to "process and manipulate" the sounds of the English language, their ability to read and comprehend information in English will improve. While this article was intended more for ESOL course teachers, the information provided can be utilized with all educators who have an ELL student in their class. The article identified that the Spanish language only has approximately 22 sounds where the English language has double the number of sounds. To aid in the improvement of reading in ELL students, we as non-ESOL class teachers, can exchange text that will be a lower reading level but still mean the same. Reference: Hagan, E. (2010) Response to intervention: implications for spanish-speaking english language learners. Retrieved on October 30, 2018 from http://www.rtinetwork.org/learn/diversity/response-to-intervention-implications-for-spanish- speaking-english-language-learn

WEEK 7 - Chris Baugher, Patricia Bankins and Alison Burns - First reading. "This paper investigates how pre-service teacher education can provide a strong literacy foundation for content area teachers. Pre-service teachers emphasized their growing awareness of how literacy strategies can enhance student learning in their specific subject areas." (Orr, Kukner and Timmons, 2014)

This article gives an interesting insight to content area literacy and infusing literacy into science and math classes. I was particularly interested in the different ways the sample teachers incorporate literacy strategies into their teaching. They talk of expanding notions of what learning and assessment can look like in science and math. Teachers must have a solid content knowledge themselves to be able to express "the most useful forms of representation of those [topics to be taught in the subject area and] ideas, the most powerful analogies, illustrations, examples, explanations, and demonstrations-in a word, the ways of representing and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others. (Schulman, 1986, p. 9)

The article supports this week's activity and Willigham's video on content knowledge improving reading skill. The first section in 'content area literacy" says it all: "Content area literacy is the ability to acquire understandings of, and think critically about, new content in a discipline using reading, writing and multiple other forms..." (Draper, 2002; Heller & Greenleaf, 2007; Kane, 2011; McKenna & Robinson, 1990) The article as a whole supports and builds upon the importance of not only literacy but also what assessments could look like and what they should reflect. Lastly, "[b]ecause literacy is important in all subject areas, content area teachers can plat a significant role in their students' literacy development" (Alger, 2007, 2009; Draper, 2002; Lind, 2008, Heller & Greenleaf, 2007). Before students can learn the material, we as teachers must become familiar and competent enough in the content to not only explain the ideas but to show them and relate them to the students' lives and prior knowledge.

Week 8: Dave and Kristina This article is found by searching "differentiation" in the MEd Program Diigo. This article is mainly about how teachers need to continue to observed and held accountable for their teaching methods in order to best educate high-ability learners. According to VanTassel Baska (2012), "teacher effectiveness has been shown to be the main determinant of student progress." The author is of the belief that if teachers are continually observed, sometimes in an unannounced situation, that they will continue to teach using complex higher order behaviors and that this is the way that gifted students will learn best. Teachers in our group can use this article to understand the reasoning behind continual professional development and observation. Both of us teach gifted students in our classes and we need to remember that these students need to provide extended activities for these students and that we need to consider if our lessons include the use of higher level skills. Often time as teachers, we tend to focus more on the students that struggle academically but, we need to remember that our gifted students also need extra support as well so that they are able to grow as learners. References VanTassel-Baska, J. (2012). Analyzing Differentiation in the Classroom: Using the COS-R. Gifted Child Today, 35(1), 42-48. https://doi-org.ezproxy.umuc.edu/10.1177/1076217511427431

This article gives a brief overview of vocabulary development and then offers many different instructional strategies to teach vocabulary in the classroom. Strategies include interactive word walls, word mapping, and self-selected vocabulary among many others.

This article strongly correlates with my instructional focuses. After viewing the article, I was able to see the different levels of vocabulary comprehension as well as the interventions that can be used to assist and assess the student's levels of comprehension. This article is a great source for any reading/language arts educator.

Vocabulary plays a vital role in my class with ELL students. This resource contains criteria that will help monitor students vocabulary progress as well as give different strategies such as Self correction, Mapping, Graphic Morphemic Analysis, Interactive word Walls and more for ELL students and students with special needs. This resource aids my groups' SMART Target learning goals by providing strategies for comprehending academic vocabulary.

This article is a case study on how better teacher preparation for instruction and assessment of writing can lead to improved writing instruction.

(Week 4: Frances and Claudio) This article is accessible through the link given above. This article focus on teachers ability to improve their instruction skills by eliminating their weakness to overlook students needs by pretending the problem is non existent. It focus on the inconsistencies of teachers' techniques for class deliverance and the missed learning opportunities for students. The readings present that students are not always given the opportunities to write or be assessed in the context of classroom instruction by teachers who feel uneasy on how they deliver the class subject. Other areas of the article points out that students get low exposure to variety forms of writing and become in prepared when there is a change in writing format.(Graham & Perin, 2007; Hillocks, 2008). Through the SMART goal, Group#4 can utilize some of the examples by providing opportunities to students by offering different writing assignments that are more realistic to meet writing abilities of the students. Students will be more in line with the SMART goal if they are allowed to provide the feedback to the teacher once the assignment is complete so they can see their own improvements. Also, teachers can improve in the teaching efforts and will be able to provide the appropriate assignments to those students who extra help which will move the teachers' uneasiness about their preparation to teach and assess writing at different learning levels. Read, Sylvia and Landon-Hays, Melanie M. (2013) "The Knowing/Doing Gap: Challenges of Effective Writing Instruction in High School," Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education: Vol. 2 : Iss. 2 , Article 3. Available at: http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/wte/vol2/iss2/3

Problem-based learning allows us to bring our students, course material, and the real world closer together. A few ideas for getting started with PBL. I enjoyed reading this article because it began with a quote and excellent question. "How do we get our students to understand what 'the field' is really like? How can we help them realize that they not only need to understand the information we are teaching, but that they need to be able to apply the information that we are teaching." This article touched more on the idea of students being able to able to apply the information that we are teaching them in the real world. Problem-based Learning Helps Bridge the Gap between the Classroom and the Real World, Jason R. Weber, (2014) Retrieved from http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/instructional-design/problem-based-learning-helps-bridge-gap-classroom-real-world/ Retrieved on 10/19/15

This brief article offers a quick introduction to the importance of preparing students for the real world through in-class activities, and provides 5 simple recommendations to help an instructor get the most out of PBL (problem-based learning, here) activities.

The article discusses how to use data in the classroom meaningfully.

The importance of short term goals in data driven decision making is addressed. It also discusses streamlining data so that teachers actually have time to create interventions, rather than just take assessments and read data.

This article is very resourceful in presenting ideas to create a data environment without inclusion of anxiety or pressure. In collecting and representing data, this article discusses several ways to display the data and set short term acceptable goals.

(Week 7: Ruchel and Beth) This journal article is accessible through the link given above by accessing the UMUC library. This journal article discuss practical strategies to help with teaching the alphabet. The importance of the alphabet for early literacy skills is discussed in the article. The article stresses the flaw with the popular "letter of the week" way of teaching the alphabet including the fact that this method takes 26 weeks just to cover the alphabet as well as the fact that if students know a number of letters those weeks are a waste of valuable class time. Teachers can use this article to further their instructional practices in the early childhood classroom by focusing on EAK (Enhanced Alphabet Knowledge Instruction) which "emphasizes identifying the letter name and sound, recognizing the letter in text, and producing the letter form, through flexible, distributed cycles of review based on factors that influence acquisition of alphabet knowledge" (Jones, Clark & Reutzel, 2013). "Rather than the traditional method of one cycle of massed instruction, EAK instruction advocates teaching letters through multiple, distributed instructional cycles which allows for letters to be introduced, practiced, and revisited several times, as needed, during the school year" (Jones et al., 2013). References Jones, C., Clark, S., & Reutzel, D. (2013). Enhancing Alphabet Knowledge Instruction: Research Implications and Practical Strategies for Early Childhood Educators. Early Childhood Education Journal, 41(2), 81-89. doi:10.1007/s10643-012-0534-9