Group items tagged

This article focuses on a special education teacher and the methods she uses to teach her students reading comprehension. It is a resource for instructional strategies that may help close the instructional gap.

Our group's EQ relates to how ESOL and Special Education students perform on state tests in English. The article here is from Arizona and is a study in how well English Language Learners performed on their state mandated tests. The document outlines the issues that English learners have in their school along with teacher and district recommendations on how to help improve student scores.

This article takes about the importance of Career and Technical classes in the schools. It also takes about students should be expose to both college and career ready education and not have to choose.

Article discusses literacy instruction and strategies in regards to ELL students.

Project based learning is a great tool to motivate students by relating lessons to real world issues. This article provides project examples and benefits of project based learning and why it should be a part of classrooms.

This article is very informative about what is expected of ELL students, and how little accommodations are given to the students when taking tests. The students are required to take benchmarks and state tests without being able to speak english at a specific level.

This provides excellent resources to support the Common Core initiative. It stresses the case for an interdisciplinary approach to learning and suggests that  "to prepare our students for an integrated world, we need to break out of the separate-discipline mentality and develop more holistic and problem/project-based approaches. "

A teacher could use this in their classroom for students to brainstorm in a group, identify key parts of a website, practice reading strategies on actual websites by marking them up, or discuss ideas and take notes. This site is quite interesting and I feel worthwhile. It does somewhat remind me of googledocs and other similar apps, but is unique in many ways. It could be used in a multitude of ways, and definitely lends itself to discussions and critiques of things as vast as articles and websites to paintings and art.

"Twiddla is a free, no-setup, web-based meeting playground. Mark up websites, graphics, and photos, or start brainstorming on a blank canvas. Voice and Text chat too!" This might be a great way to have students evaluate websites or documents collaboratively.

Ha! Oops..I already shared this link.

This article emphasizes on a new teaching strategy called the flipped model which was created to improve student involvement and academic achievement using technology to move teacher's lecture outside the traditional classroom environment. This model introduces new subject area content to students at home (prior to class) for continual review of content, and moving homework and exercises with concepts inside the classroom with learning activities. Learners within this study preferred this method over the traditional approach, as it improved instructional practices. Therefore with improved instructional practices students can be better motivated and eager to learn thus resulting in improved assessments.

I selected a source from ERIC that focused somewhat upon the novelty and implementation on PARCC assessments in place of other testing batteries in school systems. This article may help us to a degree in honing our focus of our EQ as to why students grades declined significantly in the third quarter. Discussing issues with the ELA and the Common Core in Massachusetts, the very novelty of the testing led one overwrought educator to even remark, "...I'm not really thinking about PARCC yet. I have too much else to do" (Barrett, 2014, p. 25). Herein, Barrett mentions that field testing was just implemented into 18 states, just last year, and income and resource availability may play a significant role in Massachusetts' national performance leadership on former testing assessments and the Common Core (p. 24). Interesting to note is that the two parts of the PARCC testing, the PBA and the end of year examinations are only one month apart, spanning from March-April, and May-June (p. 25). Barrett, L. (2014). Common core 'A really big reset'. Education Digest, 79(8), 22.

This citation caught my eye because I am a Massachusetts educator and it is still undetermined whether or not the PARCC tests will be implemented in my district again this year. In general I felt that, last year, the assessment took too much time away from instruction. Now the teachers and parents I know seem more uncertain than ever that all our preparation efforts are worth it. I think if we weren't in such an all-fired hurry to raise our scores PARCC could actually develop into a meaningful exercise. Everybody relax!

This site gives an array of strategies and tips to cater to struggling students.

The website created by Kathleen Bulloch does offer a lot of great tips. I especially like how they are broken down into manageable chunks for a teacher who is working to accommodate a special needs student. Suggestions were provided for certain areas of concern, such as: "If a student has trouble expressing himself verbally, then try....If a student has trouble expressing himself writing, then try..." and many more categories with similar setups. Good resource for supporting special education students with quick ideas for how an educator can differentiate their instruction to support student learning.

The achievement gap can be lowered if children are engaged in high quality play and learning before beginning kindergarten.

Caryn, I really enjoyed this article. It thoughtfully portrayed the fact that the achievement gap often starts long before students ever have their first day of kindergarten. For students who are not read to as young children, or engaged in meaningful play and projects, the first few school years are dramatically more difficult. Victoria

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 article provides a participatory action research led by students to improve their literacy skills. This approach focuses on adults serving as facilitators, not leaders. Forming a caring and welcoming environment is also a key part in motivating the students to learn and participate.

This article is spot on in suggesting that blended learning can help close the achievement gap. I worked in a high school with a very large population of ESL students and always felt as though I was not getting through to many of them. I would try many different strategies but not often successful. Using blended learning strategies, I feel as though I could start to really connect with my students and raise the success rate and confidence especially with my ESL students.

"Closing the ELL/ESL Achievement Gap with Blended Learning," by Debbie Malone. Type of post: Strategies (in a sort of blog). This is an interesting article about helping ESOL/ELL students. Some important "take-aways," according to the author (regarding the blended learning approach she advocates): "However, one of the most valuable tools provided by online and blended learning programs is their continual checks for understanding, which provide educators with real-time actionable data. This helps teachers gauge whether their ELL/ESL students are keeping up with the rest of the class or whether they need more assistance. Educators can then spend more time working with individual students in areas where they are struggling and prevent problems from snowballing. "But technology can't solve all of the problems associated with the growing achievement gap between ELL/ESL students and native English speakers. Many educators have reported a lack of funding or personal development geared toward addressing the needs of ELL/ESL learners. Technology can, however, be leveraged to personalize the learning experience for these students. "Because the human element of the student-teacher relationship is still a vital classroom component, especially for ELL/ESL students, a blended learning classroom offers an ideal way to cultivate that relationship. Building on that, it may also be the answer to creating a more effective learning environment that lowers the language barrier for educators and increases academic achievement for ELL/ESL students." Great points! As the fictional movie character Borat used to say, "I like." However, I would like to see additional (and empirical) evidence. I do agree with the author on many points, though I would enjoy seeing a research study on this. Malone, D. (2014, November 12). Closing the ELL/ESL Achievement Gap with Blended Learning. Retrieved from https://blog.edgenuity.com/closing-the-ellesl-achievement-gap-through

Dimension: Depth of Knowledge Rating: 3 This article is a good example of how to collaborate and learn from peer to peer. I like this exercise because it would allow students to apply words to topics for understanding what is necessary to build an essay. This could be used for group#4 action plan and a good tool to support my team's SMART Goal achievement for improving their writing proficiency for the 5th grade students because it focus on decreasing their English language barriers so they are able to reach their WIDA exiting level of 4.4. With practice students will be able to remember what they are learning so that they are able to break the text and understand what they mean in order to write. Scaffolding would be a good way to get to the bottom of improving in the English language.

Great video! It directly addresses many issues ESL/ELL teachers have in reaching their students, and in helping them make sense of complex texts (like the one mentioned here from 'The Washington Post') and other readings. (Again, as I often mention, if you have taken 'reading literacy' courses for your state teaching certification, you know that newspapers like 'The Post' are designed for students with grade 12+ reading ability.) For ESL/ELL learners, this is especially difficult. In the school featured here, 27% are ESL learners in a "blended" classroom in a Portland, Maine middle school. It appears that the social studies teacher and the ESL support teacher work effectively in tandem, helping students to be "close readers," and focusing on students themselves as those responsible for their own learning. The teachers use excellent ESL/FL strategies such as "pacing and pausing," "reading aloud," "sharing with partners," and so forth. ESL/ELL learners work together with their mainstream counterparts, and the process seems to work quite well. I like their approach ('Reading, Thinking, Talking, Writing') here. With proper teacher guidance, this puts the burden on the students to come up with their own interpretations of the text/s they are reading. From the 'Planning and Protocol Rubric': hitting '4s' on most dimensions, except for perhaps 'Technology Integration' (not entirely evident). Otherwise, students are expected to perform at a very high level. My SMART Learning Goal: After three weeks of targeted instruction--and in concert with the content-area teacher--75% or more of our students will score at least one point higher on their ESOL RELA and ESOL math assessments. Targeted instruction, based on the requirements of the 'Action Plan Tracking Sheet,' closely hews to what is going on in this video.

A useful module that explains how tiering can provide help learners learn better and has videos of examples. This can help improve Smart Goals for improvement in assessments, and homework and classroom performance.

I enjoyed the video on Tiering. Our teams' SMART goal is, "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." I think an important concept to note, is that this activity has a high Impact on Learning because it differentiates for the particular needs of each student. This process also encourages Student Engagement, which allows for the students to work comfortably in a peer environment. By having more time to plan differentiated work to meet simultaneous goals between students, the teacher is also scaffolding. The teacher is giving support to students who need it and to also challenge those students to maintain interest or to continue the work of those who have mastered a specific skill but may need more advanced strategies to continue the upward curve of learning. EDTC 615 Fall2018

With the video, the topic of towering the lesson is shown. With my SMART goal focusing on the 11th graders in my health education classes, it I'm important for me to address all the educational needs of my students. Currently, I use DI in my classes and I found a piece of information from the video that can I can begin to implement. The teacher had her students raise their hand with chosen number of fingers in the air. The number represents the level that each student feels they are on in regards to understanding the topic. While the exact way this strategy is used is not something I think will be effective with my high school students, the number system is. I can have my students write and post their perceived number and explain why they chose that number. Then, I can see the comfortability each student has with the topic. THey would have to apply extended reasoning which is a respresentation of depth of knowledge from the planning protocol rubric. EDTC Fall2018 EL

Document is http://www.fcrr.org/assessment/pdf/smallGroupAlternativeLessonStructures.pdf Article discusses Differentiated Reading Instruction:Small Group Alternative Lesson Structures for All Students, from the Florida Center for Reading Research. Related to elementary reading instruction.

A research article on academic ability and how this can be developed in students of various backgrounds, race, and socioeconomic status.

A comprehensive mission of public schools is to produce students who are intellectually competent and prepared for postsecondary education and the increasingly competitive workforce. However, differences in educational outcomes of students indicate that the impact of our current public school system is limited.