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Week 4: This website provides teachers and students with all different resources to solve word problems. It also can help teachers create posters, showcase methods, come up with lesson plans, and generate practice worksheets. This information can be used in a second grade classroom. This tool can help students understand the steps they need to take in order to solve word problems.

This blog post explains the way to close the achievement gap in a mathematics classroom. The article touches upon stereotypes and ethnic and racial disparities, and other ways for educators to close the gap for their mathematics students.

Wow, what an interesting article! I'd never really considered racial inequality in math instruction before, but after reading the article, something to consider. One of the suggestions was to remove homework from math instruction due to some studetns unstable living situations. This makes sense and I think as teachers we often forget what some of our students are dealing with at home.

I really liked this article and the ideas in it. I try to celebrate the mistakes in my classroom, using them as a lesson within a lesson. I understand the point about homework, however I will continue to give my students homework. We are supposed to be preparing them for college. I don't remember one college class where most of my grade didn't come from work outside of class.

With Pear Deck, educators are able to upload and create slideshows that allow students to follow along and interact on their electronic device. Within the slideshow educators can ask various question types and get student responses in real time. Educators can also get student feedback during a slideshow.

A 21-page study of Milton Public Schools addressing the achievement gap of special education students.

I find this interesting, considering we never question the tests. Teachers, Schools, Families, and School districts have been trying for years to close achievement gaps, yet the gap remains. I think it is time to stop discussing what we need to do and start looking at standardized tests as inappropriate.

This study suggests that policy makers need to re-examine how they view the educational gaps of students with disabilities, in that they are diverse in the range of disabilities that create these disparaties. Decision making to lessen the gap cannot look at a one size fits all solution when dealing with a heterogeneous sub-group.

This article discusses the effects of learning targets on all people in the school - students, teachers, principals and central-office administrators. It goes on to describe ways to create an effective learning target and the actions necessary order to do so. Furthermore, it outlines the process of learning targets. Effective learning targets are able to help close the achievement gap!

Since standardized testing has seem to surface as a way for schools to be graded on their "performance", an increasing number of schools have embraced the data driven curriculum.

This article gives good insight on using data with our instruction. Although the idea of using data to drive instruction has always been out there, within the last 2 years, this has become more of a focus in my school. Last year we started holding monthly "data meetings" in order to look at data gathered from weekly assessments, unit assessments, county and state assessments. Based on the scores we would work to create a next steps in our instruction. As a school, we also set goals to reach across grade levels.

Good article. As I was reading this article one thing hit me. One of the first things that is mentioned is NCLB, RTTT, and CCSS. I was thinking, maybe if the government would let teachers get used to a curriculum our instruction would get better and higher level learning could go on. Just my short rant.

Week 9: Margarita Lugo, Erika Eason, Frances Parker This journal article is accessible through the link given above by accessing the UMUC library Description: This article takes a closer look the the kinds of accommodations in place for students with learning disabilities in math, science and world language class. Even though these accommodations are created and determined by learning and special education specialists, there is little research existing about which accommodations are recommended and effective for math, science, and world language courses. The author chose to focus on accommodations in these courses because of the lack of research of the effectiveness of accommodations in these courses as well as the documented struggle for students with learning disabilities in these courses. Smart goal: Our SMART goal is that "By the end of the numbers unit, 60% of students in the Special Education program in MS Spanish 1A - Period 2 will achieve 80% or higher on each formative assessment including listening, speaking and writing assessments". This article can help me achieve this goal by giving me new insight on the documented effectiveness of accommodations in the world language classroom. Framing Question: What kinds of accommodations would be most effective in the world language classroom? Which accommodations have been proved to be the most effective in the world language classroom? Citation: Ofiesh, N. S. (2007). Math, science, and foreign language: evidence-based accommodation decision making at the postsecondary level. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 22(4), 237-245.

(Week 7: Amber, Angela, and Kenneth) This article is accessible through the link given above. The article discuss a research method that is based on student centered teaching rather than teacher centered teaching. The article displays the changes for a teacher design where the teacher leads every activity and shift the focus to the teacher become the facilitator. Instead of having large number in classes, small groups scenarios are shown to be more effective with students learning from their experiences rather than the teacher teaching all the knowledge and content. This shift looks as though it was a two year time span and shows some effective result where student centered teaching where student are active learners. Teachers can use this article to design and implement a different approach to teaching by empowering themselves to switch up the way they teach in the classroom. Instead of lecturing information, they should try to work with their student and create exercises where the student learn from each others and their experiences where the teachers are the facilitator. Barraket (2005) states that student centered approach promotes small group activities that will improve the response of pedagogical challenges of teaching social research methods (Barraket (2005). Reference Barraket, J. (2005). Teaching Research Method Using a Student-Centred Approach? Critical Reflections on Practice. Journal Of University Teaching And Learning Practice, 2(2), Retreived from http://www.eric.ed.gov.ezproxy.umuc.edu/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=EJ1059434