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This article discusses how professional development for teachers will help close the achievement gap. This blog centers on how the improvement of teaching practices will best assist students and that there should be universal teaching strategies. EDTC 615. k-12

Details 4 critical ways in which we can improve the quality of instruction by focusing on improvement as instructors. Standardizing practices, strategies, assessments, etc. Interesting read and turns the system around to look at instructors what we are able to change.

This article is great at recognizing necessary checks and balances for teachers. Changing standards will not along close all of the achievement gaps. The improved curriculum must come with a way for teachers to know they are delivering appropriately and sufficiently.

This article offers strategies to early childhood educators as they are instructing English Language Learners in language and literacy development. Highlights in this article include instructional strategies, explicit vocabulary activities, exposing students to multiple opportunities to speak with both peers and adults, and encouraging language development inside and outside of the classroom. These strategies are helpful in thinking about guiding my ELL students to improve their oral language skills.

This article shows the success a group of schools have in teaching instruction when there is a purposeful, intimate focus on individual teachers. When teachers are given proper tools, instruction, and guidance, they will succeed in instructing students and therefore a greater percentage of students will have a better understanding of what is being taught.

Focused teacher development is needed to achieve student success! This is 100% true and this article talks about this in a great way. Great find!

I found this article helpful in the importance of providing individualized professional development to teachers so they are able to grow their practice around targeted skills students need to master.

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.

An informative and engaging article that provides eight solutions to tackling the achievement gap.  It is well organized and written with clear reasoning for each solution.

I really enjoyed this article. As a new instructor I am constantly looking to engage my adult students. Through my instruction, making that personal connection is so important. Once you make that personal connection I find that students start making a personal connection with their assignments as well. I find having a non-academic conversation at the beginning of class can help the students feel involved classroom citizens.

This article really gives great advice on how teachers can help close the achievement gap by changing small things they do in the classroom. The two things that stuck out to me was allowing more time and progress monitoring. Sometimes time is all a student needs to succeed. When students feel rushed they end up just picking whatever answer they think is right or just something to complete the assignment. Allowing students to return to their unfinished work could really help students concentrate knowing that they don't have to rush to finish an assignment. As far as progress monitoring goes, it helps when the teacher really cares about making sure the students are on the right track and that their parents are aware of the work they have completed or would need to complete to get them on track.

This site provided an article that looked into what the organization, Partners in School Innovations is doing to "not just close the achievement gap, but the teaching gap." Results from a survey are shared regarding average class sizes and the time spent teaching versus the time spent planning. The article provides a case study of a school that focused on instructional gaps and its results. This is a great read for administrators, policymakers and other stakeholders.

I realize this has more to do with achievement gaps than specific gaps within a single classroom, but it has been my experience that targeted instruction to support a few helps every learner in the room.

I am a special educator at RHHS in Howard County. As a special educator, I have been tasked with teaching Tutorial classes that were created to help students with disabilities receive service hours in various goal areas. Last year, was the first year that I attempted to implement SMART Goals into my classroom. Most students struggle to determine their personal SMART Goal and use it to help them focus on improving specific skills. This year, one of my midyear assignments required students to develop a SMART Goal for the following quarter. Students were asked to read and annotate an article, then discuss what they learned with their peers through a classroom discussion. We are now in Quarter 3 and some students have already achieved their SMART Goals from Q2. I found it interesting that part of this week's assignment was to find articles to help support our data analyzing from Venables by developing SMART Goals based on our macro and micro data. I have never thought of using a SMART Goal to improve my professional practices. I think that this could be a wonderful idea, however, I am nervous to develop a SMART Goal because I do not have control over many of the aspects in the classrooms that I support. For the purpose of this class, I will be creating a SMART Goal that I believe would benefit my students. I will share it with my co-teachers and see what they think. The resource that I provided gives examples of professional and student SMART Goals. I found that no only did students struggle to determine what a SMART Goal should measure, but I am facing that same difficulty. I wanted to provide my peers a reference of some achievable and specific SMART Goals that they could use as a model when creating their own.

This article discusses how effective professional development has an impact on improving student learning. The author examines what "effective" professional development looks like and why it's important.

This article follows a cohort of teacher candidates through their 4 years of undergraduate studies to help them develop their own personal beliefs about teaching which in turn helps the teachers to develop their practical theories on teaching. The article concludes that teachers must be reflective in their teaching in order to improve their instruction. They must be able to recognize what works and what does not and how to go about increasing their strategies to help students.

This is an excellent guide for early childhood teachers on one strategy to differentiate math instruction. This article outlines how to develop high quality math games related to children's literature, as well as, examples of activities that relate to specific books. I found this particularly helpful in developing math engaging math activities for my students.

This is a guide for teaching students about writing a claim and supporting it with evidence can work with any English 6-12 class. I haven't used this yet, but I would definitely try it!

This study investigated the effects of input- and output-based instruction on the development of L2 knowledge of 129 third-semester college students learning English in Iran. I found this to be an interesting study because it addressed both kinds of instruction and acknowledged the ongoing debate about the importance of each method and its role in student learning of a second language. The study recognizes that input-based instruction needs to be more than exposure alone and include instructional intervention in order to be effective, and that output-based instruction involve meaningful output practice activities supported with feedback. Although the study does not claim that output in and of itself leads to L2 development due to the need for teacher feedback, it does suggest that output-based instruction is as effective as or can be even more effective than input-based instruction.

These segments get to the heart of the conceptual misunderstanding that teachers encounter when attempting to teach simple circuits. It demonstrates some instructional alternatives teachers can use.

This is an excellent design for a student-centered inquiry activity. I'd like to revise my introduction to circuits next year to work more like this.

(Week 8: Mary, Jessica, and Sarah) This journal article is accessible through the link given above by accessing the UMUC library. This journal article explains the willingness of teachers to differentiate assignments for their mixed-ability students. To show teacher's efficacy to differentiate assignments, a study is conducted between two school districts. The first school district is located in an urban area containing 4,000 students. The second school district is located in a suburban area with many students receiving free and reduced lunches. A Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale is used with the participants to see how often accommodations are made for students. This is a great journal article for all teachers to read! It is important to differentiate assignments for all students. A differentiated classroom is a place where children have resources to learn new information in different ways. As it is stated in the text, "Teachers who differentiate their instruction respond to learner needs in the way content is presented (the content dimension of differentiation), the way content is learned (the process dimension), and the ways students respond to the content (the product dimension). All these adaptations are designed to meet the individual characteristics of learners and to maximize their time in school" (Dixon, F. A., Yssel, N., McConnell, J. M., & Hardin, T., 2014). Through the study conducted in the article, teachers are able to see how important it is to attend professional developments to learn more about differentiation. References Dixon, F. A., Yssel, N., McConnell, J. M., & Hardin, T. (2014). Differentiated Instruction, Professional Development, and Teacher Efficacy. Journal For The Education Of The Gifted, 37(2), 111-127.

@Jessicacarr @sarahdonahey

Two prominent methods for closing achievement gaps are discussed in this article: 1. increase district control over teaching and curriculum, and "minimum standard of instruction", 2. using teacher teams to develop curriculum and teaching methods. Because district control leads to set curriculum, methods, and assessments across schools, progress is easily measured. However, talented and creative teachers tend to feel less valued as educators, and more like tools of implementation. This could cause less effectiveness for having to fit lessons within such a strict construct. Teacher teams, or Professional Learning Networks, empower teachers for contributing to development of effective lessons. Educators tend to enjoy this approach, since it is more natural to teaching and learning, though it is difficult to measure what is being learned. Under district control, the focus can be on research based interventions, where measurement relies on teachers not straying from the mandated processes. Alternatively, it can focus on teacher learning, which would output teachers with similar goals, but who can draw from their own experience and knowledge. Mountain High School in Pleasantville, California, was divided into "learning communities" of around 80 students. Teachers were to serve as advisors, regularly contact families, collaborate with colleagues, and ELL and Special education students were divided amongst the communities. The teacher lack of experience with PDs showed, as they were more focused on student problems rather than ways to improve instruction. Teachers were also not used to contacting parents outside of problematic situations. It was also necessary to provide accommodations that help struggling students to strengthen the lacking skills that are preventing further growth. The proposed methods seemed sound, though implementation in the case study, was still problematic. The lack of success was potentially due to lack of understanding of what compris

(Week 9: Amber, Angela, And Kenneth) This article is accessible through the link given by accessing Diigo. This article discusses two methods for closing the achievement gap due to teacher collaboration. The article discusses how teachers can collectively have discussion that may identify and address the structural issues that are built into the school system. Teachers can use this article to begin to understand how their instructional practices can be hampered by systematic inequalities. The idea of all of this is for these "Collaborations to require and build trust, routines and skills for further collaboration efforts. This also means that the collaborators will need training in order to help them talk about issues of teaching and learning and critique each other's practice (Levine and Marcus, 2007). This would be useful for our practicing teacher because (1) They teach in different districts so there will be some disparities, (2) critiquing each other can be more helpful and a great learning experience. References Levine, T. H., & Marcus, A. S. (2007). Closing the achievement gap through teacher collaboration: facilitating multiple trajectories of teacher learning. Journal Of Advanced Academics, 19(1), 116-138. From http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ786607.pdf

This resource is the most complete guide that I was able to find in regards to developing SMART Goals as a means to pinpoint areas for professional growth. Many of the articles that I found online were short articles that just listed the definition and provided few examples of SMART Goals or anecdotal information based on the person writing the web page. I thought that this resource was a wonderful document that could be used by school systems to help teachers show growth. Currently, we have and SLO in Howard County, however, it requires us to make a student performance goal. It does not require us to develop as a professional in the process. I think that this is a complete disservice to our students. As a teacher, I believe that I am tasked with continuing to learn for all the year which I choose to stay in this profession. I should never be "comfortable" with my teaching practices and materials. I should always adapt materials to meet the needs of the students have each year and I should continuously be looking for new ways/materials to present information to students. As a math teacher and special educator, I think that Web 2.0 tools are the future of my field, however, most other professionals at my school disagree. They believe that students should learn in the classroom and not be provided with direct instruction of how to use the Web to help them learn a variety of mathematical concepts or ways to improve study methods. I hope to use this resource to develop my own practices and help others grow as well.

This study focuses on the stages of literacy development in Kindergarten up to 8th graders. The author states how children's minds do not learn by taking mental pictures or by memorizing but by constructing mental images over time. It also includes resources to engage students in word study at various levels.

This resource explains how children from grades K-8 develop their knowledge of words/vocabulary. It explains how teachers can instruct in a way that meets each learner's needs by expanding from what they already know, adding new content, but not too much where the teacher frustrates the learner. This resource helps with my groups SMART Target Learning goals because it meets everyone's grade level (K-8), and focuses on reading skills.