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National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) is a national organization that develops voluntary certification for accomplished teaching.  Look at the Five Core Propositions, which underly all accomplished teaching, and the standards in your specific area. You can use them to reflect on your own teaching. You may also want to apply for National Board Certification, which is a high recognition across the country .

Thanks for sharing KW. I plan on exploring this option as I chart out my career path.

Thanks for sharing! Maybe after my master's is finished I will look into being National Board Certified.

iTunes University is a learning platform for all ages and subjects to utilize. The course manager allows anyone to build and publish their own iTunesU courses. For example, teachers who recognize a learning gap within the intended standards can create a unit plan on iTunes U. Since they become the author of this instructional resource, students can really benefit as learners. iTunes University can also serve as a professional development resource. My colleague Matt and I have even used iTunes U course manager to develop a course for teachers all over the world to use. Check it out here -> https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/digital-writing-resources/id881059679

This paper gives a broad overview of key historical and current theories to language development and learning. It provides a nice overview and review of various approaches and schools of thought. The author's premise is that teachers should look both collectively and uniquely at these in order to make informed instructional decisions when teaching students who are learning a second language, either English as a second language or another foreign language. While the information is not new, it is a well-presented consolidation of information that educators can use to diversify their instructional approach to promote language development in their students.

This article presents the main ideas for planning effective and engaging lessons. It is based on backwards design so that the lessons are based on outcomes rather than just the activities. This article is also based on the DAP model that allows for the fact that students develop at their own pace. There is also a review of helpful lesson planning skills in assessment, direct instruction, differentiating instruction and developing objectives.

This article is about adapting instruction for more advanced learners in the Head Start classroom.

Numerous innovations in the education technology space are beginning to show potential in improving education and helping address skills gaps. Some of these advancements include Khan academy and Read 180 (self paced instruction for students). Professional development of digital resources is imperative to help close instructional gaps. EDTC 615 - instructional gap solutions

I love that this resource provides multiple examples of tools that we can use within our instruction. The categorization of each example also provides a clear explanation of how it can be incorporated. I think that one important point that was discussed within this page was how students can develop 21st Century Skills through implementing these tools. As 21st Century Skills are becoming a major focus in instruction, this shows how it can be addressed.

This was a great tool that shared tons of tools that teachers can use in our instruction. Some really great resources I have found to use were Khan Academy, Google Apps for Education, and One Note. This article has a lot of great visuals to help understand more about how we, as educators, can use technology to help close the skills gaps.

Having teachers experience "a day in the life of an ELL" can be powerful professional development-and at one school it's reportedly helped close the achievement gap. ELL 'Shadowing' Brings Instructional Gaps to Light, Liana Heitin (2011) Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2011/08/24/ell_shadowing.html Retrieved on 10/19/15 Great article with a fresh new idea!!!! This article tells the tale of "A teacher or administrator follows an English-language learner to several classes." I have "shadowed" in a classroom before, usually to observe the teacher. But the purpose of this shadowing is to look specifically at the student's use of academic language. Statistics show "English-language learners spend less than 2 percent of the school day improving their academic oral language." That number is completely unacceptable. I think we as teachers could all benefit from "shadowing" students. It does not have to just be ELL students we shadow. Reviewing data and becoming educated about the students who struggle would help with the shadowing process. Maybe we could start with shadowing the students who aren't improving in order to better understand why they are behind.

(Week Nine: Ruchel and Beth) This article is accessible through the UMUC library via Document Express. This journal article is about differentiated instruction when it comes to teaching students the alphabet. The article highlights the fact that "Early literacy experiences vary widely... and children show substantial differences in their alphabet knowledge development. Thus, children in the same early childhood classroom may exhibit differing levels of alphabet knowledge" (Piasta, 2014). Teachers can use this article to further their instructional practice by using the strategies and assessments discussed in the article to work with students in ways that will help the individual child learn all the letters verses a whole class approach to teaching the alphabet. The article discuses how, "The familiarity of children with letters included in their own first names, for example, has long been observed" (Piasta, 2014). But when it comes to teaching the alphabet in a whole class approach teachers are not acknowledging "differences across letters, often providing the same amount and types of instructional activities for each of the 26 letters irrespective of the ease or difficulty of learning a particular letter (Piasta, 2014). The article provides an idea that all "Early childhood educators may wish to assess all the children in their classrooms or may first use established alphabet screening assessments" (Piasta, 2014). It is also helpful for educators "To conduct a diagnostic alphabet assessment, an educator presents a child with each of the 26 letters and asks the child to supply the name and/or sound for each letter. The educator marks whether the child supplied a correct name and/or sound. Although the assessment can be scored in terms of the total number of correct letter names or sounds (i.e., 0 to 26), most important for diagnostic purposes are which letter names and sounds the child knows (Piasta, 2014)...

...The article finds that small group learning "has been demonstrated to be more effective than whole-class or even one-to-one instruction in supporting young children's early literacy development (Piasta, 2014). The article also stresses the fact that educators should "plan and use effective teaching practices to deliver alphabet instruction on the selected letters. Alphabet instruction can take place in many fun, engaging, and authentic contexts" (Piasta, 2014). In closing, "Outside of planned alphabet instruction, educators may also take advantage of additional "teachable moments" to review and reinforce children's alphabet learning whenever these occur" (Piasta, 2014). References Piasta, S. B. (2014). Moving to Assessment-Guided Differentiated Instruction to Support Young Children's Alphabet Knowledge. Reading Teacher, 68(3), 202-211. doi:10.1002/trtr.1316

Today's state-of-the-art health education curricula reflect the growing body of research that emphasizes Teaching functional health information (essential knowledge) Shaping personal values and beliefs that support healthy behaviors Shaping group norms that value a healthy lifestyle Developing the essential health skills necessary to adopt, practice, and maintain health-enhancing behaviors. Health teachers are able to use this to develop strategies and use best practice strategies in their own classrooms to assist with teaching in the classroom.

This artifact is an AVID student handout with Costa's 3 Levels of Thinking. It includes key words to use in your questions to help guide you to create different levels of questions ranging from basic remembering and understanding to creating and evaluating. Students will use this handout to develop the questions they create for their class Cornell Notes, Essential Questions and Cornell Notes they write for their homework reading assignments.

Edutopia is a great resource for lesson plan ideas and professional development. This article offers project-based learning opportunity for students learning simple circuits.

Week 9: This design model is for all learners fro designing and planning a course. It shares the process and steps for using the A.D.D.I.D model (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate) which serves as a blueprint and "device to help us think through a course's design".

Lesson plan for studying Victor Hugo's Les Misérables with students using novel and character summaries in the target language. While the multiple choice questions in the lesson are mere comprehension questions, some of the discussion questions address main idea and supporting details. Teachers could also develop their own multiple choice questions for the passages to address main idea and supporting details.

In this first chapter of his book, Popham (2008) attempts to define what formative assessment is and what it is not. He insists on the fact that formative assessment is a process and in his opinion a classroom process. He refers to a meta-analysis conducted by Black and William (1998b) to show evidence of the benefits of formative assessment and quotes Black and William's claim that "student gains in learning triggered by formative assessment are "amongst the largest ever reported for educational interventions" (p. 61). Popham also warns educators against testing companies who are now offering interim or benchmark tests as "formative assessments" and claims that there's no scientific evidence that district-developed or state-developed periodically administered assessments will improve students' achievement.

The article from Response To Intervention (RTI) focuses on ELLs and how we can support them with learning a new language. Some key points highlighted in the article that align to our teams EQ and would support ELL learners include: monitoring student progress 3 or more times a year, review a 3 tier system RTI outlines, and encourage general educators to participate in ESL/ESOL professional developments focused on meeting the needs of the ELLs in their classroom.

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. "

The road trip structure with stops to explore various Web 2.0 tools is an excellent example of a web-based activity design. Although this road trip is an online professional development example, I can see the structure being adapted for K-12 student explorations.