Group items tagged

This is a great article stating that students' reading is strengthened by teaching all the subjects and progressing them in logical order.

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

The 5 check for understanding strategies in this video really support our goal of : By the end of the month, give practice tests the day before exams with at least 75% scoring at least 75%.Checking for understanding is an important step in the teaching and learning process. The background knowledge that students bring into the classroom influences how they understand the material you share and the lessons or learning opportunities you provide. Unless you check for understanding, it is difficult to know exactly what students are getting out of the lesson. In the Planning protocol rubric, student engagement is high for most students. This goes far beyond just asking your students "do you get it?" and I really like the ones that involve movement! Being crammed in a desk all day is no fun at all.

My SMART goal is to achieve a 100% passing rate amount my target group of students for all county and state standardized English Language exams. This video does have techniques I can use to achieve this goal. I think the focus and techniques using for 'checking of understanding' can help achieve the protocols of 'rigor and relevance' as well as 'depth of knowledge.' I love the idea of debriefs, and 'catch-and-release' at the end of classes and would like to keep myself more honest at doing this, and tightening up my lessons to allow time at the end of my classes for debriefing and to avoid running lessons right up into the bell.

From the planning protocol rubric the other area I would relate this style of teaching to besides the ones listed above would be "impact on learning"- In which there would be a very high impact on learning. The strategies used in this video focus on student rigor. The principle breaks their instructional tactics into 5 different areas. The SMART target learning goal that these strategies could be used for would be one of my group members "After three weeks of targeted instruction, students will increase their pre-assessment scores by 3 or more points, or 75 percent or higher on the post-assessment" Looking at this learning goal you can see where the following strategies would be very helpful. As well as how we can use them to address the above SMART learning goal in our group. 1. Constantly checking the learning target. (are the students constantly working toward building their skills using PARCC like questions). 2. Guided practice ( The teacher will help lead students in instruction that will help mimic items that might be seen on the PARCC test. 3. Catch and release (The teacher will frequently bring everyone back to a large group to discuss trends or similarities he or she is seeing as students work independently) 4. Cold Calling ( making sure that each student is contributing and assessing that each student understands what is being taught) 5. Derbies ( doing things like exit tickets in the form of a PARCC question as the students leave as well as discussions to see where students are at.) All of these steps could be used for as an instructional tactic for the SMART learning goal in our group as mentioned in examples in the parentheses above. Great video and clearly a very high impact on student learning.

Explicit, intensive, persistent instructionTo become good readers, most students require explicit, intensive, and persistent instruction.[1] In explicit comprehension strategy instruction, the teacher chooses strategies that are closely aligned with the text students are reading.

(Week 7: Adiatu, Julie, and Heather) This journal article was found by Adiatu on Diigo, and is accessible through the link given above by accessing readingrockets.org. The journal article is focused on elements of effective reading comprehension instruction. The authors of the article state that effective comprehension instruction is when students "are able to develop, control, and use a variety of comprehension strategies to ensure that they understand what they read." (readingrockets.org) The article discusses various instruction strategies that students can also use independently in their learning; for example - thinking aloud. This journal article is useful to teachers in that it provides useful information on how to select appropriate reading materials for students, and it suggests instruction practices that motivate students to read widely in order to reach higher literacy levels. 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 they are currently implementing instruction techniques to achieve SMART learning goals. Reference: What is effective comprehension instruction? (2009, January 2). Retrieved from http://www.readingrockets.org/article/what-effective-comprehension-instruction

WEEK 8 - (Chris Baugher, Patricia Bankis and A. Burns) Assessment is the key to good instruction. It shows us what students know and allows us to adjust our instruction. Assessment is tied to learning goals and standards, but students must own the assessment process as well, as they must be able to articulate what and how they are being assessed -- and its value.

This article provides five useful strategies to help students improve and to improve assessments. There are two key factors in this article which ring true for me. The first is "formative assessment and feedback along the way" (Miller 2015) where students are given specific feedback on their assessment on how to improve and continue forward (Miller 2015). "Formative assessment allowed students to experiment and, yes, sometimes fail. However, they were given the tools, both through feedback and instruction, to improve and move forward to success." (Miller 2015). What this entails if differentiated instruction; something my district and school are pushing for. The second is "student ownership of assessment process" (Miller 2015). Giving students choice, options, and freedom allows students to take ownership and responsibility for doing something all while doing their best on it. In addition, students will know more about what is being asked of them or what they're supposed to do in order to earn a higher grade or preform the task more effectively. "These methods mean that assessment is no longer done to students, but with them, putting the focus on the student and learning" (Miller 2015). Hopefully with these implementations and integration, students can feel the focus from assessment scores to learning content and gaining understanding.

This article is useful when considering big picture assessment objectives. In my own experiences, I have touched upon each of these strategies when conducting an assessment, but I've never built each of them into one assessment. The (5) strategies mentioned in this article include: Aligning Essential questions at the beginning of a unit to standars, building in written assessment components for students to describe/explain in writing, creating performance and project-based assessments to demonstrate understanding and application of concepts taught, regular and on-going formative assessments and feeback to help teachers to better tailor instruction to meet each learner's needs, and involving students in the decision-making process when choosing activities and when determining diagnostic measurement tools. As a World Language teacher, I think that these tasks which are challenging in themselves to build into curriculum, become extremely difficult in the L2 setting. I'm wondering how L2 instructors find themselves doing each of these things on a regular basis. Do they conduct all of it in L2, as it is suggested that L2 teachers do, or does some of this end up being done in English?

(Week 7: Jeremy, Kelly, Patience and Sherita) This article is originally a Diigo share from 2015. This journal article is accessible in the link given above. This journal article discusses how here in America, there is a pervasive fear surrounding teaching and learning math. The author suggests that the American public suffers from innumeracy. Through discussing the article, the group agrees that many countries have mastered the use of American mathematical principles. The article discussed that by utilizing and engaging in clear mathematical methods of learning for students and by creating valuable conversations, making the learning process more viable, the students consequently, learn. "Instead of having students memorize and then practice endless lists of equations - which Takahashi remembered from his own days in school - Matsuyama taught his college students to encourage passionate discussions among children so they would come to uncover math's procedures, properties and proofs for themselves. One day, for example, the young students would derive the formula for finding the area of a rectangle; the next, they would use what they learned to do the same for parallelograms. Taught this new way, math itself seemed transformed. It was not dull misery but challenging, stimulating and even fun." (Green, 2014) Teachers can use this article to further their instructional practices by utilizing math in a real world format, in a conversational and hands on applicable manner, making learning math fun and interesting for their students. In some instances, math classes may be seen as boring and monotonous tools that serve to be an overtly unloved subject area here in America. The simple truth, is that many teachers love to learn and teach math here in America, and there is a realization for teachers, that all nations compete mathematically. In technology, industry, trade, consumerism and capitalism, numbers and mathematical data maintain a lot of the privile

(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 article uses a Pennsylvania Elementary school and its partners as an example of community schools and what it can do to help make education in and out of the classroom more attainable.

The use of worked examples when students are learning and/or practicing a math concept involves comparing and contrasting. this article goes to the importance of students referencing their notebook when they are working/practicing in order to analyze their work and make decisions on how to proceed in a process.

In this blog post, contributors Libby Woodfin, Tony Frontier, Laura Cabrera and Alice Mercer provide examples of the power of formative assessment to improve student learning. I was especially intrigued with first grader Austin and how his classmates used concrete, descriptive feedback to help him improve his scientific drawing of a butterfly. Check out the link! This would be a great article to assign for a PLC text-based discussion using any of the protocols described by Venables on pp. 85-87 in his book, Turning Data into Action.

This KQED blog post provides information on current and past research that indicates how important movement and the use of our bodies are to learning. This research is called "embodied learning". The discussion on highly decorated classrooms is worth further exploration. This would be another great article for a text-based discussion in a PLC. The math and physics examples can be adapted for other content areas for use as instructional strategies.

(Week 9: Benjamin, Cheney, and Gretchen) This article is accessible through the link provided above. The main focus of this article is to inform educators of the positive effects movement can have on student learning. This article provides a series of studies where students were presented with different problems, mostly math, and encouraged to represent the problems with movement. Students who used physical movement to represent and solve mathematical problems demonstrated higher levels of success than their age-related peers who simply solved by reading a problem to themselves or aloud. This article is useful for all members of my team as it suggests methods for adapting physical movement to all content areas. Within this article it is suggested ""When students use their bodies in the learning process, it can have a big effect, even if it seems silly or unconnected to the learning goal at hand" (Schwartz, 2015). I think most teachers can find reassurance from this research-based article knowing that the implementation of movement doesn't have to fit directly with curriculum unit. The teachers within my specific team can use the practice of movement as an alternative method for instructing desired skills such as decoding strategies for reading or identifying/constructing numbers in base ten. Reference Schwartz, K. (2015, March 26). Why kids need to move, touch, and experience to learn. Retrieved from https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/39684/why-kids-need-to-move-touch-and-experience-to-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.

This protocol helps students share their opinions by asking them to line up along a continuum based on their position on an issue.

Ericka Posey's Smart Target Learning Goal: By the end of April, 80% of the 10th grade LSN Government students will be able to analyze political cartoons and write accurate BCRs with 75% accuracy for historical content and meaning. This activity will assist my students achieve the goal as it gives students a verbal prompt, gives them a chance to analyze that prompt, take a stand and defend that stance with strong examples. The same skills used in the Take a Stand will assist my students in analyzing a political cartoon, take a stand on the written prompt and defend that prompt with evidence from the political cartoon. The only difference is in the Take A Stand everything is done verbally and in the analysis of the political cartoon and BCR is a written assignment.

My chosen dimension is student engagement, I would consider this activity to be highly engaged with a rating of 4 because of its participation requirement and discussion method among all students. The discussion tactic in this video forces students to share their various perspectives in an open environment. Also, the students can easily see each other's choice before going into detail about why they made that choice. The students learn to value different perspectives and methods from their peers. This tactic works with our SMART goal because it emphasizes critical thinking proof to resolve a real problem. This tactic allows students to know that it is not about having one right answer to the problem, but discovering many strategies and reasons to solve the problem. Also I like that students must use retained information to evaluate their decision and the decision of their peers.

(Week 8: Jennifer and Ashleigh) This article is accessible through the link above using the UMUC library database. This article analyzes data from an early childhood survey to determine how various instructional strategies in math impact students of diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses, and varying readiness levels. The results of the study indicate differing exposure to instructional strategies to support students in math. For example, the study shows that students with high socioeconomic status and higher readiness levels have more exposure to the use of manipulatives, while students with lower socioeconomic statuses and lower readiness level have more exposure to music and movement to learn math. Additionally, the study found that only some instructional strategies have an impact on student achievement in math. This study is beneficial for teachers as they reflect on their current instructional practices in relation to student achievement. The results of the study express the need for differentiated math instruction for various communities of learners within the classroom. This is useful as we examine Ashleigh's Data Action Plan and how the use of manipulatives for measurement may or may not support achievement for all students. As strategies are implemented, Ashleigh can take note of which strategies are most beneficial for different subgroups within her classroom. References Bottia, M. C., Moller, S., Mickelson, R. A., & Stearns, E. (2014). Foundations of mathematics achievement: instructional practices and diverse kindergarten students. The Elementary School Journal, 115(1), 124-150.

Week 8: Partner: Cecile Droz This article discusses a new way to give student's warm-up exercises. Instead of having them complete them at the beginning of class, the students will complete the warm ups up to 3 days before they are due. The warm-ups will prepare the students for the upcoming week of assignments. The best type of warm-up assignments give the students a scenario that they are familiar with. It is important for the educator to determine if there are any misconceptions by looking at the warm-ups to determine what concepts need to be addressed again.

Although not everything described in this article applies necessarily to all subjects, the idea that teachers need to be more aware of the prior knowledge students have before they present new materials is very interesting. In second language, for example teachers use students' oral and written productions to assess their command of grammar but before any cultural or historical unit, it would make sense to address prior knowledge and rectify what needs to be rectified before introducing new ideas/material.

The use of warm-ups as a combination of extension, priming, and pre-assessment is novel. This gives students time and mental space to make a prediction and then bring it to class, prepared and ready to learn. I will definitely be employing this in a class I am designing next year.

Week 8- Fifteen years later, this article investigates recommendations provided by the National Research Council's seminal report:Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children. The article discusses which of these recommendations have been implemented in U.S classrooms over the past 15 years and which strategies have been avoided. The authors then share more recent research studies sharing strategies that may help teachers improve primary-grade reading. Authors: Nell K. Duke and Meghan K. Block

The article provides valuable insight into the impact that vocabulary instruction can have on reading comprehension. It is also noted that because reading instructional has changed over the years this too has contributed to comprehension and vocabulary development. It appears that the approach to reading instruction needs to be revisited to determine which strategies works the most effectively.

I loved this article. My school is currently focusing on Academic Language in our School Improvement Plan, we are also an IB school where students are to use Academic Language more often. I'm glad to see that many of our commonly used words are included in this list. I also love how they go through the examples of how to teach a new word. In middle school I feel these higher level vocabulary words are used more often than in primary ages.