Group items tagged

"A word wall in the classroom is a powerful instructional tool to strengthen content vocabulary or concepts. A word wall can be an organized collection of words (and sometimes phrases) displayed on a wall or other space in the classroom."

Watching this video gave me a great idea for one of my group members Spencer who teaches ESOL students who struggle with verbal/conversational skills and written/language skills. Spencer's SMART Goal is 75% of the 24 students with a C or lower to have a B (80%) or higher in my class, by the end of the 1st quarter. With this strategy students can build vocabulary skills by word connections and possible interactions with one another to help strengthen each others vocabulary skills often times with the teacher being the facilitator of instruction not the lead in the instruction.

Watching this video gave me ideas on supporting my students. Word Walls are important supports for students in the classroom. They help students solidify their thinking process and content knowledge. Students in this video did the thinking required. This is also important as students tend to rely on teacher lead information. Our SMART goal is that 75% of students will increase their informational text reading comprehension by one grade level. The word wall in this video is a great strategy to make connections with my students.

this is a "protocol students can use to share and gain knowledge in preparation for an assessment."

I would rate the Go Go Mo protocol a 4 in the Rigor and Relevance dimension. While using this protocol, students are not only thinking (when they are giving) but also working. Students are actively moving around the classroom seeking out others from whom they can get new information. The teacher also suggested that they take their readings with them, which may hint at the fact that may still need to actively search for information. My group's SMART goal is that students will be able to analyze word problems to identify mathematical components needed to solve complex word problems and apply them to real-life problems and scenarios. This method could be effective (may be used on a smaller scale with 2-3 people for word problems) in that all students will have to identify information that they deem important and share with their classmates. From here, they can begin to decide what information is actually most important to solving the problem that is proposed and work together to solve the problem.

This activity will help close the learning gap by enabling collaboration and information sharing between students prior to exams.

This article gives proactive teaching strategies to use for all ELL learners regardless of their proficiency level. It even provides a checklist that ELL students can use independently.

"Reading Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners," by Colorin Colorado. Type of post: Strategies (in a sort of blog)…. This is a very good read for ESOL/ELL instructors. For one thing, it discusses some of the reading comprehension skills that can be taught and applied on a daily basis. Among them: * Summarizing * Sequencing * Inferencing * Comparing and contrasting * Drawing conclusions * Self-questioning * Problem-solving * Relating background knowledge * Distinguishing between fact and opinion * Finding the main idea, important facts, and supporting details Further, the article talks about why reading comprehension skills are particularly important for ELLs: "English language learners (ELLs) often have problems mastering science, math, or social studies concepts because they cannot comprehend the (language in) textbooks for these subjects. ELLs at all levels of English proficiency, and literacy, will benefit from explicit instruction of comprehension skills along with other skills." As an ESOL teacher (and support co-teacher), I can definitely relate to this notion. The article also discusses "Classroom strategies: Steps for explicitly teaching comprehension skills." Most ESOL teachers know that a lot of work on comprehension strategies; identifying important vocabulary; effective "partnering"; and other crucial steps mean the difference between having their ESOL students comprehend an important or main idea, versus having them suffer through difficult texts. (Even many so-called "native speakers" are often not good readers, and stand to gain a lot from instructional strategies outlined in this article. [If you took so-called "reading/literacy courses" to receive your teaching certification in any particular state, this will be clear to you.])

"Reading Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners," by Colorin Colorado. Type of post: Strategies (in a sort of blog)…. This is a very good read for ESOL/ELL instructors. For one thing, it discusses some of the reading comprehension skills that can be taught and applied on a daily basis. Among them: * Summarizing * Sequencing * Inferencing * Comparing and contrasting * Drawing conclusions * Self-questioning * Problem-solving * Relating background knowledge * Distinguishing between fact and opinion * Finding the main idea, important facts, and supporting details Further, the article talks about why reading comprehension skills are particularly important for ELLs: "English language learners (ELLs) often have problems mastering science, math, or social studies concepts because they cannot comprehend the (language in) textbooks for these subjects. ELLs at all levels of English proficiency, and literacy, will benefit from explicit instruction of comprehension skills along with other skills." As an ESOL teacher (and support co-teacher), I can definitely relate to this notion. The article also discusses "Classroom strategies: Steps for explicitly teaching comprehension skills." Most ESOL teachers know that a lot of work on comprehension strategies; identifying important vocabulary; effective "partnering"; and other crucial steps mean the difference between having their ESOL students comprehend an important or main idea, versus having them suffer through difficult texts. (Even many so-called "native speakers" are often not good readers, and stand to gain a lot from instructional strategies outlined in this article. [If you took so-called "reading/literacy courses" to receive your teaching certification in any particular state, this will be clear to you.]) Colorado, C. Reading Comprehension Strategies for English ... - LD OnLine. Retrieved March 31, 2018, from http://www.ldonline.org/article/14342/ L

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.

"a Chalk Talk protocol allows students to have non-verbal "discussion.""

My group's SMART Target Learning Goal is 75% of students will improve their informational text comprehension by 1 grade level. The Dimension I'm referencing is Technology Integration. Although I feel this is a great tool and has a major impact on student learning, it does lack technology integration. I rate it as a 1. I think it rates off the scales in the other dimensions. Some sort of tech integration would make this a huge win all around.

EDTC615 FALL2018 I have found several dimensions from the Planning Protocol that I could assess this particular under for instance: Depth of Knowledge- The Chalk Talk can be use on a multitude of levels for DOK. From a basic warm up to a well thought out thought provoking silent Socrative seminar, depends on how the teacher want to use the tool in their classroom will determine the DOK. Teacher Friendliness - This instructional tactic is very teacher friendly and low maintenance across the board. you can just use a whiteboard and post it stickies, or chart paper and post it stickies, and just a window/liquid chalk and post it stickies. Rigor and Relevance- Again rigor and relevance is dependent upon how the teacher decides to use this instructional tactic in their classroom. This is a tool that can evoke deep thought or a tool that can be used as a quick response to a warm up question. Possible Technology Integration- Although the video did not depict a technology integration while I was watching the video an idea came to mind to use this idea in conjunction with Padlet app and divide the classroom up into groups with each a different Padlet question or conversation and first each member in the group share to the Padlet and then have the student rotate to each groups table and share a post to each other's Padlet. That is one way to integrate technology into a Chalk Talk discussion. This could be used as an instructional tactic for all our group members as an exit ticket, class survey, check for understanding of the day's lesson, warm-up question, and/or silent Socrative seminar. I can think of endless possibilities with this particular tool based on the dynamics of your student population, skill set, and grade level. Spencer's SMART Goal is 75% of the 24 students with a C or lower to have a B (80%) or higher in my class, by the end of the 1st quarter. Ericka's SMART Goal is By the end of 1st quarter 75% of the LSN Government students will be able to an

This article is a resource for teaching content area vocabulary.

"In a jigsaw protocol small groups of students become experts in one section or text and hear oral summaries of the others. The protocol allows students to synthesize across texts and gain new understandings from their classmates about the topic as a whole."

EDTC615 FALL2018 My SMART goal is after one marking period of examining musical examples, 90% of students will be able to recognize musical notes and form. This protocol is going to have a high impact on the student learning because the students are able to discuss and dive deeper into their reading. I can apply this to my music class by handing students a piece of music and having them look for the form of the song and the musical notes. They then pair up with someone with the same song and go over the notes a form together.

Dimension: Student Engagement Rating: 4 - High engagement for most students I particularly enjoyed this strategy presented by fifth-grade teacher Jennifer Dauphinais. The highlights for me were the students engagement from the very beginning in stating the 'Learning Goal.' It's one thing for the teacher to know what the end-goal is, but it strengthens the activity when the student understands the "why." Having students become "experts" in their reading to then discuss details and main ideas in groups is a great recipe for reading comprehension. The students have the ability to hear different perspectives and everyone has a voice. I really enjoyed this. Author Daniel Venables challenges educators in his book, How Teachers Can Turn Data into an Action Plan to "do something different in the classroom" if one approach doesn't materialize student-learning (pp. 60). My gropu's SMART Target Learning Goal is for 75% of students will improve their informational text comprehension by 1 grade level. Dauphinais' 'Jigsaw' method is a fresh approach to literature instruction and could be a great tool for us to get the students to reach this goal. #EDTC615 #Spring2018

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?

One of the biggest pushes in education today is letting students take control of tracking their own data and setting their own goals. To many teachers this task may be overwhelming and leave you trying to figure out the easiest way to implement this in your classroom.

(Week 9: Sarah, Mary and Jessica) This article is accessible through the link provided above. The main focus of this article is the importance of setting goals in the classroom. The teacher who wrote this article wanted to take her students' portfolios and turn them into a student data folder. Within the data folder there are "long term goals (the entire school year), short term goals (monthly, quarterly, weekly), goal reflections, and tracking charts (bar graphs, tables, charts, etc.)" (Harpole, 2013-2015). According to Harpole (2013-2015), "Each assessment would be based on the text we were reading that week in class. It contained four multiple choice questions with an answer justification required and a constructed response question. Students would take their weekly assessments on Friday. During the first ten minutes of class on Mondays, we would pass out data folders and students would record their scores." This allows students to set goals based on their score. Her research did show that the students were focused more on the number grade than any other grade. In turn, "My students set goals during Quarter Four that did not contain letter grades or words like "basic" and "unsatisfactory"( Harpole, 2013-2015). This implementation was very successful in her classroom. The article shows the process that Harpole took to improve her student's data folder. It took her a lot of time to perfect it in order to be able to share with other teachers. This article is a great lesson for all teachers. Every teacher wants to show data in their own way. Sometimes it's hard for teachers in different grade levels to show the data. This teacher came up with a packet that other teachers can use as a guide to help their fellow educators. I know that I would use this data folder for my students and just revamp it so that it's age appropriate for my students. The teachers in my group can use this article as a guide to help their students set goals. At the end, of t

This article is a great way to showcase the student's classroom goals and track student data. It gives the students the responsibility to track their own work and it would be a great tool to send home for their parents to view. The students have ownership of their work and their grade. Having weekly assessments on the content presented allows the students to see what they need to study and to ask the teacher for any help. I personally would keep the student's progress monitoring sheet in their own personal notebooks where they will have a copy of their progress monitoring sheet for them to fill out daily or weekly and their goals taped to the inside of their binder. This way the students can see if they have mastered their goals.

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.

Ferlazzo has a list of games ideas the are a marvel. His basic requirements is that the games require no money, little teacher prep work, and every students has to be involved. I was impressed. I think I know how our students can review for the unit test. Ferlazzo says these are easily modified for other content areas. I thought they be the perfect way to review vocabulary.

I like this one.

You could laminate the big index cards if you can't find small whiteboards.

iEARN (International Education and Resource Network) is the world's largest non-profit global network that enables teachers and youth to use the Internet and other technologies to collaborate on projects that enhance learning and make a difference in the world. iEARN Collaboration Centre are the most comprehensive resources for international collaboration in teaching and learning. More than 100 projects completed with teacher resources and teaching guides, this is the website for K-12 teachers to collaborate on-line for students projects exchange and teaching ideas exchange. Get to know what other teachers and students are doing in topics we are interested in are eye-opening. Students can have real time exchange for video, idea and resources under teacher's supervision.

This website validated my concerns about science vocabulary for secondary students. It can also provide other resource videos and professional learning resources.

Excellent ideas for telling classroom stories (for parents and others) with Social Media.

This site provides many links to other sites, for those wanting to know more about multicultural education.

This a great tool where you can post questions or comments on a wall that is interactive. We used it during a school wide staff meeting and it worked really well. It served as a "parking lot" for questions so it didn't disrupt the flow of the meeting. We also had other teachers and administrators responding to the questions/comments in real time. See the description below.. Brainstorm with students from your own school or from other schools. This program allows you to post stickers with your ideas onto a virtual wall. You can embed your wall on a website or blog.

Brandon, This is a great tool. I have been in staff meeting where it has taken much longer than it should have, but this allows for questions to be answered while information is being presented. This tool was very easy to use and like that it can be embeded into a website or blog. Thank you for sharing. Rich

This site allows you to customize your own map. You can even create a link so others can access the map you have created. You can add physical systems like water, land, and climate. You can also add populations, culture, political, economic, environment, and society information. You can also draw on the map and place markers. This would be very useful for 7th grade World History and Geography. It could actually have a place in any grade. I have not used it yet, but I plan to. I like everything about it so far.

This is a website that helps connect students to the real world. It take a wide array of places you use math and sometimes don't think about it, like sports, music, fashion, restaurants and so many more. Videos are shown to show how math and the topic relate to each other and then students are given a task to help figure out using math. Students will be so engaged that they will forget they are even doing math!

I was highly impressed by this young teacher's blog. He is already teaching like a master teacher. David Leed's blog has a tons of great teaching ideas and links.

Quia is a site that allows teachers to access template tools for quizzes and other assignments, and students can access and take these assessments online.  This can be used in a variety of ways, including formal assessments and test preparation.  There are also shared activities teachers can access, which are well-organized by category.