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Author Rebecca Alber shares six scaffolding strategies designed to provide successful learning experiences for our students. Teachers can use these to support our diverse learners.

(Week 7: Michele, Ericka and Spencer) This article is accessible through the link --> https://www.edutopia.org/blog/scaffolding-lessons-six-strategies-rebecca-alber. This article focuses on a learning technique called scaffolding. Used as a precursor to differentiated instruction (DI), scaffolding involves chunking the lesson into parts so a higher level of emphasis can be placed on information the teacher desires the students to learn. In the article, the author, Rebecca Alber, provides the reader with 6 strategies to use in their lessons that can incorporate the learning tool scaffolding. To determine the scaffolding strategy, the author emphasizes the use of the zone of proximal development (ZPD). "The ZPD is the distance between what children can do by themselves and the next learning that they can be helped to achieve with competent assistance." Some scaffolding strategies include pre-teaching vocabulary, fishbowl and use of visual aids. Teachers can use scaffolding in class to help encourage higher level thinking which allow students to better understand the information and skills learned in class. Additionally, teachers who do not have the resources to DI (space, time, additional teacher support) can use scaffolding strategies to aid in meeting the educational needs of all their students. Although one strategy does not work, the author emphasizes the importance of trying other. Reference: Alber, R. (2011). 6 scaffolding strategies to use with your students. Retrieved on October 23, 2018 from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/scaffolding-lessons-six-strategies-rebecca-alber EDTC615 Fall2018

Dimension: Depth of Knowledge Rating: 3 This article is a good example of how to collaborate and learn from peer to peer. I like this exercise because it would allow students to apply words to topics for understanding what is necessary to build an essay. This could be used for group#4 action plan and a good tool to support my team's SMART Goal achievement for improving their writing proficiency for the 5th grade students because it focus on decreasing their English language barriers so they are able to reach their WIDA exiting level of 4.4. With practice students will be able to remember what they are learning so that they are able to break the text and understand what they mean in order to write. Scaffolding would be a good way to get to the bottom of improving in the English language.

Great video! It directly addresses many issues ESL/ELL teachers have in reaching their students, and in helping them make sense of complex texts (like the one mentioned here from 'The Washington Post') and other readings. (Again, as I often mention, if you have taken 'reading literacy' courses for your state teaching certification, you know that newspapers like 'The Post' are designed for students with grade 12+ reading ability.) For ESL/ELL learners, this is especially difficult. In the school featured here, 27% are ESL learners in a "blended" classroom in a Portland, Maine middle school. It appears that the social studies teacher and the ESL support teacher work effectively in tandem, helping students to be "close readers," and focusing on students themselves as those responsible for their own learning. The teachers use excellent ESL/FL strategies such as "pacing and pausing," "reading aloud," "sharing with partners," and so forth. ESL/ELL learners work together with their mainstream counterparts, and the process seems to work quite well. I like their approach ('Reading, Thinking, Talking, Writing') here. With proper teacher guidance, this puts the burden on the students to come up with their own interpretations of the text/s they are reading. From the 'Planning and Protocol Rubric': hitting '4s' on most dimensions, except for perhaps 'Technology Integration' (not entirely evident). Otherwise, students are expected to perform at a very high level. My SMART Learning Goal: After three weeks of targeted instruction--and in concert with the content-area teacher--75% or more of our students will score at least one point higher on their ESOL RELA and ESOL math assessments. Targeted instruction, based on the requirements of the 'Action Plan Tracking Sheet,' closely hews to what is going on in this video.

Main idea is a difficult skill for many readers. In order to be successful students need to be able to make inferences and determine the importance. Those are tricky prerequisite skills for students to grasp as they require higher order thinking. However, being able to successfully understand the main idea of a text leads to other skills like comparing and contrasting multiple texts. So how can a teacher effectively help their students master this skill? This blog article breaks down the skill into seven scaffolding steps, which are then broken down into three areas (keywords, stated main idea, and inferencing). Also included are videos to help teachers create quality main idea instruction, worksheets, and additional resources. #mainidea #scaffolding #resources #inferencing #keywords #higherorder

The purpose of this study is to explore how a Pre-Kindergarten teacher makes pedagogical decisions that are known as emotional scaffolding for ELL children. The study describes a teacher who through implementing an optimal environment for her ELL students, was able to fully engage them in Pre-Kindergarten content. The study offers a variety of strategies of what a teacher can do to have a successful ELL early childhood school environment.

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 suggests that improving upon a LD student's level of reading requires a strong combination of well-developed and strategic instructional strategies. These strategies include direct response and cueing processes, scaffolding, modeling the process, and providing an organizational structure to record, review and reflect upon learning.

Jennifer, I really like this article. It can be frustrating enough for parents and students when reading difficulties occur. Add to this complication learning difficulties, and the problems and insecurities really start to add up. This article, and the years of research that it is based on helped to enumerate the many reading interventions that already exist for students with documented learning disabilities. I will definitely use these in the future in order to combat such problems. Victoria

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

"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 article describes the report of a 4 week study of the English reading comprehension of struggling readers. The research used technology to decrease achievement gaps in reading. Thirty 4th-grade students read narrative and informational hypertexts that contained vocabulary, comprehension strategy supports, and text to speech read aloud features. In the process, vocabulary and comprehension achievement was observed in the students. The results in this article suggest that struggling readers and Spanish-speaking ELLs used technology and beneficiated by learning vocabulary and effectively applying reading comprehension strategies.

In reading this article it was quite interesting to me the successes that occurred when the school incorporated the use of a technology based universal digital literacy (UDL) tool. The digital text coupled with vocabulary support was instrumental in the success of these students. It is also important to note that the stories given to the students to study were a blend of folktales that represented many different cultures rather than strictly from the US. It is important to note that when ELL students and struggling readers are given text or material that is relevant to their own culture they are able to access prior knowledge to make connections to the new material. The supports utilized in the study were the initial discussion of "power words" that are prominent in the text. The mid reading strategy is a support to develop comprehension by prompting students at the end of each page to stop, reflect and summarize/predict then being prompted to give a written or recorded response. These activities are able to be tracked using the technology thus furthering a teachers ability to interpret student needs and supplement with various strategies in the classroom. An important element to this programs success was the training of the teachers on the UDL technology.

This article focuses on simple things that teachers should keep in mind when trying to close the achievement gap. It reminds teachers that they don't need to make grand, sweeping changes; just doing some small things can have a major impact in terms of both the instructional and achievement gaps. The steps include using data more effectively, reflecting on your own choices in the classroom with a purpose, staying open-minded and avoiding assumptions, ensuring that the class is academically and culturally relevant, and developing positive relationships with parents. These are not necessarily ground-breaking ideas, but they are small enough that they can be effectively implemented relatively quickly and then fostered more to help close those gaps for students.

I enjoyed this article as it gives very simple ways that teachers can do a better job. It also confirms what I've known to help by making more culturally friendly lessons that students are more accustomed to as we try to scaffold concepts that are foreign.

a posted visible support for just-in-time learning that includes only the essential information about strategies, procedures, and concepts that students can access at any time.

Anchor charts are always helpful to students throughout the day that helps them visualize their learning throughout the unit. Because of this, I believe this can be helpful in guiding our students to be successful in our SMART goal. The goal in our group is students will be able to not only answer a real-life mathematics question, but they will also be able to defend their thinking/reasoning accurately and precisely 75% of the time. They way that we can use the anchor chart is to show students how to create an appropriate response, and what makes an appropriate response.

EDTC615 FALL2018 (Week 8 Ericka, Michele, Spencer) The article and video is via diigo library SMART GOAL: By the end of 1st quarter 75% of the LSN Government students will be able to analyze political cartoons and historical content with 75% accuracy for historical content and meaning for the LSN FAST I test. The video states it is for grades 3 - 8 but I find that it can be appropriate for high school students also. Anchor charts can be used for any subject matter, really any grade level for many different purposes as a visual aid for individual learning and for groups activities. Anchor charts can be used as warm up activities, classroom assessments, exit tickets, and classroom activities. Anchor reports can be used within the members of our group to make key vocabulary points especially for ESOL students. They are used to access what the students have learned on an independent level. These anchor chart can be used to fortify information needed in small groups for the overall whole class. The use of color, large fonts, and well organized and easy to read anchor chart are much more viable for students. Anchor chart when used with practice the students can use them to guide their own learning. These are important for all students because at some point we want the students to take charge of their own learning and be self-sufficient within the classroom setting. There is some prep work completed by the teacher and the teacher facilitates the learning but the overall learning is done by the students. For my students I would like to use anchor charts as a class survey, assessing the knowledge learned by a particular lesson or as an exit ticket forum.

This article details how to establish mathematics discourse in the classroom. The article details specific steps to model, scaffold, and encourage mathematics discourse between students throughout a math block. Discourse supports collaboration, justification of ideas, and flexibility with mathematical thinking. The article is geared towards elementary students; however, the ideas are universal for all grades.

This article helps teachers create a friendly and safe math community. Students will be able to use math vocabulary to explain their thinking and reasoning when solving a problem.

This article discusses how teachers can help every student move forward and experience success by anticipating possible gaps in knowledge and building scaffolds into each lesson to address these gaps. The author, Pepper Rollins (2016), describes a variety of tools to provide such support.

"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