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This article provides detailed background information regarding explicit writing instruction, especially regarding students with special needs such as ADHD, but the strategies discussed can be adapted and used with all learners regardless of ability or grade level. The article begins with a focus on strategies for providing students with motivational contexts for their writing as well as making writing a routine that they enjoy. The rest of the article is divided into sections based on students' ability/age level (basic skills, revising and editing, and motivation). This article discusses strategies that can help address teachers address students' learning gaps in elaboration and explaining their ideas fully in expository writing tasks. Be sure to click "Single Page" at the bottom right of the article so you can see the entire article on one screen, and explore the links to the left of the article for more information about writing instruction for different populations!

The following is a pdf file about how to integrate writing into mathematics. It is a fantastic resource from the Michigan Department of Education that addresses integrating Common Core skills into every subject area.

I found these writing strategies to be extremely useful in helping come up with activities for helping students improve their writing skills.

Grades K-2 Reading. Kindergarten-K, First-1st Grade and Second-2nd Grade Smartboard Interactive Reading. ELA Writing Games, Activities and Lessons. Teachers and students can use these Smartboard games, activities and lessons to learn about Reading ELA in Kindergarten, First Grade and Second Grade. This site offers an array of phonics activities to support struggling K-2 students working on initial letter sounds, vowel sounds, and reading skills.

Founded by Dr. Gianfranco Conti, Phd., the Language Gym. The site includes a language training system with a verb trainer, workouts, and a game room. The verb trainer reviews tenses, pronouns, types of verbs, and conjugations. The workouts have vocabulary and grammar modules by proficiency level. The game room uses sports themed games to practice language skills. Languages included are Spanish, French, German, Italian and English.

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.

This article is a case study on how better teacher preparation for instruction and assessment of writing can lead to improved writing instruction.

(Week 4: Frances and Claudio) This article is accessible through the link given above. This article focus on teachers ability to improve their instruction skills by eliminating their weakness to overlook students needs by pretending the problem is non existent. It focus on the inconsistencies of teachers' techniques for class deliverance and the missed learning opportunities for students. The readings present that students are not always given the opportunities to write or be assessed in the context of classroom instruction by teachers who feel uneasy on how they deliver the class subject. Other areas of the article points out that students get low exposure to variety forms of writing and become in prepared when there is a change in writing format.(Graham & Perin, 2007; Hillocks, 2008). Through the SMART goal, Group#4 can utilize some of the examples by providing opportunities to students by offering different writing assignments that are more realistic to meet writing abilities of the students. Students will be more in line with the SMART goal if they are allowed to provide the feedback to the teacher once the assignment is complete so they can see their own improvements. Also, teachers can improve in the teaching efforts and will be able to provide the appropriate assignments to those students who extra help which will move the teachers' uneasiness about their preparation to teach and assess writing at different learning levels. Read, Sylvia and Landon-Hays, Melanie M. (2013) "The Knowing/Doing Gap: Challenges of Effective Writing Instruction in High School," Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education: Vol. 2 : Iss. 2 , Article 3. Available at: http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/wte/vol2/iss2/3

This blog post discusses the advantages of doing a search in Diigo using the 'community' search function as opposed to doing a search in Google. This can be used to demonstrate to colleagues as well as students the benefits of doing educational searches via curated social bookmarking sites such as Diigo.

(Week 7: Adiatu, Julie, and Heather) This journal article was found by Adiatu on the UMUC Library, and is accessible through the link given above by accessing ERIC. The journal article is based on a study of 132 fourth-graders, and focused on examining the relationship(s) that exists among sustainable attention, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. According to authors Yildiz & Çetinkaya, "Sustainable attention is the type of attention that provides the ability to focus on a task for a long time. It is required to analyze the sentences in reading material and to utilize them actively at different times" ( 2017). The study results showed that students that lacked sustainable attention had poorer reading speed, comprehension, and word recognition. This journal article is useful to teachers because it provides information on useful activities teachers can arrange to increase the attention levels of students. For example, the authors of the journal suggest that teachers record their students' oral readings and play it back for them. 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 the authors stress that teachers should strictly monitor the oral reading skills of students that are having reading comprehension difficulties. Reference: Mustafa Yildiz , Ezgi Çetinkaya (2017). The relationship between good readers' attention, reading fluency and reading comprehension. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 5, 366 - 371. doi: 10.13189/ujer.2017.050309., Universal Journal of Educational Research, 2017. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1134476

This website offers fun, interactive, online games for students to play over the summer to assist in closing their learning gap. This would be a great resource for teachers to give to their students at the end of the school year, or even over long breaks, for them to practice skills they are lacking.

The main takeaway from this resource for me was where the onus falls for the learning gap. Unlike the instruction gap, the learning gap seems more focused on the student needing to bring up their learning to ensure that they maintain over the summer, or reach new levels. The common denominator is that these all seem to take place outside of the classroom. However, I could see a teacher recommend these resources to different groups or having centers set up to ensure that students are working in areas that they need to improve to close their learning gaps during class time.

Resources and exposure to programs like this are imperative for underprivileged students who's family's do not have an understanding of how to maintain and increase their child's educational progress during the summer.

"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