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Barbara Lindsey

Science Talk | EL Education - 6 views

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    "Science talks allow all students to do exactly what scientists do: think about, wonder about, and talk about how things work, the origins of phenomena, and the essence of things."
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    SMART Goal: 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. Planning Protocol: Student Engagement can be a tactic that my team can use for the SMART goal because students are lacking the ability to defend their reasoning when it comes to writing the information down on paper. If we practice students defend their answers by engaging them in guided questions and discussions (orally) and letting students know what they instructors are looking for, I think it will help students be able to defend their answers when writing them down.
rcourtot1015

6 Things Any Teacher Can Do to Help Close the Achievement Gap - 0 views

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    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.
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    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.
randallhansen

21 Cool Things Teachers and Students Have Built With 3D Printers! - Emerging Education ... - 2 views

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    Ideas from 3D printers.
sfcanady

​8 Proven Ways to Help Close the Achievement Gap | EdSurge News - 13 views

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    An informative and engaging article that provides eight solutions to tackling the achievement gap.  It is well organized and written with clear reasoning for each solution.
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    Emotional start, easy to read eight part checklist that can help bridge the instructional gap; good tools to make sure all is being done to properly cater towards the full comprehension of material by students.
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    This short article highlights years of research that examined the racial achievement gap. Research and finding suggest that much of what accounts for the disparities in achievement is attributed to socioeconomic factors. The article offers 8 ways for closing the gap among those most impacted based on the findings and best practices.
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    Great article. Another source of proof that higher levels of expectations and rigor really do help close the gap. I also like that they reinforce the value of school and home connection.
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    This article talks about using assessments to tell if interventions are working, this like a response to intervention. Raising the bar for the student to they can be successful. Monitor the students progress on a monthly basis and get the parents involved
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    When we met, April's mother was in drug rehabilitation and her father was in jail. She would stare at the ground and rarely utter a word. I was a sophomore in college and was serving as April's mentor; I feared that we might never develop a close relationship.
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    When we met, April's mother was in drug rehabilitation and her father was in jail. She would stare at the ground and rarely utter a word. I was a sophomore in college and was serving as April's mentor; I feared that we might never develop a close relationship.
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    I almost put this article up myself. Very moving.
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    This article highlights 8 ways to provide educational gains to students needing them most. The goal is closing the achievement gap between struggling learners and high performing students. 1. Use Evidence-Based Instruction, 2. Provide a Rigorous Curriculum, 3. Increase Instructional Time, 4. Introduce Supplemental Instruction, 5. Monitor Progress, Ideally Monthly, 6. Motivate & Engage, 7. Deepen Professional Development, 8. Link School and Home
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    This is a great article that highlights different things that can be done in the classroom to close the achievement gap the two that I think are most important are the increased instructional time, and link between school and home. I think almost every teacher has wished for more instructional time in the classroom, I know I only see my students every other day and I often think about how much more I could teach them if I saw them every day like math and ELA. I also think the communication between home and school is important to a student's ability to learn.
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    Great article! I like how it was connected to an inspirational story. I like how each of the ways was described. Often in the busyness of teaching, it's good to have reminders of what is needed, so that you can strengthen weaknesses.
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    (Week 9: Sheila, Suzanne and Cathy) This article is accessible through the link above. This article explains eight ways educators can inspire academic advancements in students, especially students from lower socioeconomic statuses. While mentoring the author gain insight on how to help close the achievement gap. The writer and her team identified that evidence base instruction, a rigorous curriculum, increased instructional time, supplemental instruction, progress monitoring, motivating and engaging, professional development, and a link to school and home would accomplish those gains. The author believes that "if teachers know about and follow those suggestions they could help close the achievement gap." (Fisher, 2015) This article can be a great resource for teachers. Many of the suggestions could be incorporated by most teachers. However, the article also assumes that if followed these eight tools will close the achievement gap. The author also does not explain how teachers can increase instructional time. Reference: Fisher, O. (Oct 2015). 8 proven ways to help close the achievement gap. Istation. Retrieved from https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-10-27-8-proven-ways-to-help-close-the-achievement-gap
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    The article was very informative. I especially liked the 8th suggestion, "Link home and school." This is an essential piece that I think educators need to do a better job with for at-risk students. When there are more people engaged and involved, students have a broader network of support to ensure success. We need to do more community outreach to help our students improve both academically and in the broader sense.
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    I really enjoyed this article. As a new instructor I am constantly looking to engage my adult students. Through my instruction, making that personal connection is so important. Once you make that personal connection I find that students start making a personal connection with their assignments as well. I find having a non-academic conversation at the beginning of class can help the students feel involved classroom citizens.
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    This article really gives great advice on how teachers can help close the achievement gap by changing small things they do in the classroom. The two things that stuck out to me was allowing more time and progress monitoring. Sometimes time is all a student needs to succeed. When students feel rushed they end up just picking whatever answer they think is right or just something to complete the assignment. Allowing students to return to their unfinished work could really help students concentrate knowing that they don't have to rush to finish an assignment. As far as progress monitoring goes, it helps when the teacher really cares about making sure the students are on the right track and that their parents are aware of the work they have completed or would need to complete to get them on track.
anonymous

What Makes EdTech Leaders Great? | edtechdigest.com - 0 views

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    This article provides a list of useful edtech leadership traits. For example, here's one suggestion: "With so much that changes with educational technology daily, great leaders need to be comfortable with ambiguity. Things may not always be clear as to where edtech is going, but knowing where the technology can get us is essential. "
daverogoza

Effective Learners | EL Education - 0 views

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    This video was useful for exploring the dimension of both 'student engagement' and 'depth of knowledge'. The teacher explores ideas and experiments with ways to involve the student into asking themselves what things are relevant to their own learning. This is relevant to my SMART goal of 100% pass rates among my SLO group on their standardized tests because I can have them explore and better understand the language, vocabulary, and contextual reading goals I am setting for them in my class. I think these strategies could be universally effective in nearly all learning environments.
tricia1022

The 5 Keys to Successful Comprehensive Assessment in Action | Edutopia - 19 views

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  • These methods mean that assessment is no longer done to students, but with them, putting the focus on the student and learning.
  • Although students are awarded grades, they are rewarded through being at their best and coached through their challenges.
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    • tricia1022
       
      I do aspire to coach students through their difficulties. This articles gives teachers a lot to live up to. I like how it condenses unit planning.
  • podcast or a Prezi
  • learning
  • I want to make sure that all of my students succeed, so I must know those goals for all students.
  • "Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content." "Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience." "Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, assess the credibility of each source, and quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and providing basic bibliographic information for sources."
  • Whether those are Common Core State Standards or other important district- or school-level objectives and outcomes, we must make sure that our units of instruction are aligned to them.
  • I began with the end in mind when I planned this unit
    • tricia1022
       
      Having a picture in mind of what product I want students to create is easy. Mapping out all the skills that students will need to create the product I am still working on but very possible.
    • tricia1022
       
      These standards have to be incorporated into your entire school year for students to receive enough practice to master them. Feedback on the little things like warm up responses should have impact on the larger pieces of writing. LIGHT BULB IDEA have students rewrite responses from warm-ups and read them out loud to a partner. Have them do it the old way once, then the new way.
    • tricia1022
       
      Explaining a concept in writting is a higher-order thinking skill. A student can demostrate learning through writing an explanation. teachers have to give students enough sustenance to build knowlegde upon to own the concept.
  • . Student Ownership of Assessment Process
  • "How do advertisers trick us?"
  • Even though there was choice in the written products, there was a common, standards-aligned rubric that could be used to assess all the products to ensure that all students were meeting the same outcomes.
  • Portfolio
  • In fact, students were able to show some of their content knowledge as well as speaking and listening standards around collaboration and effective presentation.
  • Performance assessments like these allow us to check not only for engagement, but also for deeper learning through 21st-century skills.
  • Feedback
  • differentiation decisions
  • Students were also given specific, timely, and actionable feedback through the formative assessment process, with peer critique, teacher critique, and even outside expert critique on their performance assessments.
  • the power of media.
  • the rubrics
  • ments
  • learning
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    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.
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    point 4 - Formative assessment and feedback along the way - "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." In the video it is mentioned that we often grade students on a paper, tell them what they have done wrong, but do not let them go back and rewrite the paper. Students should be able to experiment and fail... but need to be able to take these failures as lessons to go forward and succeed!
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    Linda Darling-Hammond, professor of education at Stanford University "A false distinction has cropped up in the United States which seems to suggests that it is ok for outside summative assessments to just be multiple choice." She goes on to mention other countries that use project based summative assessments as well as essays, performance and oral examination to allow students to show understanding or learning im more real world methods.
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    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.
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    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?
Jim Sweigert

Reading Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners | LD Topics | LD OnLine - 6 views

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    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.
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    Reading Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners Available Online: http://www.ldonline.org/article/14342 In this article which discusses English Language Learners (ELL), Colorin Colorado discusses strategies that can be used to assist ELL students in acquiring competencies taught in a language that is secondary for students. Colorado asserts that reading comprehension skills are necessary for ELL students to access content knowledge inclusive of science, math, and social studies.Colorado further claims that once certain reading comprehension skills are taught, students can use the skills in any language. Our group found that these strategies are important for teachers of any subject or discipline. Our practicing teachers all want to adopt the ELL strategies in this article for various reasons including helping lower performing students in math, advanced placement social studies students, and primary-grade students as they are learning to read and decode information. Colorado, C. Reading Comprehension Strategies for English ... - LD OnLine. Retrieved March 31, 2018, from http://www.ldonline.org/article/14342/
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    "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.])
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    "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
vgosselin

What They Don't Know Can Hurt Them: The Role of Prior Knowledge in Learning - 0 views

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    Prior knowledge, or background knowledge, is the information someone already knows about a topic. Sounds great, right? If you are teaching someone it has to be a good thing for that person to already know some things about the subject, right? Not always. Maybe that person's prior knowledge is biased, wrong, or full of misconceptions- that would leave that person at a disadvantage. Teachers, who know that proper prior knowledge help students make connections with the information, must ensure they use their student's prior knowledge appropriately. This essay explains how a student's prior knowledge can affect their learning and how teachers can use prior knowledge to their advantage in instruction.
donero37

Closing the Achievement Gap - Educational Leadership - 38 views

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    In order to increase the achievement levels of minorities and low income students, there are three components that are the focus: high standards, a rigorous curriculum, and effective educators.
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    Caryn, I like that this article not only realistically talks about the historic and growing achievement gap, but that it also provides potential solutions. Not surprisingly, most of the solutions whether they be standards, curriculum, or teacher-based are all easily manageable. The only trick is to actually get some forward momentum on this decade's old issue. Victoria
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    Caryn, I'm reminded of the old educational psychology experiment where teachers were given false information about student abilities. Teachers who were told that a class was full of 'high performing' pupils ended up doing more high end assignments and pushing the students to do better while teachers were told their pupils were 'low achieving' did remedial assignments and barely pushed them to improve. I teach in a very diverse and low SES school, but I always do my best to assume that all of my students are able to do the high level work I assign in Physics. I also agree whole heartedly when then article claimed that teachers have to give extra help to students who are already at a disadvantage. My students do quite well when they apply themselves, but often that means they have to see me during lunch, after school, or even on Saturdays (when I work at a Saturday school program). Many students have jobs to help out their families or need to be home right after school to babysit siblings or to cook supper, etc. I find that the more time I can devote to being available to students, the better my classes perform. I must say however I would like to see an update to this. When it was talking about the lack of progress of students in the 1990s and then discussed 'data in the last 5 years..' I had to scroll up to the date of the article. Being that it is almost 15 years old, I was sad to see how many of the gaps still exist in our schools...
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    Combining standards, high standards for all learners and highly qualified teachers helps to close the learning gap.
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    I was very interested in this article because I teach at a title 1 school in MCPS. Majority of my students are minorities or low income students. Our FARMS percentage is extremely high. I do not mean to repeat what Caryn had posted earlier but I mean to piggyback on her comment "To increase the achievement levels of minority and low-income students, we need to focus on what really matters: high standards, a challenging curriculum, and good teachers." I know this to be true in my classroom. For my students I have to high expectations and structure. I have to present them with a challenging curriculum. I need to devote myself and give them all I can. But, progress has come to a halt, which happened around 1988, and since that time, the gaps have widened. To me that is frightening and it makes me want to act immediately. "Because if we don't get the numbers out on the table and talk about them, we're never going to close the gap once and for all." People need to not be afraid of talking about the data, addressing the data, conquering the data. But in order for none to take offense everyone needs to know the correct data. Before speaking, people need to be educated. There simply cannot be "downright wrong-notions about the whys beneath the achievement gap." This article is great and goes on to give us proper data. It informs us of what needs to happen in order to close the gap: standards are key, all students must have challenging curriculum, students need extra help, and teachers MATTER A LOT.
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    Looks into why the instructional gap has widened after 1988 after having been narrowed the previous 18 years.  Offers patterns and key concepts to look at when trying to understand how to close these gaps.
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    I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article as it relates to the student achievement gap. I currently teach at a Title 1 school in Prince George's County where majority of my students are working at a level below their perspective grade. This article does a great job breaking down the statistics and providing steps to move forward in solving this major issue. Lesson 1 spoke to me directly because the teaching and comprehension of standards are the building blocks of students growth. I reinforce the focus standard(s) of the week by way of intervention, homework, informal, and formal assessment. This article is very VALUABLE!!!
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    I love the lessons outlined in this resource. I especially like how Lesson 4 places a focus on the teachers and how they matter. In impoverished schools, many times the most qualified and effective teachers do not want to be there, therefore limiting the quality of teachers present. It is unfortunate that this happens but it is very common.
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    Helpful article on closing the gap with low income and minority students.
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    While this article came out too long ago to have up to date technological solutions, it still offers a brief, helpful framework for looking to improve classroom outcomes.
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    Excellent resource laying out the achievement gap problem (with data) and valuable solutions to close the gap.
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    This resource does an excellent job of breaking down and making sense of the achievement gap. When the numbers are presented in this way, it makes it clear just how wide that gap is and how worrying it is that the gap is once again increasing. The most interesting piece of the article was the stark contrast in the reasons for the gap between adult stakeholders and student stakeholders. The adults appear to place blame on factors beyond the classroom that are difficult to control, while the students highlight the growing concerns within the walls of the schools that are much more actionable.
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    The points in this article are personal to me as I teach adults at a Community College. In every cohort that I have 50% of my students have difficulty writing a cogent paragraph and 90% of them have never heard of an academic journal. While this is not part of my curriculum, I also teach these things. My students need to be sent into the workforce being able to participate in conversations in the workplace.
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    The article really breaks down what happens to students during high school where they fall behind to move forward in attending college. One thing they mention is test scores. To attend college students have to take and pass a standardized test that determines of they will get into college and what college they can get into. I believe community college is a great way to bridge the gap between high school and a university. There they can determine a major and may attend school part time while still working. This gives them the time to determine what they want to do in life while still being able to survive.
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    We should understand how race, poverty and the environment influences a child's potential in education before they even start Kindergarten. But like a disabilites or inequities there is diversity in the factors that cause these disparities and our solutions to remedies these gaps must offer a multifaceted approach. An approach that offers rigors instruction in the classrooms, access and guidance for continued learning at home and within our communities.
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    This post hits home, as I see it at my Title I school. Students struggle but even the students passing AP classes and Honors courses, yet when they see the SAT's or the ACT's. Last year, my school's valedictorian only got a 1000 on the SAT and did not get to attend her first choice. We, as a school, and larger, we as educators need to ensure that we are doing everything we can to get these students to get past whatever challenges exist outside of the school and have strict standards that need to be met.
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    This a great resource for every teacher.
Jennifer Dow

There's No Such Thing as a Reading Test - 1 views

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    This article argues that we, as a society, are misguided in our approach to teaching to the test, when it comes to critical reading. The author argues that it is not simply enough to teach reading strategies to students because research has demonstrated that there is an absolute necessity to teach context and content for essential background knowledge. This seems to stand in the face of the common tagline in education that it is not What we teach, but how we teach. To tackle this issue, it is recommended that teachers take a more curriculum based approach in reading tests. That is to say, that teachers don't simply choose texts arbitrarily, but rather, in order to teach to these high-stakes tests and core standards, that teachers very mindfully construct a curriculum which builds student exposure and study of key informational texts.
srichards29

Introduction to Data-Driven Educational Decision Making - 4 views

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    Since standardized testing has seem to surface as a way for schools to be graded on their "performance", an increasing number of schools have embraced the data driven curriculum.
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    Article discusses how we can use data to drive instruction, data has always existed but now we have to use it to be successful.
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    This article gives good insight on using data with our instruction. Although the idea of using data to drive instruction has always been out there, within the last 2 years, this has become more of a focus in my school. Last year we started holding monthly "data meetings" in order to look at data gathered from weekly assessments, unit assessments, county and state assessments. Based on the scores we would work to create a next steps in our instruction. As a school, we also set goals to reach across grade levels.
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    Good article. As I was reading this article one thing hit me. One of the first things that is mentioned is NCLB, RTTT, and CCSS. I was thinking, maybe if the government would let teachers get used to a curriculum our instruction would get better and higher level learning could go on. Just my short rant.
gbcoalition

June 06-09 2017: Global Internet of Things Summit (GIoTS), Geneva, Switzerland - 0 views

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    The 1st 2017 Global IoT Summit will attract all IoT stakeholders from industry, academia and research. It will be co-located with the IoT Week 2017 and it will take place at Geneva International Conference Centre (CICG), Geneva.
John Field

States of matter after activities - 0 views

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    This bookmark is for 3rd graders and up, although I think some of the activities might be a little above grade level. One of the things I had trouble with was a culminating activity for my scavenger hunt. I have found this PDF file that has several of them. I am looking to use the cut and paste activity so the students can have a wrap up activity for the scavenger hunt.
Angelique Noel

Tux4kids Downloads - 0 views

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    This software is a game-based program that works on many areas in mathematics. the targeted grade levels are 1-5. I have used the software, and I found myself on it longer than expected. for the most part, I liked how the software is designed. I appreciate the gaming aspect of the software. It doesn't make you feel like you're just doing math work to do. I believe that the only thing that i wasn't to big on was that it doesn't really separate the different grade levels. They do breakdown the different math areas. Overall I would recommend this software.
wrayner

Getting Started with Diigolet - Diigo help - 0 views

  • Tags help you find and organize your bookmarks by letting you select all of your bookmarks with a certain tag or combination of tags. Quickly add relevant tags to a bookmark by clicking on any of the recommended tags that appear under the description field on the “Save Bookmark” pop-up. When you are satisfied with the information in the “Save Bookmark” pop-up, click the “Save Bookmark” button. Now a link to the page is stored in your Diigo library, and the information you entered is stored with it.
  • Highlight Highlighting lets you denote important information on a page, just like highlighting in a book, but with Diigo, the highlighted text will be conveniently saved to your library as well. There are some important things for me to denote on my recipe. My wife doesn’t like pineapple, my grandfather can’t have eggs or chocolate, and I don’t like coconut very much, so I highlight those items on the recipe to let me know I need to deal with them. Highlight by clicking “Highlight” on the Diigolet. Then select the text you want to highlight. The text will be visually highlighted and the text is now stored in your library. It’s that easy. Click the button again to exit highlighter mode. You can also change the color of a highlight by clicking the downward-pointing arrow next to “Highlight” and choosing a color. Colors are useful for differentiating different types of highlights. I will use a different color for each of the different people I need to consider.
  • To add a sticky note to a highlight, simply move your mouse cursor over a highlight. When the little pop-up tab with the pencil on it appears, move the cursor to it and a menu will appear. Choose “Add Sticky Notes”. Now you can type and post a sticky note just like before, but this time it will be tied to the highlighted text.
rhurd1

Science Shows Making Lessons Relevant Really Matters - 3 views

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    Personal relevance examples are given in order to make lessons and information meaningful for students. Personal connections to material will help retention of material as well as motivate student willingness to learn.
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    One thing that came to mind when I read this article was a technique of vocabulary instruction that my school has been using for the past few years. It is called the "Marzano" method of instruction (named after Robert Marzano) which asks students to give their own impression/explanation of a new term before it is used in class. I often like using this technique for vocabulary in Physics that has a contemporary meaning aside from how we will be using it in our course. One great example is "Resistance" in circuitry. I will ask the students (as per the Marzano method) to write down a description or explanation of this word, then I will go around and record the results from random students around the room. The 'group' consensus definitions are then combined to come up with the 'official' or 'technical' definition of the word. It's amazing to see how many students have odd connections to words that help explain the science meaning of the word. Once I had a student bring up the idea of resistance meaning a "rebellion" or "uprising" of sorts. In electrical terms that is not the 'true' definition, but having the students visualizing the electric conductor 'fighting back' against the electron flow can easily guide students to the more appropriate usage of the word. This way, students can see that these 'new' terms are ones that they already have an inkling of understanding for. Their understandings are not useless, but rather need to be expanded upon as we learn more about our content.
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    This seems a really excellent support for the PBL model of instruction - providing real-world context to the material of a class motivates learning, and allows students to activate prior knowledge. See also the another edutopia article: http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning-student-motivation
Rich Agosta

Splashtop - 0 views

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    With Splashtop software I am able to access my laptop through my iPad. This software allows me to move freely around my classroom and instruct. In our health lessons I am able to display our power points or access online resources on my computer from my iPad. It also has a tool called whiteboard, which allows me to draw, highlight, circle, or point out different things that are displayed on my screen. This could really come in handy when we talk about different muscles in the body and allow me to really point out a specific muscle. This is a great resource for a teacher, but unfortunately is not free.
jkiska

Youth Fitness: Teaching Strategies - 2 views

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    Week 7: We are always looking for new strategies for teaching fitness to our middle school students (the article focuses on students aged 13-19). Focuses not just on their physical ability but also their cognitive abilities. When we discussed this reading we all agreed when the article said " Be aware that many teenagers have a short attention span. Create variety to keep them excited and engaged. Circuits, boot camps, strength training and partner yoga are great choices for teens." We recently did a circuit workout that included all of those things. (Stevenson, 2013)
jkiska

PE Scholar - 0 views

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    This website allows physical educators to browse Free Physical Education Resources, Lesson Plans, Activities, Games, Articles, Videos, Blogs. It is an easy way for teachers to find lessons that they may be struggling with. I like to find lessons and change them to make them work for me. The blog is also helpful because it helps teachers relate to one another, that may be struggling with the same things my team does.
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