Group items tagged

This documentary focuses on Hutong, the cultural symbol of traditional life in Beijing. Though well-known around the world, many Hutongs are actually facing the problem of arbitrary and incomplete demolition, and the shortage of governmental administration and public cleaning. This is a website that youth can post their created digital media as wel as express their own idea and opinion to have their own voices and collaborate regarding issues they care and concern about. Urbanization, gender equality, racial justice, environmental protection for everyone are among the issues that global youth care about. Teachers need to provide students a safe environment on line or in person to express themselves.

The study compares students (grade 4) that received traditional instruction to those who received computer assisted instruction (CAI) with traditional instruction for basic math facts. The results show that daily CAI positively effects student math achievement. This study is interesting in that students received 10 minutes of CAI to achieve these results.

The study described in this article is very interesting because it relates to our group's Exploratory Question. We are trying to see if computer practice one or twice a week correlates to progress in students' mastering their addition and subtraction facts. As shown in the article, computer assisted instruction had a positive impact on the students' fluency of basic math facts.

This article emphasizes on a new teaching strategy called the flipped model which was created to improve student involvement and academic achievement using technology to move teacher's lecture outside the traditional classroom environment. This model introduces new subject area content to students at home (prior to class) for continual review of content, and moving homework and exercises with concepts inside the classroom with learning activities. Learners within this study preferred this method over the traditional approach, as it improved instructional practices. Therefore with improved instructional practices students can be better motivated and eager to learn thus resulting in improved assessments.

(Week 7: Ruchel and Beth) This journal article is accessible through the link given above by accessing the UMUC library. This journal article discuss practical strategies to help with teaching the alphabet. The importance of the alphabet for early literacy skills is discussed in the article. The article stresses the flaw with the popular "letter of the week" way of teaching the alphabet including the fact that this method takes 26 weeks just to cover the alphabet as well as the fact that if students know a number of letters those weeks are a waste of valuable class time. Teachers can use this article to further their instructional practices in the early childhood classroom by focusing on EAK (Enhanced Alphabet Knowledge Instruction) which "emphasizes identifying the letter name and sound, recognizing the letter in text, and producing the letter form, through flexible, distributed cycles of review based on factors that influence acquisition of alphabet knowledge" (Jones, Clark & Reutzel, 2013). "Rather than the traditional method of one cycle of massed instruction, EAK instruction advocates teaching letters through multiple, distributed instructional cycles which allows for letters to be introduced, practiced, and revisited several times, as needed, during the school year" (Jones et al., 2013). References Jones, C., Clark, S., & Reutzel, D. (2013). Enhancing Alphabet Knowledge Instruction: Research Implications and Practical Strategies for Early Childhood Educators. Early Childhood Education Journal, 41(2), 81-89. doi:10.1007/s10643-012-0534-9

This is a Slideshare presentation about color coding by Jugnu Agrawal and Gary Hoag. Research that supports color coding is provided as well as some strategies for different activities from organizational skills, to reading and writing. Teachers can follow some of these strategies to differentiate their lessons and add variety to a "traditional" lesson.

Most teachers believe that students have a fear of word problems, but this article will have you second guessing that. The article will have teachers thinking that word problems should be used from the start of a lesson and not at the very end of a homework assignment. Students normally perform better on word problems then algebraic solving because they have context clues to help them solve the problem.

To sum up this article you can look at the following quote from it; And he warned that the tendency to wait before using word problems could exacerbate gaps for students who struggle with algebra early on, because they may not be exposed to many word problems at all. Students have a fear of word problems because they perceive that they are too hard before they even begin working on them. This combined with the gaps in the vocabulary knowledge are making word problems more difficult for them.

This is an article that explores the strategy of introducing word problems first during math instruction. As a math teacher, I tend to introduce concepts first then build up to applying those concepts to word problems. The strategy of introducing the word problems first acts to help students solve a problem using any method they are comfortable with, without getting bogged down with the math too soon and becoming unwillingly to solve it. This could address the SMART learning goal, by helping us to rethink the way in which students approach word problems.

This article makes a very good argument for incorporating e-mail into the classroom to improve student writing. The author explains how students are often bored with traditional writing assignments and editing/revising sessions using Microsoft Word (even though this is technology, it is less interactive). The author explains how having a second party on the other end of the email who will be reading their work encourages students to carefully proofread and make edits/revisions as necessary on their own before sending the e-mails. Students were also more interesting in the authentic writing tasks that e-mail communication allowed (such as writing to professionals in their fields of study/interest and receiving real responses). The author gives a plethora of ideas for utilizing e-mail to improve student writing in various content classes, including Language Arts, Math, Foreign Language, and Social Studies. Kristine and I found this article and are hoping to work in this strategy/component into our Data Action Plan (although we previously did not list it as a strategy to help with our SMART goals). WEEK 7