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This article presents a Texas district's plan on closing the science instructional gap in ethnically diverse students in 2 low socioeconomic elementary schools. Teachers set up a multisensory interactive word walls to teach vocabulary, and designed inquiry science lessons that were aligned with standards and the Texas school district's curriculum framework and pacing guides for science instruction. Purposeful planning gave teachers a chance to become familiar with the progression of instructional goals, and provided time to create activities that fit within the framework and that addressed essential vocabulary. The inquiry science lessons incorporated 5-E: Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaboate, and Evaluate, where Engagement is meant to activate prior knowledge, Exploration is hands on inquiry, Explanation involves teacher-guided questions, Elaboration gives students the chance to "solidify" understandin, and Evaluation involves formative and summative assessments. Vocabulary development was achieved with the use of word walls and visuals, sometimes provided by the student to develop familiarity and fluency. Studies showed significant improvement in student achievement. Students reported recognizing science concepts in everyday life, a good sign of true learning. It even benefited the teachers, who reported having "refined" and strengthened science knowledge and teaching strategies as a result of professional development. A balance of focused district standards and teacher-designed interactive lessons using effective research based strategies, seems to have a powerful effect on closing learning and instructional gaps.

Note: The article is in English, although the page that shows the full article is written in Spanish. This article presents the idea that using screencasts and/or video lessons can help give students access to better instruction. The main idea of the paper is that to properly support students, one needs to be able to help answer questions in a timely fashion. As students study away from school, they tend to email questions to their instructors. I have noticed in recent years that emailed questions, although extremely relevant, can be unwieldy to explain via text. The article's text has the exact same conclusion (which is why it resonated with me the way it did) and makes the distinction that those same unwieldy or impractical 'text' solutions would be trivially answered if the student was face-to-face with the instructor. This concept, that face-to-face interaction is superior to all others, is the motivation for writing this paper. While screencasts and videos are not very interactive (for the most part), they are superior to simple written explanations (especially for complex or visual problems in science and math).

Wow! What a thoughtful analysis of the idea of using screencats and/or video lessons to support student learning.

This is an amazing classroom management system to promote positive behavior. Each student in the class is given an avatar. Simply click on the student's name and give/take dojo points for the behaviors you've programmed in. All of the data is logged into the site and saved for the duration of the year. Use the class feature daily or weekly to identify classroom strengths and areas for improvement. Individual student reports are also available and serve as a powerful tool for parent conferences and grade level meetings. Teachers can choose to reward students based on their positive behaviors by points or percentage. I have used the site extensively in my classroom (5th grade) and have found it to be the most effective positive behavior strategy I've ever tried.

A great free online tool for tracking student behavior. This site allows teachers to instantly record student behavior and participation in class. It also graphs students weekly behaviors and allows students to set goals. Teachers can link class dojo up to parents' email and cell phones so parents can recieve daily updates on their childs behaviors and choices in school.

I have a few teachers who have used this tool in their own classrooms and absolutely love this technology. In order to stay organized, Class Dojo allows teachers to keep track of students behavior. Then, teachers could have a simple way of tracking data in order to allow for positive incentives. Displaying data for the class shows how behavior is effecting classroom lessons and keeps students accountable for their actions. Behavior reports are also good printouts to bring to parent-teacher conferences.

Why reinvent the wheel when making PowerPoint presentations? This online tool is used to upload and download PowerPoint presentations and visuals on all sorts of topics. Users may search for an already created PowerPoint on a subject they may teach and download it for their own teaching purposes. Although this online source is open to anyone, it can be used in any classroom content or subject area under discussion; however, a teacher may need to customize sample PowerPoint presentations to fit their classroom needs. For example, if a language arts teacher needed to give notes on grammar and parts of speech, they may search for a PowerPoint already made including that information. This tool saves teacher time and helps spark ideas!

The tool I posted is Slideshare, a presentation platform where users can post PowerPoint presentations they have created for their classrooms or even businesses. I have used this tool in the past in order to find ready made notes presentations I could present to my 6th grade language arts students. The great thing about about Slideshare is that I can use already created PPTs and customize them to fit my students needs. I definitely recommend this site for the teacher who just doesn't seem to have extra time to create all new notes presentations. Don't reinvent the wheel!

Samantha- Are the PPTs all Creative Commons then? You are free to use, and alter?

This url directs users to a video that displays a strategy using numbers/symbols as well as concrete blocks how to subtract by decomposing a ten or a hundred. This website can be used as a resource to support learners showing difficulties with performing the operation where they need to decompose across 2 place values visually.

Week 8: In our Data Action meeting we discussed intructional strategies involving simulation and games. This article explain some advantages and fears for educators implementing games into their lesson plans. Matthew Farber Social Studies Teacher, Ed Tech Leadership EdD Candidate, Author In the fall of 2014, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop (a nonprofit founded by Sesame Street creator Joan Ganz Cooney) assessed the impact of the gaming in school settings.

Initially, I was very hesitant to buy into learning through online games. I know that children today spend so much time in front of screens, and I didn't want to contribute to this obsession (for some children it does border on that). I did see that BrainPop, a site which I use frequently, introduced GameUp and Spotify. I figured if BrainPop was okay with gaming for learning, then I had to give it a try. Well, my students will now beg for BrainPop and will do evey activity, quiz and graphic organizer associated with a lesson in order to get to sortify. What a great tool. I am now a firm believer.

I too see the benefits of using these online games within instruction. The games provide students with a means of engagement that we often struggle to provide students. With the growth of technology, students are becoming more in-tune with new technology and are using it more often at home. By connecting technology to instruction, we are able to meet them in the middle. There are so many tools available online that it's a shame not to use them!

"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 speaks of how implementing the framework known as Environment as a Integrating Context (EIC) can help close the achievement gap for students and lead to deeper connections through all subjects. The framework focuses on using the surroundings, and community around the school as a basis for the education. Understanding that if students can connect knowledge to visual cues and surroundings that they see everyday, it will help in the long term memory of those lessons and a higher mastery rate. This framework in my opinion should be used for secondary education. I believe this because that particular age group will be able to connect what they are learning in other subjects through this framework and it would be extremely beneficial when it comes to the standardized testing.

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

There is no one way to use technology in the mathematics classroom, but I have always struggled with how to seamlessly move from a hard-copy activity to a technology based one. In order to improve students understanding of Algebra 1 concepts, I believe that they need to be provided with multiple ways to look at things. However, there does not always seem to be time to create other types of materials that are more visually appealing. The source below lists different ways that I could allow students to use technology to enhance their learning in and out of the classroom. I also appreciated knowing that some of the techniques that we currently use are considered "effective uses of technology" in the mathematics classroom i.e. collecting real-world data for in class work and taking pictures of real world objects. In the future, I would like to have a link of my Canvas page for students to find multiple tutorials for each concept that could a condensed version of the lesson from the day, along with other videos that would provide them with a new way to look at the information. With these resources students could be required to show that they viewed videos at home and it could help me to begin "flipping the classroom" and providing more enrichment and practice in the classroom for the students to solidify their understanding.

This website contains a wide variety of virtual manipulative that can be maneuvered by all learners at all stages. Both students and teachers can use this to demonstrate understanding as well as modeling a strategy. All viewers are able to see concrete place values as well as the composition and decomposition of hundred and ten blocks. It is a great tool for the visual learner and those who are still in the concrete stage in addition/subtraction.