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Edmodo is also a great site to use for a class homepage. It's a good resources for students and teachers. We have Edline in our county but I think the personalization of this is better.

Week 9 - This article by Leonore Ganschow and Elke Schneiderm provide an excellent description of students who struggle with learning a foreign language, yet they provide excellent strategies to assess and accomplish such task. The articles provides a summary of research findings with regards to at-risk students and foreign language learning, what administrators can do, and recommendations for the study of a foreign language. From the website: LD OnLine is the leading website on learning disabilities, learning disorders and differences. Parents and teachers of learning disabled children will find authoritative guidance on attention deficit disorder, ADD, ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, dysnomia, reading difficulties, speech and related disorders. LD OnLine works in association with Learning Disabilities Association of America, International Dyslexia Association, Council for Exceptional Children, Schwab Foundation for Learning, and the Coordinated Campaign for Learning Disabilities.

A teacher could use this in his or her classroom to help students brainstorm ideas in the writing process. I have used googledocs to insert a pre-writing template for students to complete prior to some writing assignments which fulfills a similar purpose. The resource could also be useful in helping you keep your agenda or priorities organized especially when working in a group.

I have used this in my personal life to get together with busy friends. Can be a great way to coordinate meetings, especially when a "meet every Tuesday" strategy doesn't work well for you.

Phet is a website that provides interactive simulations for science and mathematics. The simulations can be downloaded or used online for instructional, homework or review purposes. They are free and easy to use and a great learning device. An instructor can use the simulations to introduce information to students as well as using them as instructional methods to help students grasp ideas. Having students work on simulations in class or as homework can help enrich understanding.

Open Culture defines itself as "The best free cultural & educational media on the Web" [Open Culture. (2013). Home page. Retrieved from www.openculture.com). This site was suggested by one of our students using working on a Diigo account just for world language teachers), but this site seems useful for all subjects, with links to many free videos, K-12 resources, e-books, etc.

A great Web 2.0 tool for creative writing. This would be useful in a Social Studies class for students to work together to create a story based on the time period being studied. I have found this very easy to use.

This site gives an array of strategies and tips to cater to struggling students.

The website created by Kathleen Bulloch does offer a lot of great tips. I especially like how they are broken down into manageable chunks for a teacher who is working to accommodate a special needs student. Suggestions were provided for certain areas of concern, such as: "If a student has trouble expressing himself verbally, then try....If a student has trouble expressing himself writing, then try..." and many more categories with similar setups. Good resource for supporting special education students with quick ideas for how an educator can differentiate their instruction to support student learning.

This is a website with some fantastic alphabet activities including ways to help children recognize the alphabet, help with learning upper case verses lower case letters, help with phonetics and a book list to help with all these skills. This website has some fresh ideas that will work well in a pre-k classroom.

This article is spot on in suggesting that blended learning can help close the achievement gap. I worked in a high school with a very large population of ESL students and always felt as though I was not getting through to many of them. I would try many different strategies but not often successful. Using blended learning strategies, I feel as though I could start to really connect with my students and raise the success rate and confidence especially with my ESL students.

eduCanon allows educators to upload videos and insert questions directly within the video. Works well with smartboards, keeps students attentive, and is a paper saver. Often times teachers may not have copies of questions available, or find that students pay more attention if the video stops periodically and being chosen randomly. Students are also able to refer back to the video on their own time to review.

This resource speaks to the importance of giving students the opportunity to experience word problems in a more natural way, such as providing video anchors. This article identifies a video resource that was created by Vanderbilt University titled "The Adventures of Jasper Woodbury." These videos present a real life challenge and problem that helps students work through the problem solving process as a class.

This article discusses strategies for helping relate word problems to real life for students. It is suggested to use anchored instruction, linking instruction to assessment and having students answer challenge problems. The implication is that word problems are textual as opposed to contextual and that real-world problem solving occurs in dynamic environments. This could help by presenting word problems in a different manner for students, thereby linking the problem to a real world sccenario.

This is a great resource for students to be able to work collaboratively to determine what they can do to make their writing better. The dimension I was focusing on was "impact on learning" from the protocol rubric. The SMART goal in our group is focused on students being able to complete a complex math assignment that requires multiple steps. Students also need to be able to explain their mathematics in written form to explain their thinking. This protocol of "praise, question, and suggestion" is a great resource that our students can use in order to make sure the writing aspect of their math makes sense and answers the question fully. I look forward to seeing the outcomes of utilizing this idea. Based on this, I would score the praise, question, suggestion tactic as a 3 or a 4.

This is an awesome resource for teachers, parents or anyone working with students with Autism. It provides helpful tips, challenges, and treatment and therapy options for these students. I like to reference it as it covers a lot of information on behaviors and how to handle them. It is applicable for any age pre-k though adulthood. -I am a special Educator serving students in the Autism Program.

(Week 9): Jenn, Jim and Sabrina Source: This journal article is accessible through the link given above by accessing the UMUC library. Focus: This journal article focuses on the need for preparing an increasingly diverse student population for life in the 21st century. In addition to addressing differentiation, our classrooms "will be heterogeneous in nature, (as well as) learner-centered, knowledge-centered, assessment-centered, instruction-centered, and community-centered." Teachers in these classrooms "will need to be proficient in 'teaching up,' or planning learning experiences at a high level of challenge." (Tomlinson, article abstract) Why the article is useful: Teachers in our group work with students from very diverse socioeconomic, linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Many of these students come to us from homes where English is not spoken, where their families may be disadvantaged with issues relating to poverty and social isolation, and who often have a variety of special needs (SPED, ESL/ELL, etc.). Reference: Tomlinson, C. (2015, April 14). Teaching for Excellence in Academically Diverse Classrooms. Society, 52(3), 203-209. Retrieved from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.umuc.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=9&sid=d8e836f2-a403-4b8f-a484-e5e63f248a74%40pdc-v-sessmgr05

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.

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.

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?