MEd Program Diigo Group

This article provides multiple different strategies for helping students in social studies learn new vocabulary. The article divides these strategies into categories and discusses the importance of activating students prior knowledge before focusing on new social studies vocabulary words.

This article summarizes how one school used a blended differentiated curriculum to reduce the achievemnt gap between poor and wealthy students. What I found interesting about this approach is that the authors said, "That engagement in learning is enhanced when students' interests and choices are considered." This is a different approach to how some schools use differentiation and the change didn't happened over night. The school made a lot of adjustments, including re-writing the curriculum and setting specific learning objectives. However, they were successful because they saw an improvement in student achievement.

This article defines several key elements of the assessment process. Use it as a quick cheat sheet.

This article compares Western teaching and learning with Asian (specifically Japan) learning/ Instruction. The author, Buchanan, touches on the methods used to differentiate such as for Gifted and Talented learners. Buchanan then gives suggestyions on improving teaching as a whole.

This article shares a intervention that was used to help close the vocabulary gap between Latino and Anglo students. A group of 5th graders were taught academically useful words along with some strategies . Those strategies include, "using information from contex, from morphology, from knowledge about multiple meanings, and from cognates to infer word meaning." The students in the the study showed greater growth in vocabuary comprehension than students who were not a part of the study group.

This paper gives a broad overview of key historical and current theories to language development and learning. It provides a nice overview and review of various approaches and schools of thought. The author's premise is that teachers should look both collectively and uniquely at these in order to make informed instructional decisions when teaching students who are learning a second language, either English as a second language or another foreign language. While the information is not new, it is a well-presented consolidation of information that educators can use to diversify their instructional approach to promote language development in their students.

When looking for information about learning and instructional gaps in language classes, I found this paper about encouraging communication with second language learners through creating information gaps. The concept is that students use language in authentic ways by answering questions that are open ended and relevant or by doing other activities that encourage communication and discussion rather than very set and inauthentic uses of language. As a language teacher, it gave me ideas for games or activities to do with my students as well as a reminder to use open-ended questioning in order to promote more diverse student responses. It seems a little dated based on the reference materials, but is still relevant in the modern World Language classroom.

This paper discusses the importance of vocabulary instruction and instructional strategies in order to support vocabulary learning across all grade levels and content areas. Using direct and intentional vocabulary development in the educational setting provides students with the tools and language skills necessary to progress and thrive. This focus is instrumental in narrowing achievement gaps between students, and is particularly beneficial for ESOL students. As a language teacher, it was an excellent reminder of the need to continue vocabulary focus across all skill levels. The lower levels are very vocabulary-centric, but the higher levels become less vocabulary-focused and more communicative in nature. However, there are always more words to know and as concepts and themes of study become more sophisticated, so too becomes the language and word level. Various strategies must be employed, both emanating from the teacher's intentional instruction and students' independent work. This paper has concrete and specific instructional strategies that teachers of all content areas and across all age levels can employ.

I found this paper particularly interesting because it highlighted that when teachers explicitly teach vocabulary to students, it results in not only the increased retention of words learned, but of increased comprehension skills as well.

This 90-page publication offers research-based findings on learning and teaching music, including teacher strategies and discussion on essential learner outcomes from the Maryland state music curriculum.

This Edutopia post discusses arts education having intrinsic value and its effects on achievement gaps.

Art education can lessen the achievement gap, specifically with students from low socioeconomic backgrounds (SES). Unfortunately, an 'opportunity gap' exists with low-income students, which makes them less likely to have access to art education as compared to their higher-income peers.

The purpose of this study is to explore how a Pre-Kindergarten teacher makes pedagogical decisions that are known as emotional scaffolding for ELL children. The study describes a teacher who through implementing an optimal environment for her ELL students, was able to fully engage them in Pre-Kindergarten content. The study offers a variety of strategies of what a teacher can do to have a successful ELL early childhood school environment.

Abstract: This reflective essay describes a teacher's development of a student-centered approach to teaching which bridges the gap between students' knowledge before and after a course. In "mind the gap teaching," students' prior knowledge leads the conversation and, in turn, the teaching, allowing them to integrate new information more effectively.

Abstract: This study investigated teachers' uses of research on the identification and instruction of students at risk for reading disabilities (RD). It identified obstacles to teachers' uses of RD research and methods to bridge RD research and teachers' practices...

This article discusses how effective professional development has an impact on improving student learning. The author examines what "effective" professional development looks like and why it's important.

This article focuses on how a multi-strategy approach can assist students in learning new social studies content vocabulary. The article provides a case study that includes three groups of students which focused on different methods of vocabulary acquisition. The article notes that a multi-strategy approach is the best for assisting students in learning new vocabulary.

One of the things I found interesting was "students first learned to ask important questions about the text to guide their thinking and then used questions to help them develop a main-idea statement for a short section of text. They then learned to combine several main idea statements into a longer summary with the aid of a graphic organizer." These strategies were taught and practiced for six weeks at a time, before a new one was introduced.

This article examines various methods for helping students with comprehension difficulties learn and acquire new content specific vocabulary. The primary focus of the article is on the importance of a multi strategy approach to help keep students engaged with vocabulary building activities.

This article is about adapting instruction for more advanced learners in the Head Start classroom.

Sight word acquisition is an important building block in the construction of a child's ability to read. This article has teacher and parent strategies.

Great resource! I have about 10 students (of 48) who are reading at a DRA 10 or less in 3rd grade. I'll have to use these strategies and share with parents!

Fun and engaging ways to teach sight words!