MEd Program Diigo Group

Hear Gay Su Pinnell detail strategies for Phonics Mini Lessons, which are designed to support effective and efficient delivery of phonics instruction to young learners. Fountas and Pinnell are renown in the field of literacy instruction. This tutorial is a valuable mini lesson for educators who are not fortunate enough to have participated in their workshops.

FREE online. Teach children to read. For adults too! Fast and easy. Learn to read with interactive audio lessons and hundreds of clickable words. This site offers fun, interactive phonics tutorials with activities are designed to work on specific skills. Students can use this in the classroom or at home.

This website is a great resource for the early childhood classroom. The "picture pairs game" helps with letter recognition.

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.

Within the website "Starfall" for beginning level readers there is an entire letter practice session; it is in the form of an interactive game. All of the letters of the alphabet are presented and students are able to click on one. It then takes the student through an interactive presentation (visuals and sounds) of that letter: it shows the upper and lowercase form of the letter, makes the letter sound, shows and says words that begin with that letter and dictates a sentence to students using many words beginning with the chosen letter. This would be good for students who are struggling to identify the letters of the alphabet and their sounds; good for repetitive, independent practice as students could use this by themselves on a computer.

On Starfall.com, there is an entire phonics section titled "Learn to Read" that begins with focus on beginning sounds, making words and word families and gradually gets harder as you progress through. It is an interactive making words game where students that are playing can hear a word, see a matching picture, select a letter that begins the word, hear the sound that the selected letter makes and hear the completed word - all in the context of word families. The game is also self correcting - there is a buzzer noise if you select the wrong beginning sound/letter, so students know to choose again. Within the "Learn to Read" section, there are also books that use the words from the making words activities and videos for students to watch. This would be a great tool to use for a student to independently practice phonics at a literacy center when they can't be working with the teacher because it is visual, it reads to the student, it is easy to use and follow, and it is self-correcting so that students are practicing correctly.

This article provides detailed background information regarding explicit writing instruction, especially regarding students with special needs such as ADHD, but the strategies discussed can be adapted and used with all learners regardless of ability or grade level. The article begins with a focus on strategies for providing students with motivational contexts for their writing as well as making writing a routine that they enjoy. The rest of the article is divided into sections based on students' ability/age level (basic skills, revising and editing, and motivation). This article discusses strategies that can help address teachers address students' learning gaps in elaboration and explaining their ideas fully in expository writing tasks. Be sure to click "Single Page" at the bottom right of the article so you can see the entire article on one screen, and explore the links to the left of the article for more information about writing instruction for different populations!

This is a collection of instructional strategies that can be used to improve student writing and cooperation and encourage critical thinking. Links to strategies are sorted by teachers' needs: Monitor Progress, Compare and Contrast Ideas, Form Groups, Get Moving!, Work Together, Adapt Content, Share Ideas & Opinions, and Take Notes. Within these categories are several links to various strategies to meet these needs. Each of the links leads to a clear description of how the strategy can be used and multiple examples and clickable resources that can be utilized by teachers immediately. This site has a plethora of interesting activities and tasks for students to encourage better collaboration and thinking. An instructional gap our team recognized that is quite prolific among middle school-aged students is the lack of elaboration or explanation of details in their expository writing pieces. Students can organized paragraphs and essays write clear topic sentences and conclusions, but they struggle supporting their claims with specific details and then explaining how their details relate to the topic.

This document provides a detailed overview of the writing process for teachers of and students in secondary schools (grades 7-12). It provides numerous strategies teachers in all content areas can employ to encourage students to write more frequency and with more fluency. The document is organized in chronological order according to the steps of the writing process (Generating Ideas, Developing and Organizing Ideas, and Revising and Editing). Each of these steps in the writing process is described and accompanied by detailed activities. The explicit guidelines (instructions) for each activity could be easily utilized by a novice teacher, but even a seasoned master teacher can benefit from exploring the strategies posed in this document. To address our identified learning gap (that secondary students struggle to elaborate on initial ideas in their writing), the section on "Adding Content" on p. 104 of this document is especially helpful.

Slideshows teaching these skills with built in activities for students. Slideshows are in English, but students will need to understand the skill first before they can transfer it to the target language. Teachers can provide French examples to supplement the slideshows.

This resource is a simulation that can be used by teachers or students to demonstrate the effects of forces on motion. Explore the forces at work when pulling against a cart,and pushing a refrigerator, crate, or person. Create an applied force and see how it makes objects move. Change friction and see how it affects the motion of objects.

This tool provides teachers with the data needed to track students' progress on solving word problems. IXL gives students different word problems to solve. These problems could be solved in a small-group rotation. This would help students identify the steps and method they are using. Also, students would be able to take their time to solve these problems in their elementary school classroom.

This tool provides pre-k to 12 additional support/practice with math concepts. Teachers are able to assign a skill to practice in class or at home. Teachers are able to access reports by concept and time spent. Down side is the cost of IXL.

I use this website for fluency practice and lesson extensions with my small group math instruction. My first graders enjoy the games.

Week 4: This website provides teachers and students with all different resources to solve word problems. It also can help teachers create posters, showcase methods, come up with lesson plans, and generate practice worksheets. This information can be used in a second grade classroom. This tool can help students understand the steps they need to take in order to solve word problems.

This is an article about the RTI program and how students who are English Language Learners can benefit from using certain strategies and what areas they might struggle in. Teachers could use this resource as a guide to how to implement their own interventions for their students.

This website gives a good overview of what RTI is, as well as a background and makeup of ESOL learners in the United States. The article also provides teachers with strategies on how to teach certain skills to ESOL students, such as using a table that includes a picture and the word in both English and Spanish. As a user of RTI at my own school, I have seen the positive effects of this tool.

(Week 8: Michele, Ericka and Spencer) This article was retrieved using a search on Diigo. It can be accessed using this link http://www.rtinetwork.org/learn/diversity/response-to-intervention-implications-for-spanish-speaking-english-language-learners In the article, Elsa Hagan provides the reader with insight into ways ELA teachers can improve reading levels of their Spanish-Speaking ELL students. Currently, there is a 29% gap in reading level with Spanish-Speaking ELL students when compared to other ELL students. To help bridge the gap, strategies need to be utilized. One involves the use of Response-to-Intervention (RTI) model to aid in monitoring the individual progress of all ELL students with an extra emphasis placed on the Spanish-Speaking students in the program. This will involve continuous monitoring of the Spanish-Speaking ELL students to ensure they are receiving the appropriate intervention strategies for their current level. Along with using RTI, the author indicates that a Phonological Awareness is needed. By aiding the ELL students ability to "process and manipulate" the sounds of the English language, their ability to read and comprehend information in English will improve. While this article was intended more for ESOL course teachers, the information provided can be utilized with all educators who have an ELL student in their class. The article identified that the Spanish language only has approximately 22 sounds where the English language has double the number of sounds. To aid in the improvement of reading in ELL students, we as non-ESOL class teachers, can exchange text that will be a lower reading level but still mean the same. Reference: Hagan, E. (2010) Response to intervention: implications for spanish-speaking english language learners. Retrieved on October 30, 2018 from http://www.rtinetwork.org/learn/diversity/response-to-intervention-implications-for-spanish- speaking-english-language-learn

This is an online resource that students can use on their own to understand vowel sounds and practice them. Students could use this resource on their own or the teacher could use it as a lesson tool.

A website for the Florida standards and resources to teach these across grade levels and subjects. This website can be used to research standards and find lesson plans that correspond. I was interested in simple circuits and came across this: http://www.cpalms.org/Public/PreviewResourceLesson/Preview/76115

This is a video explaining simple circuits. This video could be used in instructing for simple circuits.

Site that provide Common Core-aligned performance tasks

This is one page on the site called All about circuits. It describes an experiment in simple circuits which could be used for a unit on simple circuits. This resource could be used as a handout or guideline for a unit on simple circuits.

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.