MEd Program Diigo Group

The article shows how you can encourage student dialogue. In this study, the class was given a cartoon showing characters discussing a new or current class topic that has common misconceptions associated with it. After viewing the cartoon, students are asked to take sides and either defend or refute one of the characters' opinions about what they are expressing. This helps students focus on the topic because they are not reading an article or passage that is asking for feedback, but rather they are taking part in a sort of 'debate' amongst these characters. It is a starting point for a student centered lesson and helps the students feel more at ease in defending or arguing a point; they are talking about ideas that the 'cartoon character' has instead of an idea or concept that 'they' came up with.

Preventing students from dropping out of high school shouldn't begin in high school. Research shows that efforts and attention should begin in the middle grades because those grades can be a prime battleground against dropping out in the future. There program does not lie solely with the at-risk youth and potential dropouts. Schools need to determine and implement school improvement strategies and models reflective of all students to give each student e genuine opportunity to succeed. Meaningful Engaged Learning (MEL) helps students succeed academically. MEL focuses on five areas - Inviting Schools, Learning by Doing, Student Voice and Choice, Higher Order Thinking, and Real World Connections.

Meta-analysis was conducted on interventions used for mathematics with students with learning disabilities. There were four instructional components examine to determine their effectiveness and impact -- a) approached to instruction and/or curriculum design, b) formative assessment data and feedback to teachers, c) formative assessment data and feedback to students and d) peer-assisted mathematics instruction. The research indicates the positive impact of cognitive strategies and the direct instruction model for mathematics instruction. The information was beneficial. Direct instruction often used for reading instruction of students with disabilities so it only makes sense that is also works for math instruction. Research-based information helps me determine what instructional strategies and practices I will include in my classroom.

Short article with different motivation techniques for students who don't seem to care about completing work. Includes 5 techniques, such as create challenges that students can master, that are easy to implement.

This article is perfect for our group! We have identified that student participation has had a major impact on student reading, writing, and test scores and that motivation is one of the key elements that needs to be addressed. The first two techniques are of particular interest to me. Students certainly would benefit from knowing the long term benefits of their work. I think just a simple, "what do you want to do for a living once you are out of school?" can go a long way. If a student knows that he/she needs to pass the English PARCC in order to graduate and enter the field of their choice, they are more likely to take it seriously. The idea of creating "challenges that students can master" is a good one as well. I've noticed with my students that they are less likely to attempt work if they believe that they do not have the ability to do it. Introducing the material incrementally can build up their confidence and lead to future success.

Our group's EQ relates to how ESOL and Special Education students perform on state tests in English. The article here is from Arizona and is a study in how well English Language Learners performed on their state mandated tests. The document outlines the issues that English learners have in their school along with teacher and district recommendations on how to help improve student scores.

I found this article to be very intriguing, because although it makes the common claim that increased school attendance will result in higher GPA, it also describes how another variable, a student's distance living away from school, affects their attendance rate. According to this study, there is a statistically significant effect of the farther away one lives from school, the greater their absences will be. This is something I want to investigate further once I return to school and can see where some of my historically truant students are traveling from each day.

This article details the difference in achievement that has been attained by the KIPP charter schools in Baltimore, especially in middle schools. Although I was interested in how KIPP succeeded where so many others have failed, I realized that there are many differences between these schools and the school I teach in. (Parent & teacher buy-in, selectivity of the students they serve, etc). As such, I don't think the successes described here would be replicated at my school, with my 8th graders.

This article provides a wonderful overview of ways to involve families in a learning community at school across multiple subject areas. However, there is a large focus on reading and ways to foster family involvement in developing early literacy skills at home. This will be an excellent resource for our group as we begin to design a plan for supporting students in Kindergarten in their ability to blend words and recall high frequency words in text.

This article outlines many of the beliefs we discussed in our data meeting #2. Mostly the fact that children coming from low-income background often come to Kindergarten less prepared than their middle-class peers. For our exploratory question, we want to focus are research on early literacy and the impact of family involvement. This article will be a good resource as we build an argument of the importance of these factors in order to sway parents to do more with their children at home to foster literacy.

Students' middle grade attendance is a strong indicator of future high school performance. As such, middle teachers can use such attendance info to identify students who may tend to struggle in high school, and give those students needed support in advance of ninth grade. I have not been able to implement the strategies mentioned (its Summertime!) but I intend to try some this Fall with the 10 or 15 students that I know will be attendance issues in my 8th grade classes.

Like you mentioned, I already know a handful of students going into 8th grade (I teach 6th-8th grade computer technology as a creative arts course) that will be attendance, behavior, and/or low GPA's. I feel like while our schools try to support student learning, we too often push kids through from one grade to the next. I have students this past year who in the semester every other day that I instruct them (45 classes in all), they have missed more than half and yet they promote to the next grade. Each of the five areas highlighted raise good points and I actually find some of the statistics very alarming considering the small differences in percentages. For example, Figure 3 on page 8 depicts two identical students with exact achievement marks in 5th grade. By the time they reach 8th grade, one students attendance improves 2% and the other students attendance drops 4% to a 93% avg. attendance rate. While this doesn't sound like a terrible drop (at least to me), the possibility of these students being on track for 9th grade went from 93% for the student who improved attendance compared to 66% of this student being on track for 9th grade whose attendance dropped just a few percentage points. I think more needs to be done at the school level to improve performance and setup interventions that help our students succeed rather than worrying about the multiple standardized tests that students are required to complete throughout the year. Thank you for sharing! I'm definitely reading over this again as I prepare for the upcoming school year with my middle school students and may even share it with my staff.

A scholastic article with many different ways to motivate middle school students. This article discusses whole school motivators as well as classroom motivation techniques. A quick read with many good techniques.

Early literacy skills begin developing at a young age, even before kids get to Kindergarten. Therefore it is vital that families consistently read with their children and expose them to text in the home. This article explains the benefits of early literacy in the home and outlines a plan for gaining more parent involvement by creating literacy bags for families to take home and use with their children. The research provided will not only help us to find answers to our exploratory question, but will also give us ideas for action plans that we can put into place in our own schools.

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.

This site provides courses for parents to prepare their children for school. There are lessons on content areas as well as to prepare for independent activities with independence time.

Teaching literacy in the high school content areas. Contains research and specific ideas for reading and writing in math, science, social studies, and English. Could be useful for working with students learning to write BCRs.

Remember the 65% solution? This article is from 2006, but the discussion about demonstrating student learning in the school library is still relevant. It describes a pilot program that sounds similar to Venables' data action model: "Using online tools, [librarians] continue a dialogue, exchange ideas, and provide critical support to one another as they strive to create evidence folders for their own school library media programs." Includes sample rubrics and graphs of outcomes.

This article discusses how to teach students to strengthen Executive Functions. Examples are given on to recognize the weakness that often mistaken for other problems such as laziness, lack of focus, and forgetful. Great examples on how to tackle these issues and provides strategies that will help over come executive function weaknesses.

This article presents the main ideas for planning effective and engaging lessons. It is based on backwards design so that the lessons are based on outcomes rather than just the activities. This article is also based on the DAP model that allows for the fact that students develop at their own pace. There is also a review of helpful lesson planning skills in assessment, direct instruction, differentiating instruction and developing objectives.

This article discusses challenges teachers face with differentiated instruction. Every challenge presented if followed by links to articles that relate to the challenge and webinars to watch. The challenge of helping students with special needs and disabilities is very interesting since this goes with my groups data meeting 2 exploratory question.

This power point presentation points out the challenges of differentiating instruction in the classroom. It provides several definitions of what is differentiated instruction. Provides information 4 classroom elements that can be differentiated. Points out the obstacles teacher may face when attempting to differentiate instruction. Discusses CRIME: Curriculum, Rules, Instructions, Materials, and Environment. The presentation also gives some really great strategies for differentiated instruction towards the end.