MEd Program Diigo Group

This is the position statement developed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children related to mathematics in early childhood education. This document outlines 10 strategies for high quality math instruction in the early childhood classroom, as well as, 4 strategies for educational institutions, program developers and policy makers. I found the 10 strategies for teachers to be particularly beneficial in my own reflective practice.

This article provides developmentally appropriate strategies for supporting math instruction in the early childhood classroom. Strategies include how to set up a math rich classroom, as well as, how to children to engage in mathematical play.

It is no longer assumed that productive language competence naturally develops from receptive language competence. Now the noticing and the focused output hypotheses are considered in order to arrive at solutions for addressing the gap between receptive and productive competence.

This article from ISTE discusses how blended learning can be used to bridge the achievement gap for students who don't have access to technology (or who have minimal access) outside of the school setting.

The projects you will find here have been curated by BIE and were gathered from online project libraries. They are easily searchable by subject area, and are a guide to PBL lessons to be used or to inspire lesson plans.

Suggestions for Assessment throughout the process of a PBL. Include links to multiple articles on different types of assessment and grade levels.

An article about designing your classroom to be 21st century learning-friendly. Includes space design suggestions and app suggestions for use in the classroom.

This article is really a guide for anyone working with students to follow. It helps train us to ask better questions, and therefore help students to think at a higher level. great for parents and teachers!

Great resource! I have a twitter account for my classroom, but don't actively engage in it as a PLN. These are great guidelines for using it as part of your PLN!

This seems very similar to Project Based Learning and I like how many examples they give of how to use this in specific classroom settings! Great resource! Thanks!

This would definitely be an interesting way of teaching argument writing to my 9th grade classes. With this lesson, students analyze how an author creates an argument in several short documentaries.

This is a guide for teaching students about writing a claim and supporting it with evidence can work with any English 6-12 class. I haven't used this yet, but I would definitely try it!

This is a great resource for teaching students to analyze literature by applying the author's technique to their own writing.

These segments get to the heart of the conceptual misunderstanding that teachers encounter when attempting to teach simple circuits. It demonstrates some instructional alternatives teachers can use.

This is an excellent design for a student-centered inquiry activity. I'd like to revise my introduction to circuits next year to work more like this.

Week 8: Partner: Cecile Droz This article discusses a new way to give student's warm-up exercises. Instead of having them complete them at the beginning of class, the students will complete the warm ups up to 3 days before they are due. The warm-ups will prepare the students for the upcoming week of assignments. The best type of warm-up assignments give the students a scenario that they are familiar with. It is important for the educator to determine if there are any misconceptions by looking at the warm-ups to determine what concepts need to be addressed again.

Although not everything described in this article applies necessarily to all subjects, the idea that teachers need to be more aware of the prior knowledge students have before they present new materials is very interesting. In second language, for example teachers use students' oral and written productions to assess their command of grammar but before any cultural or historical unit, it would make sense to address prior knowledge and rectify what needs to be rectified before introducing new ideas/material.

The use of warm-ups as a combination of extension, priming, and pre-assessment is novel. This gives students time and mental space to make a prediction and then bring it to class, prepared and ready to learn. I will definitely be employing this in a class I am designing next year.

Personal relevance examples are given in order to make lessons and information meaningful for students. Personal connections to material will help retention of material as well as motivate student willingness to learn.

One thing that came to mind when I read this article was a technique of vocabulary instruction that my school has been using for the past few years. It is called the "Marzano" method of instruction (named after Robert Marzano) which asks students to give their own impression/explanation of a new term before it is used in class. I often like using this technique for vocabulary in Physics that has a contemporary meaning aside from how we will be using it in our course. One great example is "Resistance" in circuitry. I will ask the students (as per the Marzano method) to write down a description or explanation of this word, then I will go around and record the results from random students around the room. The 'group' consensus definitions are then combined to come up with the 'official' or 'technical' definition of the word. It's amazing to see how many students have odd connections to words that help explain the science meaning of the word. Once I had a student bring up the idea of resistance meaning a "rebellion" or "uprising" of sorts. In electrical terms that is not the 'true' definition, but having the students visualizing the electric conductor 'fighting back' against the electron flow can easily guide students to the more appropriate usage of the word. This way, students can see that these 'new' terms are ones that they already have an inkling of understanding for. Their understandings are not useless, but rather need to be expanded upon as we learn more about our content.

This seems a really excellent support for the PBL model of instruction - providing real-world context to the material of a class motivates learning, and allows students to activate prior knowledge. See also the another edutopia article: http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning-student-motivation

This is a good protocol - with a blank template sheet - for planning & executing a data-based intervention in the classroom.

This study investigated the effects of input- and output-based instruction on the development of L2 knowledge of 129 third-semester college students learning English in Iran. I found this to be an interesting study because it addressed both kinds of instruction and acknowledged the ongoing debate about the importance of each method and its role in student learning of a second language. The study recognizes that input-based instruction needs to be more than exposure alone and include instructional intervention in order to be effective, and that output-based instruction involve meaningful output practice activities supported with feedback. Although the study does not claim that output in and of itself leads to L2 development due to the need for teacher feedback, it does suggest that output-based instruction is as effective as or can be even more effective than input-based instruction.

The National Science Teachers Association has put together a cache of NGSS-aligned science lessons, for brainstorming, looking ahead to emerging standards, or introducing into your classroom.