Group items tagged

"As you are watching, ask yourself: What changed by using, in this case, the iPad and ShowMe app? Could the same [learning] have been accomplished by keeping students' illustrations analog? Was there differentiation potential? Can this type of "activity" be used as an assessment to replace/upgrade traditional assessment? Are the movie clips potential artifacts for digital portfolios? Could these movie clips be part of a variety of student work at a parent-teacher conference? Was any learning amplified by placing it on the classroom blog to share with families? What skills were practiced? What literacies were supported? Was it worth the extra time investment, the learning curve?"

"A prevalent misconception about standards in general is that they simply specify learning goals to be achieved." Big Idea # 1 - The Common Core Standards have new emphases and require a careful reading. Big Idea # 2 - Standards are not curriculum. Big Idea # 3 - Standards need to be "unpacked." Big Idea # 4 - A coherent curriculum is mapped backwards from desired performances. Big Idea #5 - The Standards come to life through the assessments.

"As I design a lesson or assessment, I ask myself if what I've designed, or what the students must master, correlates to the important skills of: Collaboration Communication Critical Thinking Creativity My lessons and tests must incorporate one or more of of the four Cs to, in my opinion, be worthy of spending precious instructional time in the classroom. On another note, the other short rubric I keep in my head is related to differentiating my lessons. Looking at teacher and education author Dr. Carol Tomlinson's list of ways to differentiate in the classroom, you'll notice that this aligns nicely with the four Cs above. Tomlinson explains that the four elements that lend themselves naturally to differentiation are: Process Environment Content Product"

"The problem is not technical. Nor is it motivational. Nor is it moral. The problem inheres in your unreflective acceptance of assumptions and axioms that seem so obviously right, natural, and proper that to question them is to question your reality. Therefore, faced with failure after failure, having tried this, that, and almost everything else, you don't examine your bedrock assumptions. Instead, you come up with variations on past themes?now with more desperation and anger, but less hope."[8] As we work to bring about meaningful change in education, let us enlarge our focus beyond the externals --books, the curriculum, teaching methodologies, assessment. Only by including the internal processes through which those externals are filtered will we gain a more complete perspective -- one that holds great promise as we seek out new horizons for learning."

"Here's a great topic for news junkies: "Watergate 4.0: How Would the Story Unfold in the Digital Age?" Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein gave their assessment at the annual American Society of News Editors conference this month by referring to how Yale students answer a similar question assigned in an advanced journalism class."

The Illustrative Mathematics Project offers guidance to states, assessment consortia, testing companies, and curriculum developers by illustrating the range and types of mathematical work that students will experience in a faithful implementation of the CCSS. The website features a clickable version of the Common Core in mathematics and the first round of "illustrations" of specific standards with associated classroom tasks and solutions. **log-in required