Group items tagged

This site gives instruction on how to set up a scientific paper and how to read one. Students very often don't understand how to set up a scientific paper and this gives a breakdown of exactly how to do it. It also gives instruction on how to interpret results, and how to decide if all of the criteria that need to be in a scientific paper have been met. Students very often don't understand how all of this can be accomplished. This would be of use for students who were having trouble writing a scientific paper.

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Also very useful for how to read a scholarly article in any discipline, not just science! I'm going to tag this one to use with future classes. Thanks!

"The mission of the Michigan Assessment Consortium is to improve student learning and achievement through a system of coherent curriculum, balanced assessment and effective instruction. We do this by collaboratively Promoting assessment knowledge and practice.Providing professional development.Producing and sharing assessment tools and products." Includes resources and archived videoconferences

I found this site that has free reading worksheets and short stories that are geared towards beginning ESL students reading levels. It incorporates lifeskills lessons as wells as geography, history, holidays, and famous Americans. It seems like a great resource for social studies. I actually found a worksheet with a camping theme to use with our "Camp-Reads-A-Lot" theme day we are doing tomorrow. This particular worksheet has a paragraph, true/false questions, personal questions, and a little writing section. I also found a worksheet about the American Flag, which is great, because we are studying American symbols. This worksheet has 3 paragraphs of information about the flag, true/false questions, and a Daily Oral Language type "correct the sentence" section. These aren't something I would use in isolation, but they are a great resource for adding to and differentiating instruction.

For my first journal, I read this article about multi-sensory language arts instruction.  It claims that if you can provide students with visual, auditory, and tactile-kinesthetic methods for learning, they are more likely to be successful.  One of the things that I agreed with most strongly that it seems many educators today shy away from is the idea that students should "practice to the point of automatization."  Automatic reading is not the key to comprehension but it is surely a necessary foundation for meaningful reading.  When I was a student, we practiced grammar and spelling until it was second-nature and generally my current abilities testify to that.  However, we have steered away from correctness in favor of sparing student egos.  I do not think that it has done them any good.  I wholeheartedly agree with this article that we MUST train our students to be good readers and writers. 

More emphasis is being placed on fluency. You can't understand what a text means if you can't figure out what it says. We don't want students to simple "bark at print" but there has to be a balance between fluency and comprehension.Was there anything in the article you would apply to your own teaching?

Lyons, W. & Thompson, S.A. (2011, October). Guided Reading in Inclusive Middle Years Classrooms. Intervention in School and Clinic, 47: 158. Retrieved January 27, 2012, from http://isc.sagepub.com.huaryu.kl.oakland.edu/content/47/3/158.full.pdf This study was interesting, because it focuses on something that I am sure so many teachers struggle with - how to teach students who demonstrate a wide variety/range of ability and needs. This study took a really "rough" socioeconomic level of 4th -8th graders and their teachers, and using guided reading as their main method of instruction DID see an 80% of students advance at least one, if not more levels. This was attributed to the fact that in small guided reading groups teachers could spend more time with small groups of students, targeting individual needs. That was the warm fuzzy. Of course, the part that this article mentions in the end, and would stop most teachers in their tracks before attempting to duplicate this, is that each classroom was equipped with several teachers and teacher assistants to make this work. Additionally, there were many times where the rest of the class NOT consisting of the 3 to 5 students in the guided reading group were supposed to work independently. All in all, every study has its flaws - the interesting thing here is that despite them, students still improved overall.

oops...ok I edited my post and stuck the citation in it...thanks!

Interesting to note some of the different terms used in the Canadian Schools, such as "families living in vulnerable circumstances" and "enhanced funding." Probably akin to our use of "at-risk" and "Title I." You are right, most teachers would "stop in their tracks" with regard to the two teachers. This article refers to an inclusion setting, in which the special ed teacher "pushes in" with the special ed students and co-teaches with the gen ed teacher. I did a NCA QAR visit last spring in a school with 4 or 5 teachers in a grade, and 4 paras in the school. It was either 2nd or 3rd grade. Every day at the designated time, all the paras would go into that pod of the school, and the students would move around to different teachers or paras and everyone got guided reading every day. It requires a shift in thinking and lots of collaboration and cooperation, but it can be done.

Collection of resources related to CCSS. Includes links to various state Common Core sites as well as instruction strategy sites.

Here is another Symbaloo collection!

Strategies for Reading Comprehension for social studies, but you could use it for a variety of content areas. A very nice site, and you can actually dowload forms and it gives you instructions on how to use the forms. For me this will be a keeper site.

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Teaching prohibition & organized crime with The Great Gatsby and the attached resources is a BREEZE! (:

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Resources for K-12 science lessons!  This is awesome and has everything from The Very Hungry Caterpillar to Animal Farm reading with science. 

Great interactive reading activity for a Spanish classroom! 

American Revolution - Primary Sources Lessons

Opening the Door: Teaching Students to Use Visualization to Improve Comprehension