Group items tagged

"Thinking Maps, developed by Dr. David Hyerle, are visual teaching tools that foster and encourage lifelong learning. They are based on a simple yet profound insight: The one common instructional thread that binds together all teachers, from pre-kindergarten through postgraduate, is that they all teach the same thought processes."

Graphic organizers is our topic for Monday, March 12.

This is a great website for students and teachers of any grade level. It's great for students in a jam and needing help or a more permanent system for helping students progress in multiple areas. Topics include math, science, humanities, finance, and economics ranging from basic to highly complex lessons. Students can track their individual progress; parents and teachers can target and monitor the progress of their children/students. It's free, easily accessible and a great tool for learning. Take a minute if you don't know about this website, it's really quite amazing.

+2

This is a rubric on the T4 strategy. It discusses what T4 is, how to use it as an assessment tool, what concepts teachers' should model, and gives a rubric for assessing the strategy. Very helpful if you are interested in teaching your students this strategy.

Second-Language Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Learning with Multimedia Lee B. Abraham Hispania , Vol. 90, No. 1 (Mar., 2007), pp. 98-108 Published by: American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20063468 This article presents a research study where ESL students were put into 3 groups a control group, a forced look-up group, and a choice look-up group. The study was trying to find out if using multimedia would aide in the increase in vocabulary in ESL students. The study found that students in the control group had little vocabulary growth, but the students in the two other groups had the same percentage growth of 18%. When I first started reading this article, I was interested to see if using multimedia tools would increase the vocabulary. I was specifically interested in the use of technology. There is no differentiation about which types of multimedia are better. As I further read, I thought that the students who were given a choice of what to look up would make more growth, because they would be working off their own motivation, but the study showed that whether they were forced to look up words or had a choice, they made the same growth. This reinforces the importance of teaching my students to use context clues, but when that doesn't help, to learn how to use a dictionary and the computer to find the meaning for words.

"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

The ideas about engagement and motivation and their place in encouraging at-risk students to read was incredibly interesting to me.  I wonder in which district in Michigan the study was done.

+2

Vocabulary building is valuable, not only for second-language learners but also for many clients we serve, from young children with developmental delays to older stroke survivors and every age between. Check out these free online pictures of vocabulary words, picture dictionaries, flashcards, games and activities, and more. Kuster, J. M. (2011, November 1). Building vocabulary with online tools. A S H A Leader, 16(13), 2. Retrieved from http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA272738779&v=2.1&u=lom_saginawvsu&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w

Mike Schmoker's "Focus" is a tremendous commentary on the elements of good instruction and the current state of education and teaching.

This reference text is divided into two sections: "What we teach, How we teach, and Literacy" and "Curriculum, Instruction, and Literacy in the Content areas." If one was to read this book, you would not necessarily need to read it "cover to cover." I believe that Section I is important for all teachers or those who have a hand in education. Section II, because of the way it is divided, could be read based on interests. There are specific discussions about how to integrate literacy into content areas. I felt that the discussion of literacy in mathematics and science was extremely interesting. Mike Schmoker's message was calling educators "back to the basics." As I read, I found myself scribbling in the margins, because the comments being made were so true they were almost "taboo." Schmoker contradicts the current "educational bandwagons" that so many administrators and districts may jump on. He quotes Pfeffer and Sutton, saying "leaders resist simplicity; they are often irrationally enamored by novelty and complexity" (p 16). It was refreshing to read such a strong argument for "pure, effective teaching." Regardless of the technology or other tools in the classroom, without a firm grasp on the ways to provide clear instruction, students will not learn. I have already used sections from this text in my building's PLC time. Though I have not used a specific strategy, I opened the dialogue about what should "be in a good lesson." Schmoker encourages the "five minute limit" where lectures cannot span longer than that before students are given a moment to talk or write. Formative assessments need to be used throughout daily lessons in order for the teacher to be guided into the next portion of the lesson. I have started to integrate more of these checks for understanding into my teaching, and I have found that I catch more misconceptions sooner than I would have normally. I also see that sections I felt required more time were grasped at a faster rate than anticipated

This article that I found I thought was very useful with new teachers developing classroom rules and procedures. Without the proper classroom routines and procedures in place a teachers classroom can be much different than they would want it to be. Noise levels, classroom wandering, and time being wasted can all occur. These things can be fixed but not by just announcing that no talking, staying in your seat, and staying on task are to be expected. These must be taught. The use of visual cues such as stop and start hand gestures as well as a gesture to say stop and start over if the procedure was not done correctly. By practicing the routine to mastery, students become aware that you are trying convey that this practice is important to their behavior. Establishing high standards is easier than having low standards. To show this, one must realize that reinforcement for bad behavior must come from the peer group. Research has reportedly shown that effective teachers show that they use the first few weeks of school teaching classroom rules. This is being proactive in your classroom.

I found this really cool website from the University of Michigan that provides apps that help students who struggle with reading and writing. Apps like this are great because they are interactive and fun. Some of the apps are free on this website and some of them cost money. I think these apps would be a great way to supplement a lesson. With the majority of students having smart phones now, having your students work on this in class once in a while would be a fun lesson too.

+2

Wordstash is a useful tool to help students with learning vocabulary in various different subjects for school. It would be something students could use outside of school to help them review or could be incorporated into lessons. Students love being able to use technology in their learning and this is a move towards that. I really love being able to make learning more friendly for students and I believe Wordstash would be a way to accomplish this.

+2

I really enjoyed this book, and it gave me great insights into how students are wired. How do they take in information and how do students use that information. There are four styles of students. The book goes into different ways of working with students and talks about how students concentrate, remember, and understand information. I liked the book because it provided useful information and tips on how to interact with students. I realize that learning styles have gotten a bad rap by some educators. Now having said that learning styles do present an interesting piece of the puzzle to how students learn. It is important to note that a learning style is a preference rather than an ability to learn. Individuals have a tendency to like information or processing to be done a certain way because there is a familiarity and comfort level. The awareness of a learning style can assist educators in setting students up for success by phrasing information in certain ways or pointing out that this information may be more uncomfortable for individuals to learn because of the way it is presented. The book is organized by learning style category and then by subject areas like concentration, understanding and remembering. The first six chapters focus on learning styles, and the remaining six chapters delve into specific topic areas as each relates to learning styles. The main topics of the book are learning styles, and three central topic areas related to learning. The topic areas are concentration, remembering, and understanding. The overall message of the book is that every person may have a dominant learning style, however each person has a certain amount of each learning styles' characteristics. Moreover as students, parents, and teachers become aware of their learning style it is meant to help them achieve and adapt to others who are not wired that way, not to be used as an excuse for poor performance or I can not do something.

You raise some important points, LeAnn. I think also it is important to help students (and ourselves?) learn to tap into other styles to further develop them.

This is the cutest website ever! If I taught elementary school, I would use this starfall website. There are different links from the main page that will help guide a young students learning. I looked at the first topic which was about teaching the sounds of the alphabet to students. I loved all the graphics and how the announcer sounded out each letter clearly. Very great tool. Check it out!!!! Starfall.com opened in September of 2002 as a free public service to teach children to read with phonics. Our systematic phonics approach, in conjunction with phonemic awareness practice, is perfect for preschool, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, special education, homeschool, and English language development (ELD, ELL, ESL).

This past week I watched my three year old nephew Brady. We tried out the Starfall website together, and Brady loved it. He knows most of his letters in the alphabet, but he really enjoyed the picutres that came after each letter. Great website and it was wonderful to see Brady so excited to interact with the picutres.

+2