Group items tagged

"First Day of Class Activities that Create a Climate for Learning By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog There's no discounting the importance of the first day of class. What happens that day sets the tone for the rest of the course."

I don't care what her bio says, the author HAD to have gone to AUNE. Great activities for first day of class...OR opening up a meeting, workshop, etc.

Trisha Riche' is a kindergarten inclusion teacher at R. L. Brown Elementary in Jacksonville, FL. The grade-level chair at her school, Trisha was selected as one of the top ten most innovative educators in the country for The Great American Teach Off. Here's an experiment you can conduct in many schools, maybe even the school where you teach.

Ever wonder if teachers have an image problem? This site is all about "rebranding" teaching. Good downloadable materials.

"I used to think I was a pretty good teacher. Now I realize that I did the best I could with the knowledge I had, but my classroom was woefully inadequate for many of my students. I failed to equip them with what they needed."

Some good video footage of a teacher explaining how the CSP has impacted her teaching

"The key to generating truly innovative ideas, he says, is learning how to challenge the status quo-which is why he's busy trying to teach people how to "think wrong'" Important pieces to consider when engaged in our work.

Can creativity be taught? Absolutely. The real question is: "How do we teach it?"

"The best approach is to learn the work by doing the work and having someone that you can share and reflect with. I think teachers respond well to the immediacy and collegiality of this approach."

Brings up interesting question of "When do we start?"  Also, about possibilities for teaching parents to be teachers.

"The problem with many assessments is they measure what students know not what they can do with that knowledge.How can instructional strategies help learners develop expertise in the content area?"

"1.What is the ultimate goal of teaching and learning? For students to know something on the surface or for students to be able to think and do something differently?"

I get fired up when I read articles like this...they validated my belief that our focus as educators should be to teach our students how to learn rather than to fill them with information. jf

"The researchers' conclusion was that, in the context of strange toys of unknown function, prior explanation does, indeed, inhibit exploration and discovery." I'm looking forward to talking about this on Saturday. Is it appropriate sometimes to limit exploration & discovery? Or is exploration & discovery the default method of a critical skills classroom?

Interested in your discussion results, Tom. My gut feeling is that pure discovery learning is inefficient, can promote frustration which can lead to loss of interest, and possible misconceptions. Isn't coaching and guided discovery a way of teaching the process of problem solving?

By Linda Darling-Hammond and Beverly Falk As the internationally benchmarked Common Core State Standards, or CCSS, are adopted in states across the country, educators are seeking ways to support an increasingly diverse student population to meet these more demanding expectations. The likelihood that students will achieve the aims of the standards will be substantially shaped by how well teachers teach these challenging academic skills in ways that support a wide range of learners.

Supervising professional and support staff for a Comprehensive PreK through 8th grade elementary school. Must be a dynamic educational leader with a proven knowledge of curriculum, teaching methods and assessment. Candidate should be astute, creative individual, open to new ideas, capable of analyzing data and recommending changes. The district is currently involved in a review and revision of our curriculum, the development of formative assessments and a district-wide adoption of the Antioch University Critical Skills program.

Interesting take on building learning communities

"Powerful learning begins to manifest when students take responsibility and ownership for their learning - when they become co-creators of their learning experience, rather than their education being something that is done to them. True student empowerment and engagement begins when we cross the threshold of co-creation."

Embedding technology into our classrooms should begin with the question "How do we enable students to use technology as part of the learning process...rather than use it as part of our teaching process?"

"I have moved to criteria lists because it doesn't really talk about an evaluation aspect per say, but rather a list of expectations."