Anticipation guides ask students to express an opinion about ideas before they encounter them in a text or unit of study. Completing anticipation guides prepares students to recognize and connect to these themes as they surface in their learning. Reviewing anticipation guides at the end of a lesson or unit is one way to help students reflect on how learning new material may have influenced their opinions, perhaps by reinforcing previously held beliefs or by causing ideas to shift.
Character ChartsGraphic organizers, like the sample below, can be used to help students organize information about major and minor characters in a text. Completed character charts are useful tools for writing essays and studying for tests. They are often used to record information about literacy characters, but can also be adapted to record information about historical figures.
Document Analysis TemplatesAnalyzing historical documents requires students to identify the purpose, message and audience of a text. Document Analysis Forms are graphic organizers that guide students through a process of identifying important background information about a document (e.g. author/creator, date created, place, format, etc.) and using this data to determine the bias or perspective of a text.
A recent report entitled "Making Education Work" urges the British government to introduce radical changes into the English education system. The fun thing is this article mentions University of Northern Iowa!
Quality science education is based on standards that are rich in content and practice, with aligned curricula, pedagogy, assessment, and teacher preparation and development. It has been nearly 15 years since the National Research Council and the American Association for Advancement in Science produced the seminal documents on which most state standards are based. Since that time, major advances in science and our understanding of how students learn science have taken place and need to be reflected in state standards. The time is right to forge Next Generation Science Standards.