10X: "Good Job" Alternatives. TEACHING YOUNG CHILDREN | VOL. 7 NO. 1 Download PDF Parents and teachers often say “good job” as an automatic response to a child’s action. “You ate all of your peas. Good job!” “You did a good job putting away the toys.” A “good job” now and then is fine, but it doesn’t help children understand why what they did was good. Preschoolers need to know what they did, why it worked, or why it shows they are capable.
Try the following suggestions to give preschoolers specific, detailed information that recognizes their achievements and encourages their learning. Use sentence starters. Notice and give feedback about efforts. Inv ite children to talk. Pay attention to details. Say “thank you.” Identify a goal before responding. Give nonverbal feedback. Use mirroring. Highlight children’s work. Encourage next steps. Childcare Providers | Learn the Signs. Act Early | NCBDDD. You spend your day working with, playing with, and watching children, and you are already familiar with many milestones – such as pointing at objects, smiling, and playing with others – that mark a child’s development. All children are unique, but sooner or later, you will see a child who is not developing as they should. You are a valuable resource to parents! They look to you for information on their child, and they trust you.
The “Learn the Signs. Act Early.” campaign has created a series of resources to help you educate parents on the full range of child development. Tools and Resources “Learn the signs. Free MaterialsYou can view, download, print, and order the various "Learn the signs. “Go Out and Play!” The campaign is happy to offer a new tool to help you monitor childhood development during an activity you do everyday with your students – play! Hand Out Milestone ChecklistsYou can print out milestone checklists for parents or your staff to complete. Include “Learn the Signs. Www.childrenshealthfund.org/sites/default/files/dev-and-mental-health-primary-care-screening-tools.pdf. STEM Challenges | Preschool Matters... Today! From the National Journal: ” . . . And let’s not forget the optics. Science is still for nerds, Bill Gates’ fame aside. These are teenagers we’re talking about, after all. To the average girl on the street, meeting the Seattle Seahawks is still way cooler than meeting a superstar rocket scientist.
Even if she rooted for the Broncos.” If that girl’s in preschool, though, she doesn’t yet think that the Seattle Seahawks are cooler than Sid the Science Kid. How can we ensure that she never does learn these lessons about STEM? Yet, many of the challenges for upper grades teaching plague earlier grades, too. Consider this a plea for putting a fair amount of these newly committed teacher training dollars into early education. –Kimberly Brenneman, Assistant Research Professor, NIEER.
STEM Challenges. President Obama showed off his inner geek last week when he presided over the White House Science Fair. He said that meeting "superstar biologists and engineers and rocket scientists and robot-builders" that day was "far more important" than his meeting with 2014 Super Bowl Champion Seattle Seahawks the week before. (Of the Seahawks' meeting, he simply said, "That was cool. ") In conjunction with the science fair, the Education Department announced $35 million in competitive grants for programs that train teachers in science, technology, engineering, and math.
The department said shortages of highly effective STEM teachers are particularly acute in high schools. State officals tell the agency that they are having a harder time finding high school math and science teachers than teachers in subjects like English and Social Studies. It's almost an article of faith in policymaking circles that STEM fields are among the most important for the country to support and promote. Formative vs Summative Assessment - Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation. Formative assessment The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning.
More specifically, formative assessments: help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need workhelp faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately Formative assessments are generally low stakes, which means that they have low or no point value. Draw a concept map in class to represent their understanding of a topicsubmit one or two sentences identifying the main point of a lectureturn in a research proposal for early feedback Summative assessment The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark. Summative assessments are often high stakes, which means that they have a high point value. Classroom Assessment | Basic Concepts. A. Formative vs. Summative Assessments Classroom assessments can include a wide range of options -- from recording anecdotal notes while observing a student to administering standardized tests.
The options can be roughly divided into two categories -- formative assessments and summative assessments. Formative assessments are on-going assessments, reviews, and observations in a classroom. Summative assessments are typically used to evaluate the effectiveness of instructional programs and services at the end of an academic year or at a pre-determined time. The following table highlights some formative and summative assessments that are common in K12 schools. Classroom Assessment | Basic Concepts. Why Formative Assessments Matter. Summative assessments, or high stakes tests and projects, are what the eagle eye of our profession is fixated on right now, so teachers often find themselves in the tough position of racing, racing, racing through curriculum. But what about informal or formative assessments? Are we putting enough effort into these? What Are They?
Informal, or formative assessments are about checking for understanding in an effective way in order to guide instruction. They are used during instruction rather than at the end of a unit or course of study. And if we use them correctly, and often, yes, there is a chance instruction will slow when we discover we need to re-teach or review material the students wholly "did not get" -- and that's okay. Because sometimes we have to slow down in order to go quickly. What this means is that if we are about getting to the end, we may lose our audience, the students. We are all guilty of this one -- the ultimate teacher copout: "Are there any questions, students? " Www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/1001270_teacher_attrition.pdf. Common Core State Standards.
Welcome to the Share My Lesson Information Center for the Common Core State Standards. As well as a wealth of facts and statistics about the standards, you'll also be able to find aligned curricula and lesson plans, the latest news on the Common Core and relevant videos and links. In addition, you can access expert advice and opinions in our Common Core Forum, where you can ask or answer questions on the standards. The Common Core State Standards will require big transitions and changes to the professional lives of educators and we want to help. In the meantime, feel free to upload your resources and let us know which of the standards they are aligned to. You can let us know which specific standard the resource relates to in the description field; be sure to tag the resource as well using the drop-down menu.
For more information, see this video. CCSS Forum Join the conversation about the Common Core and what it means for America's classrooms CCSS Forum. Sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/Watching_Teachers_Work.pdf. Sites/newamerica.net/files/policydocs/Watching_Teachers_Work.pdf. Promoting Data in the Classroom. Click here to view PDF This report explores the use of student achievement data to improve classroom instruction. The paper, Promoting Data in the Classroom: Innovative State Models and Missed Opportunities , highlights examples from two states, Oregon and Delaware, of federally funded, state-driven efforts to equip teachers with the tools they need to utilize student data. The No Child Left Behind Act launched a decade of development in state educational data systems, and since its passage, states and school districts have produced reams of student achievement data each year. However, unless teachers are able to capture those and other data and utilize them in the classroom to ensure each student’s needs are met, they are of little value to school officials or students.
This report from the New America Foundation offers federal policymakers a view into two states’ federally funded efforts to implement data systems that work for teachers. The report includes: An Ocean of Unknowns. Click here to view PDF What is the best way to use data to measure teacher impact on student learning? States and school districts are attempting to navigate these uncharted waters. As of 2012, 20 states and DC require evidence of student learning to play a role in evaluating teacher performance. As a result, better information on student learning is in high demand, and no grade level is immune. Historically, most states have required standardized testing only in grades three through eight. But now those 21 states, with likely more to follow, must figure out comparable ways to measure student learning in the “untested grades,” as well, including pre-K, kindergarten, and grades one and two. And even with testing in grade three, a lack of baseline data has implications for those teachers too.
Determining growth measures for these grades is among the most complex pieces of teacher evaluation reform. Sources: New America Foundation; National Council on Teacher Quality; Education Week; U.S. No Rich Child Left Behind. Javier Jaén Here’s a fact that may not surprise you: the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students; they also have higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion.
Whether you think it deeply unjust, lamentable but inevitable, or obvious and unproblematic, this is hardly news. It is true in most societies and has been true in the United States for at least as long as we have thought to ask the question and had sufficient data to verify the answer. What is news is that in the United States over the last few decades these differences in educational success between high- and lower-income students have grown substantially. If not the usual suspects, what’s going on? Sean F. THE GREAT DIVIDE - Opinionator. The French economist Thomas Piketty swept across the United States last week with a dire warning: Income inequality isn’t going to go away, and it probably will get worse.
Only policies that directly address the problem — in particular, progressive taxation — can help us change course. At a panel discussion in Washington of Piketty’s new blockbuster, “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” the American economist Robert Solow, who served on President Kennedy’s Council of Economic Advisers, took the long view as he formulated his response to the idea of trying to democratize ownership of capital in our country. “Good luck with that,” he said. Read more… Most people, asked whether parental involvement benefits children academically, would say, “of course it does.” Over the past few years, we conducted an extensive study of whether the depth of parental engagement in children’s academic lives improved their test scores and grades.
Javier Jaén When the G.I. Read more… Read more… State Lawmakers Recognize Education of 'Whole Child' - Rules for Engagement. Membership, policy, and professional development for educators - ASCD. Reforming the Teacher Profession: From Consequences to Collaboration | NewAmerica.net. Much of the discussion around the President’s 2014 education budget has centered on proposed initiatives for universal pre-K and a $1 billion Race to the Top competition for college affordability and completion. Compared to these bold new proposals, K-12 education seems to have drawn the short straw.
The U.S. Department of Education could see some new or expanded programming for K-12 – additional money for the Promise Neighborhoods program, a new competitive grant competition for high school redesign, and an expanded School Turnaround Grants program – but nothing like what it has outlined for very young and adult learners. The lack of banner initiatives for K-12 belies the attention that the Department has paid to the issue of teacher professionalism and evaluation over the past year. We would be remiss not to mention that issues of teacher evaluation and accountability have stirred a lot of public attention this year. New Teacher Evals- Article Dec. 2012. New York City teachers discussed preparations for new teacher evaluations with Chancellor Dennis Walcott in September 2011. In Washington, D.C., officials shortened a new teacher evaluation checklist after complaints from teachers and principals that it was too long and time-consuming.
In Memphis, Tenn., after a year of piloting new evaluations and a summer of training, some principals and teachers remained confused and overwhelmed. In Louisiana, one expert warned of lawsuits as the state began to roll out a truncated observation system without first testing it. But in New Haven, Conn., union officials and reformers alike have praised a collaborative effort to help teachers improve under the city’s new rating system. As New York City officials and union leaders wrangle over the design of new teacher evaluations due to roll out citywide next year, the experiences of other states and districts offer both inspiration and lessons about what not to do.