Literacy in the Digital Age: Five Sites With High-Quality Informational Text Editor’s Note: Teaching Channel has partnered with Student Achievement Partners on a blog series about digital literacy tools and their effective use by educators. One of the most exciting shifts in the Common Core State Standards is the increased use of content-rich, informational text. Let’s think about this. Preparing our students to be college- and career-ready is our priority. Below, we share five sites that will help you find these texts with ease and even differentiate the same article for the different learners in your room. 1. Newsela is an innovative way to build reading comprehension with nonfiction text that’s relevant. Newsela supports differentiation through interest and ability level. We’ve used Newsela with seventh grade students and saw a drastic improvement in their reading abilities. Text sets are another way to utilize Newsela. They’ve recently launched an extension of their site that is explicitly designed for elementary students. 2. 3. 4. Continue the Conversation
How To Give Students Specific Feedback That Actually Helps Them Learn - TeachThought PD How To Give Students Specific Feedback That Actually Helps Them Learn by Justin Chando To tell a student “great job”or “this needs work” is a missed opportunity. Everyone loves to hear they did a great job. We were recently talking about this example among ourselves at Chalkup as we mulled over the future of feedback and assessment. We thought it might be interesting to take Wiggin’s list a step further and think through how to make these qualities actionable, asking ourselves what strategies look like for keeping feedback solid across the board. It is goal-oriented. I’ve learned that great feedback creates a roadmap for students; it shows them how far they can go in the mastery of a subject or skill by outlining specific places for improvement or highlighting successful behaviors/techniques. What does goal-oriented feedback look like? It’s about getting excited as a student starts to understand geometry or develop an interest in literature. It is transparent. It is timely.
Why young kids need less class time — and more play time — at school (iStock) I have published a number of pieces over the last year or so on the importance of allowing young children to play in school rather than sit for hours at a desk laboring over academic tasks. Here is a new post making the case for why less class time — and more play time — will actually lead to a better education for kids, however counter-intuitive that may sound. It was written by Debbie Rhea, an associate dean of the Harris College of Nursing and Health Sciences and director of the LiiNk Project (www.liinkproject.tcu.edu. ) at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth. The LiiNk Project is described in the post. By Debbie Rhea It seems counter-intuitive to think that less classroom time and more outdoor play would lead to a better education for kids. For years, educators have tried different unsuccessful strategies – more testing, more instruction– to reverse these trends. Other countries have figured this out. [Why so many kids can’t sit still in school today]
I Know Why Your Students Don't Speak English… And What to Do About It If students today graduate from high school or even from university without being able to “speak” English, it is simply because we are not giving them enough practice in… speaking. Ask students to give you feedback or to explain their wishes, and they will inevitably say, “More speaking in class.” So how do you manage to make students progress in the skill they lack? Common teaching techniques dissected First let’s take a look at common teaching techniques. An illusion It is an illusion to think that students will learn to speak and pronounce words with a decent accent by simply listening to a teacher, to classmates or even to a recording. An analogy with sports, music or dancing You don’t learn a sport or perfect a talent like singing or dancing by watching others perform. A French Nobel Prize winner speaks about communication The big question So getting back to the question, “What should we do?” A young Swedish girl We all seem to agree on the importance of becoming operational in English.
How Guessing Games Help Kids Solve Math Problems Do you remember the scene in the movie Rainman in which Dustin Hoffman, playing Ray, an autistic savant, instantaneously counts the number of toothpicks spilled on a restaurant floor by a waitress? “Two hundred forty-six total,” Ray intones. His brother, Charlie (played by Tom Cruise), asks the waitress how many toothpicks were in the box she’d just opened. “Two hundred and fifty,” she answers. Charlie smiles at Ray. “Pretty close,” he says. The rest of us can’t estimate with anything close to Ray’s exactitude. “We wanted to know whether thinking intuitively about numbers, such as approximating and comparing sets without counting, helps in actually doing math,” said University of Illinois psychology professor Daniel Hyde in a report on the the UI website. “Hyde and his coauthors report that practicing this kind of simple, instinctive numerical exercise can improve children’s ability to solve math problems.
What is Slam Poetry? Read this article about the history of slam poetry and see if you can answer the true or false questions after. Then, why don’t you try and write some of your own slam poetry? There are slam events happening in most major cities in the world. Slam Poetry Slam poetry is a form of competitive performance poetry in which participants offer works no longer than three minutes and are judged by (1 )randomly picked audience members. How Did This All Get Started? In 1984, a construction worker named Marc Smith was hosting poetry readings in a jazz club in Chicago called the Get Me High Lounge. Marc (4 )honed his idea and selected the terminology he used from baseball and bridge. The first ever National Slam competition was held in San Francisco in 1990, and a different city has hosted the Nationals every year since. Article taken from historylink.org Have you ever heard of slam poetry before? Useful Vocabulary Decide if the following statements are true or false: 1.
A doctor’s plea: Restore recess in metro Atlanta schools | Get Schooled Sarah Gard Lazarus, a parent, pediatric emergency room doctor and native Atlantan, writes today about the critical need for recess in schools to improve children’s health and well-being. By Sarah Gard Lazarus I’m a physician. In my practice, I fix things. If someone has a cut, I sew it. Kindergartners get into recess. As a local pediatrician, I advocate for children on a daily basis. The AAP explains that children who get regular recess are healthier, better able to focus, and develop the social and emotional skills necessary to be engaged learners. Children from Finland have some of the highest scores on international standardized tests, much higher that the children in the United States. Young children learn through movement. In many families throughout metro Atlanta, children do not have a safe place to play outside of school. By depriving our children of recess, we are not improving test scores; we are creating unhealthier children and impeding learning.
5 Things About Google Slides You Did Not Know - Teacher Tech This is a little cheating as some of these features are new so you could not have known!! Google Slides is one of my favorites. I use it to have students GIVE ME information rather than get information. Truly transformative for teaching. 1. When inserting video you are no longer restricted to YouTube videos. Sharing Settings You want to make sure your videos are not private. Snagit One of my favorite favorite things is Snagit. Screencastify Use the Chrome extension Screencastify (pay for the upgrade, you want all the features) to make screen recording videos (that include your face and allow you to annotate while you record). 2. You can create Google Slides many ways. slides.google.com/create If you throw /create to the end of slides.google.com it will automatically just create a blank Google Slides on the spot. 3. Hat tip to Christine Pinto for discovering this one! One of the 4 C’s is for students to “Clearly Communicate Their Ideas.” 4. Google was built on collaboration. 5.
5 Engaging Uses for Letters in Your Classroom The idea of writing a business letter with a class may elicit eye rolls and under-the-breath scoffs of "Oh, that old chestnut!" from many a contemporary teacher. But if we desire to lead classrooms where we value reflective thought and carefully crafted words, letters can be a surprisingly rich genre to explore. Whether it's a letter that you write to your students or a letter that your students send, here are five first-class strategies that address key skills and envelop your students in learning. 1. Letters on a Rubric This year, I made the decision that on every rubric and scoring guide for a major assignment, I would begin with a brief, heartfelt letter to my students. 2. When I feel like students are becoming a bit too task-centric in their thinking (i.e. their first question when starting a new book is "What will be the project/paper for this book?") For instance, in one open letter to the class, I wondered: There was no major project associated with this reading. Drew reflected: 3.
Educational Technology and Mobile Learning: 10 Great Web Tools for Creating Digital Quizzes June 20, 2016 Over the last couple of years, we have reviewed a wide variety of educational web tools to use to create digitally based quizzes. Below is a collection of some of the most popular quizzing tools we have covered so far. Be it a flipped, blended, virtual or even traditional classroom, the tools below will enable you to easily create interactive quizzes, questionnaires and polls to share with students in class. Have a look and share with us your feedback. FlipQuiz is a web tool that allows teachers to easily create gameshow-style boards for test reviews in the classroom. 2- PurposeGames PurposeGames is a website for engaging learners through creating and playing games.As a teacher you can use PurposeGames to create a variety of game-based quizzes. 3- Riddle Riddle is an excellent web tool for teachers. This is a cool web tool to use to create quizzes and assess your students. Add 3 questions or 30. 7- JeopardyLabs Quizlet is a great website for students and educators.
Sir Ken Robinson: Creativity Is In Everything, Especially Teaching From Creative Schools by Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica, published April 21, 2015, by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright by Ken Robinson, 2015. Creative Teaching Let me say a few words about creativity. It’s sometimes said that creativity cannot be defined. There are two other concepts to keep in mind: imagination and innovation. Creativity is putting your imagination to work. None of these is true. Creativity is about fresh thinking. Creativity is not the opposite of discipline and control. Creativity is not a linear process, in which you have to learn all the necessary skills before you get started.
4 Useful Tools for Creating Non-traditional Quizzes July 29, 2015 Here are four great web tools for creating online quizzes to share with your students. We have already reviewed these tools in separate posts in the past and some of you might already be familiar with them. However, for those of you who haven't seen them before, these are web-based platforms for creating a wide variety of interactive quizzes. For more choices on quiz making tools, check out this page. 1- FlipQuiz FlipQuiz is a web tool that allows teachers to easily create gameshow-style boards for test reviews in the classroom. PurposeGames is a website for engaging learners through creating and playing games.As a teacher you can use PurposeGames to create a variety of game-based quizzes. 3- Riddle Riddle is an excellent web tool for teachers. This is a cool web tool to use to create quizzes and assess your students. Add 3 questions or 30.
Who Controls The Flow Of Information In Your Classroom? - Who Controls The Flow Of Information In Your Classroom? Flow As A Litmus Test For Quality Teaching by Lee Carroll, PhD I’ve been thinking about Teacher Appraisals for years, when finally it hit me like a flash—why can’t they be super-simple? What Are They Worth? First, are teacher appraisals worth doing at all? Is There A Progressive Method Out There? As Head of Department, I’ve been a champion of peer-appraisals for some time. Although there are a few cutting-edge administrators out there, many hew to the top-down way of assessing teachers and never tried teacher-to-teacher. My Discovery Now I’ve discovered something even easier. This year we’ve agreed to use Charlotte Danielson’s state-of-the-art Framework for Teacher Appraisals. Yet in conducting these rigorous reviews, I’ve noticed something. The trait that tells it all for me is—FLOWS. What Is ‘Outflow’? First let me define—outflow indicates the direction of communication. How Did The Teacher Support Student-Initiative? –Albert Einstein
Educational Technology and Mobile Learning: 20+ Educational Tools and Apps That Support 21st Century Learning October 8, 2015 Technology has radically transformed the notion of education to the extent that a label such as 21st century learning is a commonplace in the nascent teaching literature. There are now multiple forms of learning (e.g flipped, blended, synchronous/asynchronous, mobile...etc) that are primarily shaped and mediated by some sort of technology be it web or mobile based. This is, in our eyes, not technological determinism as some prefer to call it but rather an appropriation of the emerging technologies for the service of education. Technology, as we like to think about it, is an amplifier of learning. It enhances, extends and creates learning possibilities that, just a decade ago, would have been unimaginable. The purpose of today’s post is to share with you some of the tools and apps that best epitomize this notion of 21st century learning. 1-Apps and websites for learning coding 2- Tools for curating educational content