Middle School | University of Michigan International Institute It’s Science July 27, 2011 Posted by Matt Miller in Fulbright, Korea, Uncategorized, Undergraduate. Tags: ETA, experiment, frisbee, incentives, Middle School Hypothesis: Male, Korean middle school students will participate more in class when there are tangible incentives (ie more than just pleasing Mr. Miller, impressing their classmates, and practicing English). Matt Miller uses fun classroom activities to help his students learn English. Tangible incentives: candy, American baseball cards, catching and throwing a Frisbee, catching and throwing a maize and blue University of Michigan football. Activities: 1) identifying vocabulary words from the week’s lesson 2) playing the game Jeopardy 3) making a past or future tense sentence about the weekend Experiment: The activities were conducted in classes of 40 students, sometimes with and sometimes without tangible incentives. Findings: For activity 1, a good number of students raised their hands when there was no tangible incentive offered.
Korean Model Schools: Classrooms on Steriods and Bred for Excellence What are model Korean schools? Daegu, South Korea. Kids chirp in unison after the teacher. Maybe they break into song as they break from their row and scurry along, moving their desks into their level groups. They call them “model schools” and last month, I got to attend an open observation of one. • Korean teachers who enter endless contests to bolster their point value by taking additional training workshops, employing innovative classroom techniques and are awarded excellence in their styles of teaching… • Students whose English-speaking levels boosted their own schools’ high ranking amongst other schools… Model school– a kind of school on learning steroids. Now, one of these schools was opening its doors to display its proven effectiveness and educators were invited to take a peek at what made its programs “role model” exemplary. A model teacher introduces the target expressions for a dialogue around the lesson’s subject. How hard is the job of the model Korean teacher?
Changing Our Thinking on Developmentally Appropriate Practice “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire” (Yeats, W.B. 2007). When your child completes his or her educational experience, what final product would you prefer? A child who is skilled at regurgitating rote information which has been passed along the educational spool; or a child who has been taught there are vast and infinite ideas and concepts to be explored and their imagination and ingenuity are the limits? I surmise you would select option two should you have the opportunity. Piaget states, “The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done” (Piaget). Why should we consider ourselves so superior as to strangulate our children into a predefined education of black and white? The NAEYC position statement points out that “teacher decision making is necessary for developmentally appropriate practice.” Play is a child’s work. Lisa Parrish
What Is Integrated Curriculum? by Susan M. Drake and Rebecca C. Burns In public schools in Asheville and Buncombe, North Carolina, students learn math skills through clog dancing and explore the solar system through modern dance. Students participate in a microsociety in an after-school program at Amistad Academy in New Haven, Connecticut. In these three examples, student achievement is a primary focus. Defining Integrated Curriculum What exactly is integrated curriculum? Defining integrated curriculum has been a topic of discussion since the turn of the 20th century. Correlation may be as slight as casual attention to related materials in other subject areas . . . a bit more intense when teachers plan it to make the materials of one subject interpret the problems or topics of another. Fusion designates the combination of two subjects, usually under the same instructor or instructors. Integration: the unification of all subjects and experiences. We joined this conversation in the early '90s. Multidisciplinary Integration
Copy of What is Developmentally Appropriate Pedagogy? by Stephanie DeMott on Prezi Cooperative Learning Strategies Home > ELL Topics from A to Z > Cooperative Learning Strategies By: Colorín Colorado (2007) Cooperative Learning has been proven to be effective for all types of students, including academically gifted, mainstream students and English language learners (ELLs) because it promotes learning and fosters respect and friendships among diverse groups of students. Students typically work in teams of four. ContributeStay on taskHelp each otherEncourage each otherShareSolve problemsGive and accept feedback from peers Cooperative Learning for ELLs Cooperative Learning is particularly beneficial for any student learning a second language. Some Cooperative Learning strategies There are some popular strategies that can be used with all students to learn content (such as science, math, social studies, language arts, and foreign languages). Round Robin Present a category (such as "Names of Mammals") for discussion. Other ideas Assign a math worksheet and ask students to work in pairs. Ferreiro, R. & M.
CSC | Webcasts for Educators - Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat Webcast:December 5, 2008 Life as a Kindergarten teacher can sometimes be lonely and isolating! But a new style of Kindergarten network focused on improving student achievement through collaborative inquiry is bringing Kindergarten teachers together from one family of schools for both personal support and professional learning. In this webcast, you will see how the teachers start with the assessed learning needs of their students and then draw on current research to help them study the impact of think-pair-share, repeated interactive read-alouds, and small-group instruction at learning centres. By going into the classrooms of three of the network members, we see first-hand how planned, purposeful, and playful talk promotes oral comprehension and vocabulary development in our youngest learners. The following questions are intended to promote deep thinking and professional dialogue: What aspects of oral language development are essential for young learners to acquire? Featuring: Share: