Classroom Techniques: Formative Assessment Idea Number Four Over the last couple of months, or so, we’ve blogged on a number of formative assessment strategies, all designed to elicit evidence of student learning so that teachers can adjust their classroom instruction effectively. To recap the first three ideas: 1. The Popsicle™ Stick2. The Exit Ticket3. The Whiteboard Each of these formative assessment strategies is simple, inexpensive and designed to engage all students in classroom learning. The fourth formative assessment idea is one that is most often called “Corners.” Corners don’t have to represent answers. There’s no right or wrong formative assessment technique. Have you used or heard of corners being used in the classroom?
Response: Using 'Brain-Based Learning' in the Classroom - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo UserID: iCustID: IsLogged: false IsSiteLicense: false UserType: anonymous DisplayName: TrialsLeft: 0 Trials: Tier Preview Log: Exception pages ( /teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2012/10/response_using_brain-based_learning_in_the_classroom.html ) = NO Internal request ( 198.27.81.81 ) = NO Open House ( 2014-04-17 12:12:30 ) = NO Site Licence : ( 198.27.81.81 ) = NO ACL Free A vs U ( 2100 vs 0 ) = NO Token Free (NO TOKEN FOUND) = NO Blog authoring preview = NO Search Robot ( Firefox ) = NO Purchased ( 0 ) = NO Monthly ( 00d830a4-36e4-c86c-534e-d5bd7813ec79 : 3 / 3 ) = NO 0: /tm/articles/2012/10/02/fp_nokes_historians.html 1: /ew/articles/2012/08/29/02el-flipped.h32.html Access denied ( -1 ) = NO Access granted ( 5 ) = YES
Study finds homework has limited value Updated Wed 26 Jun 2013, 10:38am AEST New research has found that homework is of little value to primary school children, and students are regularly given too much. Australian academics Richard Walker and Mike Horsley's new book Reforming Homework says homework for young primary school children is of little or no value when it comes to academic achievement. The book reviews international research on the subject and concludes that the quality of the homework that is set is more important than the quantity. Associate Professor Walker, of the University of Sydney, admits that homework can be a touchy subject. "There's a lot of disagreement, I have to say. He says another point that emerged from the research was the effect of the involvement of parents in homework. "Where parents are over-controlling or interfering in their student's homework activities, then that's been shown pretty clearly to not be beneficial," he said. "Homework is often an add-on.
Teachers' Expectations Can Influence How Students Perform : Shots - Health Blog hide captionTeachers interact differently with students expected to succeed. But they can be trained to change those classroom behaviors. iStockphoto.com Teachers interact differently with students expected to succeed. In my Morning Edition story today, I look at expectations — specifically, how teacher expectations can affect the performance of the children they teach. The first psychologist to systematically study this was a Harvard professor named Robert Rosenthal, who in 1964 did a wonderful experiment at an elementary school south of San Francisco. The idea was to figure out what would happen if teachers were told that certain kids in their class were destined to succeed, so Rosenthal took a normal IQ test and dressed it up as a different test. "It was a standardized IQ test, Flanagan's Test of General Ability," he says. After the kids took the test, he then chose from every class several children totally at random. But just how do expectations influence IQ? Still, people have tried.
Ten Takeaway Tips for Teaching Critical Thinking Suggestions from educators at KIPP King Collegiate High School on how to help develop and assess critical-thinking skills in your students. Ideally, teaching kids how to think critically becomes an integral part of your approach, no matter what subject you teach. But if you're just getting started, here are some concrete ways you can begin leveraging your students' critical-thinking skills in the classroom and beyond. 1. Questions, questions, questions. Questioning is at the heart of critical thinking, so you want to create an environment where intellectual curiosity is fostered and questions are encouraged. In the beginning stages, you may be doing most of the asking to show your students the types of questions that will lead to higher-level thinking and understanding. 2. Pose a provocative question to build an argument around and help your students break it down. 3. 4. 5. Lively discussions usually involve some degree of differing perspectives. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
How Can We Make Middle School Less Awful? Illustration by Charlie Powell. Every morning, the sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders at Paul Cuffee Middle School in Providence, R.I. join together in what’s called a Circle of Power and Respect. In this “CPR,” they discuss anything from an upcoming science project to how to get boys to stop purposefully clogging the toilets. Last spring, when a beloved teacher left the school, one classroom used their CPR time to process the change. “He said he’s leaving because this is good for his family,” a seventh-grade boy reassured his classmates. “It doesn’t have anything to do with us.” If this kind of frank, organized discussion of feelings sounds odd for middle schoolers, it is. Unfortunately, when it comes to our national conversation about what makes great schools, middle schools (which can serve any configuration of grades five through nine) and junior highs (usually grades seven, eight, and nine) are often like the overlooked middle child. What makes a great middle school? 1.
We Need a Pause for Reflection Reflection. The part after some learning where you think about it, connect with it, build a bridge to something new. The part that often gets skipped. Move on, keep going, more to do. We need to think about the tech tool we’ve learned how to use and connect with how it might be used in other situations. Schools are built around schedules, bells, and time limits. We need a pause. Are textbooks an obstacle to learning? SmartBlogs In “We Don’t Need No Stink’n Textbooks,” Tom Whitby convincingly argues that textbooks are as obstructive to learning as they are ubiquitous in American classrooms. He suggests that most teachers’ inability to emerge from their comfort zones — of which textbooks are an essential component — hinders them from utilizing the incomparably better resources available throughout the Internet. Whitby is certainly correct: Textbooks are an obstacle to learning, and teachers rely on them extensively nonetheless. However, moving beyond textbooks requires a more penetrating solution than curating the Internet under the guise of a digital textbook as suggested in the article. The reliance on textbooks runs deeper than habit; it’s a product of intellectual laziness. To truly move beyond these textbooks, teachers must be forced to confront the fundamental question of our craft, which Whitby mentions at the beginning of his article: “What should we teach?”
I Let Them Fail. I let my students fail. I actually walk away and allow it to happen. I don’t intervene. I don’t just try to make it easy. I stay quiet. Because when I let them fail, they engage. Reading (and Scaffolding) Expository Texts Introduction Expository text differs greatly from narrative text in tone, style, structure, and features.First, expository texts purvey a tone of authority, since the authors possess authentic and accurate information on the subjects they write about (Fisher &Frey, 2008). Second, these texts follow a style that is distinctly different from that of narrative text. Expository text uses clear, focused language and moves fromfacts that are general to specific and abstract to concrete. Another aspect of expository texts is that they utilize specific structures to present and explain information (Burke, 2000). A final aspect of informational text is its features or those items that an author uses to organize the text. Scaffolding strategies for expository text Readence, Bean, and Baldwin (2004) suggest a simple procedure to help students recognize, identify, and utilize text structure as a way to better comprehend and recall reading from expository text: 1. 2. 3. Steps for Structured Notetaking
From Management to Engagement As educators, we are always looking for management strategies to try in the classroom. Note I said "strategies" -- not "solutions." Many Edutopia bloggers have written about strategies and ideas for classroom management. I've also written a blog on PBL management strategies, but many of those same strategies can be used in non-PBL contexts. When picking strategies, we have to know that because they are strategies, some may not work. However, there is a larger, more important issue to consider before venturing into management strategies to solve a problem in the classroom: engagement! It is crucial to focus on engagement rather than management. Here, Pink is talking about the three things that are needed for engagement, but they still hold true when we think about our classrooms and what we are asking of our students. Autonomy If you want your students to be engaged, facilitate self-directed activities and learning models. Mastery Our students like getting better at stuff. Purpose