Research: How SEL Classroom Management Techniques Build Academic Achievement Respect, responsibility, and a community-based learning atmosphere promote success at Mount Desert Elementary School, a K-8 public school in Northeast Harbor, Maine. An important aspect of the culture at Mount Desert is allowing students and teachers autonomy to determine what works best in their classrooms for promoting students' learning. Credit: Alyssa Fedele Mount Desert Elementary School is a small, K-8 public school in Northeast Harbor, Maine, that has successfully created a strong learning community that is the basis of the school's academic success. Responsive Classroom An Approach That Helps Build Positive Relationships The foundation for a community-based learning atmosphere at Mount Desert begins in the earliest grades, where a Responsive Classroom approach is used in all K-3 classrooms. Every morning, the entire class comes together as a community to greet one another, share news, and warm up for the day ahead. Using Discipline Challenges as Learning Opportunities Galantino, M.
Habits of Instructional Leaders - Hillsborough, NC Instructional leadership is essential in K-12 schools. What is an instructional leader? A second grade teacher can serve as an instructional leader. Principals and assistant principals should also be viewed as instructional leaders. A central office staff member may have the title of Chief Academic Officer or Curriculum Director, but that does not mean they are the only instructional leader in the school district. “One of the tasks of curriculum leadership is to use the right methods to bring the written, the taught, the supported, and the tested curriculums into closer alignment, so that the learned curriculum is maximized” (Glatthorn, 1987, p. 4). How do you 'maximize' the learned curriculum? 3 Ways To Grow As An Instructional Leader 1. I have been participating in Twitter chats for the past two years. 2. According to Schmoker (2006), "Mere collegiality won't cut it. 3. It is difficult to maximize student understanding if you do not know the goals.
Make Your Students “Poetry Geniuses”! by Abi Frost I recently discovered a web resource called “rap genius”. This Brooklyn-based startup allows users to explore and understand the meaning behind song lyrics, poetry and literature. The long term vision is to annotate all text, including news stories and long-form works like War and Peace. Teachers have started using the platform to teach students critical reading skills, so I decided to try it out in my small seventh grade reading class for struggling readers. I saw this as one engaging way to address Common Core Standard RL.7.4: RL.7.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of rhymes and other repetitions of sounds (e.g., alliteration) on a specific verse or stanza of a poem or section of a story or drama. I designed a review lesson for my poetry analysis unit using the Poetry Genius tab on the Rap Genius website. -Abi Frost, Middle School Special Education Reading Specialist
Turn On Your Brain | Resources and Reflection on Contemporary Issues in Education Webb's Depth of Knowledge Rigor. Text Complexity. Difficulty. What do these words all mean in the world of thinking? Teaching? Learning? I learned about Webb’s Depth of Knowledge just last year when I was at a Larry Ainsworth Professional Development workshop about unwrapping Common Core State Standards and aligning our instructional sequences to those standards. So, what is Webb’s Depth of Knowledge and what’s the big deal? Branching off of a “flipped classroom approach” and because I don’t pretend to be an expert on Webb’s Depth of Knowledge, click here to review (or learn about) the four levels of Webb’s Depth of Knowledge continuum: DoK1. DoK3. DoK4. I believe that each unit needs a mixture, or a balance, of all of the levels above. How do we apply Webb's Depth of Knowledge into our classrooms? If we are asking students to research, for example, here are some ways that we might be able to integrate DoK into a research unit sequentially: DoK1. DoK2. DoK3. DoK4. How does that look in Writing Workshop? DoK2.
Books for Growth and Professional Development By Caralee Adams Great books read and recommended by teachers It’s time to hit the bookstore.We asked a team of top teachers, editors, and experts for their recommendations for the best books on education of the past decade. 1. With just 120 pages, this small book is packed with big ideas about the importance of teacher language. Other Favorites from Allington:Kindergarten Literacy by Anne McGill-Franzen (Scholastic, 2005)Do I Really Have to Teach Reading? 2. In this book about classroom management and discipline, the focus is on tuning into childrens’ unmet needs, not on classroom control. 3. This book distills an approach to adolescent reading that Atwell has developed over the past three decades, says Thomas Newkirk, professor of English at the University of New Hampshire and co-editor of Teaching the Neglected “R” (Heinemann, 2007). 4. This book made several of our experts’ lists. 7. 9. 10. 11. Other Favorites from Rief:The Kind of Schools We Need: Personal Essays by Elliot W. 12.
Books That Tweak (Not Twerk!) Great Classics Originally posted on Kirkus Writers are always borrowing from one another, across centuries and continents. It’s the writers who aren’t just borrowing but building on what previous writers have created who we’re interested in. For more from Kirkus, click here! "Havisham" by Ronald Frame "An intelligently imagined Dickens prequel." "Hardly a false note in an extraordinary carrying on of a true greatness that doubted itself."
Teaching and Learning | Rick Wormeli's Resources for Practical and Compelling Educational Change GUYS READ History Lecturer : On the stretching of brighter history pupils The education twitter-sphere has been all a-buzz today with stuff about helping (or failing) bright pupils. I am not at all qualified to contribute directly to the debate; I can only recount my own experiences, and anecdotal evidence is not very valuable in such a case. Because of my work as an examiner I meet history teachers from scores of other schools every summer, and I do not think my approaches were in any way unusual. Yes, I taught at an independent school, so it was selective in terms of ability to pay fees. It was not very selective in terms of ability; plenty of our pupils did well to get C passes at GCSE with a couple of Bs thrown in. However, I think I do have some credentials when it comes to helping bright history pupils make good use of their time in school. We laid great emphasis on free reading, both quantity and quality. This emphasis on free reading started with the juniors (and we had three years before exam-pressure kicked in). Back to the advert.
Grammar and Comprehension: Scaffolding Student Interpretation of Complex Sentences I'm a fourth grade special education teacher in NYC. Our school has acquired a new reading/writing program and has discontinued a grammar program we've used for several years. In the new program the grammar component is virtually non-existent. On a gut level I feel that students are struggling with test questions, even math ones, due to lack of practice/knowledge of grammar. They simply don't understand what the questions are asking. Great question. Also, readability measures are able to predict how well students will comprehend particular texts on the basis of only two variables: vocabulary sophistication and grammatical complexity. There are also experimental studies that show that there are ways that grammar can be taught formally that improve reading comprehension. That doesn’t necessarily justify a lot of grammar worksheets and the like, but it does argue for teaching students about sentences as they meet them. Let’s slice the sentence at the first “that” and the first “or:”
Lexile Level Is NOT Text Complexity CCSS.R.10 | Resource - Full This Tweet from #tcrwp (Teachers College Reading and Writing Project) on August 15th caught my eye. A quick glance at the twitter stream confirmed that it came from Stephanie Harvey’s keynote (sigh of envy across the miles). @amandalah: Careful of lexile: Harry potter, old man & the sea &Alexander & the horrible no good very bad day. All similar lexile. #TCRWP Hmmm. . . Was I interested? Did I independently check? Those three books are typically read by readers at these levels: Alexander and the Horrible, Terrible, Very Bad, No Good Day – primary gradesHarry Potter – upper elementary gradesOld Man and the Sea – high school But yet they all three have similar lexile levels! The initial connection to Stephanie Harvey was further confirmed in Twitterverse later: So what is a lexile? The Lexile Framework® for Reading claims to measure a student’s reading ability based on actual assessment, rather than a generalized age or grade level. What examples of “Out of Whack Lexiles” have you found?