Photo by Antenna on Unsplash What is learning? Exploring theory and process. Is learning a change in behaviour or understanding? Is it a process? Here we survey some key dimensions and ideas. Cont…
We know how to help kids develop into powerful learners. Now, we just need to make that happen in schools.
"A parent of two teen-agers, Will Richardson has spent the last dozen years developing an international reputation as a leading thinker and writer about the intersection of social online learning networks and education.
Will has authored four books (with two more on the way), including ""Why School? How Education Must Change When Learning and Information are Everywhere"" (September, 2012) published by TED books and based on his 2013 TEDx talk in Melbourne, Australia. ""Why School?"" is now the #1 best-selling TED book ever.
A former public school educator of 22 years, Will is also co-founder of Modern Learner Media and co-publisher of ModernLearners.com which is a site dedicated to helping educational leaders and policy makers develop new contexts for new conversations around education.
Will lives in rural New Jersey with his wife Wendy and his kids Tess and Tucker."
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx
"the presence of one or more of these tells in student work does not constitute proof of AI use. So use these potential tells of AI as evidence to open a conversation with students, not a tribunal."
Las rubricas son muy útiles al momento de objetivar criterios de evaluación para calificar. Su construcción puede ser un poco mas tediosa, de modo que las herramientas que lo facilitan son bienvenidas
I find this article useful because I personally do not like using word for rubrics since it can become very time consuming. this article gives me tools to create said rubrics in an eaier way. My favourite tool out of the 5 suggested is For All Rubrics since it allows students to view their results in the rubrics without having to print them, It also has a very easy to understand interface which makes it easy for me and students to use it without much problem.
* "NCTQ's claims of objectivity are false. As Diane Ravitch revealed last year, NCTQ was started by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation "as a new entity to promote alternative certification and to break the power of the hated ed schools," although NCTQ claims it is no longer affiliated with its founders. Despite the facts showing otherwise, NCTQ believes competition is the best bet for improving teacher preparation."
* "Consistent with its stance on similar professional issues, NCTQ supports the Growing Education Achievement Training Academies for Teachers and Principals (GREAT) Act. Although research and effective practices show that comprehensive preparation in content-specific pedagogical strategies, teaching diverse learners, and rigorous clinical experiences are essential to developing effective new teachers, the GREAT Act would require none of these features and, in fact, would lower standards for funded providers."
* "This review is based on a review of documents with such inconsistent participation and fragmented inputs that it would not be published by a credible, professional research organization."
* "While NCTQ evaluated 1,130 institutions on various configurations of its standards, the report states that only 10 percent of institutions fully participated."
* "The fine print in the report's Program Ratings section (p. 13) states that elementary program ratings were based on five key "standards," and secondary program ratings were based on three key "areas." NCTQ does not explain how these standards were selected or how heavily each weighed in the review. Yet NCTQ went as far as to label 163 programs with a
"Consumer Alert" as a warning to parents, prospective teacher candidates and school districts."
*"The American Institutes for Research (AIR) has noted the shortcomings of using document reviews to measure teacher preparation program effectiveness. In its 2012 Evaluating the Effectiveness of Teacher Preparation Programs for Support and Accountability report, AIR lists several challenges with using process measures to evaluate teacher preparation programs: The research base of a document review is not robust enough to build assessment for accountability based on process measures; process measures do not always accurately capture what actually happens in preparation programs; and process data require complex qualitative measures that are difficult to score reliably across programs."
* ""Even NCTQ's own audit panel recognized in its report that NCTQ must do a better job of "clearly and exhaustively explaining methodology and what findings do and do not mean." The audit panel also questioned the validity of using course syllabi to determine the effectiveness of a program, suggesting that NCTQ must improve its method of "studying how accurately reading syllabi reflects the actual content of classroom instruction.""
* "NCTQ promotes to the public that its goal is to help improve teacher preparation. Yet NCTQ outright refuses to make rubrics available publicly or individually to institutions to show where programs did and did not meet standards. It does, however, make recommendations to policy makers on how they should regulate preparation programs. If NCTQ's goal was to help improve teacher preparation, rubrics should be released so that programs could utilize that information."
* "In the "Next Steps" for prospective and current students, NCTQ's recommendations are self-promoting, public relations steps intended to further promote the review – not to improve teacher preparation for future teachers."
Incorporating online resources, particularly educational apps, can significantly enhance your classroom, particularly in the context of remote learning. Educational apps offer a wealth of interactive content, especially beneficial for English Language Arts (ELA). These apps provide engaging activities, multimedia resources, and interactive assessments that cater to diverse learning styles, making it easier for educators to adapt to the challenges of remote or hybrid learning environments. By leveraging educational apps, teachers can create dynamic and personalized learning experiences, ensuring students stay connected and motivated in their ELA studies.
Scientific American is the essential guide to the most awe-inspiring advances in science and technology, explaining how they change our understanding of the world and shape our lives.
Everyday, in classrooms across the country, many teachers begin their lessons with what are commonly known as Learning Goals, Targets, Objectives or Intentions. John Hattie defines these as “what it is we want students to learn in terms of the skills, knowledge, attitudes, and values within any particular unit or lesson.” They are usually written…
Class Charts is super fast behaviour management software, creating school seating plans in seconds. Link our behaviour & seating plan software with SIMS, Powerschool & more
Class Charts is super fast behaviour management software, creating school seating plans in seconds. Link our behaviour & seating plan software with SIMS, Powerschool & more
If you're looking for tools to make online flashcards to help students recall important information and practice skills, here is a goldmine!
Via Yashy Tohsaku
Many teachers’ tech toolkits are bursting at the seams and sometimes it can be a good idea to use a few tools well, rather than jump on every new resource.
However, it’s hard to resist a useful tool to help organise your classroom and provide structure for students.
Some resources require a bit of thought and exploration to figure out how they could be implemented in your classroom. Not ClassroomScreen.
I use ClassroomScreen everyday in my classroom. It is part of our daily routine. We use it for randomizing names for participation and for grouping. My favorite feature is the timer and sound level because I don't need to vocalize the time remaining or the voice level. It's a great tool to manage your classroom and proving them with visuals.
In this post, you will find 27 Formative Assessment Tools for Your Classroom! Formative assessment is such an essential part of the learning process and student success, and many digital tools can help support this process.This list has a wide variety of features and options to help you solidify...
Uncovering these remarkable tools has significantly elevated my capacity to engage with students and deliver prompt feedback. The user-friendly nature of these platforms allows students to navigate effortlessly, promoting a seamless and intuitive learning experience. By incorporating these tools into my teaching methodology, I've observed enhanced student participation and a more interactive classroom environment. The ability to provide timely feedback has not only streamlined the assessment process but has also positively impacted the overall learning journey for both educators and students alike.
The abundance of math websites tailored for both teachers and students offers diverse educational resources. Prodigy, in particular, emerges as a favorite among students, providing an interactive and engaging platform for learning math. By incorporating such websites into your lessons, you can significantly transform the dynamics of your math class. These platforms often offer adaptive learning, real-time feedback, and gamified elements, making the learning experience enjoyable and effective. This integration not only supports teachers in delivering comprehensive lessons but also enhances student participation and understanding of mathematics.
Stimulate thinking at the beginning of class, and check for understanding at the end of it with these engaging opening and closing activities. Stimulate thinking at the beginning of class, and check for understanding at the end of it with these engaging activities.
Response: 'Every Teacher Is A Language Teacher' By Larry Ferlazzo on March 17, 2015 3:35 PM
(This post is the last post in a two-part series. You can see Part One here.)
This week's question is:
What are the best strategies to use when teaching English Language Learners in content classes?
The question above is my simplified version of the actual one sent by a teacher who requested anonymity. Here is what was submitted:
I'm at my start of second school year teaching 8th grade social studies which is tested! My population of Spanish dominant students is the majority. Social studies was never taught at the elementary level. I feel hopeless. I'm using different strategies that include foldables class discussions essential questioning visuals primary sources ...etc etc!! I cant reach them! Sometimes I wonder if its me..other teachers say I work too hard. But I really want my student to learn about history but I have to be both a English teacher and social studies teacher at same time. I need help!
Part One in this series shared responses from four experienced educators: Judie Haynes, Mary Ann Zehr, Bárbara C. Cruz and Stephen J. Thornton. You can also listen to a ten-minute conversation I had with Judie and Mary Ann on my BAM! Radio Show.
Today's guests are Margo Gottlieb, Maria Montalvo-Balbed, and Tracey Takuhama-Espinosa. In addition, I've shared responses from readers.
Response From Margo Gottlieb
Margo Gottlieb is lead developer for WIDA at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and director, assessment and evaluation, at the Illinois Resource Center, Arlington Heights. Her latest publications include co-authoring and co-editing a compendium of books by Corwin on Academic Language in Diverse Classrooms; a foundational book, Definitions and Contexts, and six others, Promoting Content and Language Learning, English Language Arts and Mathematics for grade-levels K-2, 3-5, and 6-8:
Around the country, linguistically and cultural diversity is becoming part of the classroom mosaic. For English language learners to succeed academically, teachers must interweave the academic language of each discipline into their instruction. As educators begin a new school year, here are some tips for content teachers.
Partner with a language teacher in co-planning, co-constructing, and co-teaching as you share instruction, engage in classroom assessment, and assume joint responsibility for your language learners. Incorporate the students' linguistic and cultural resources and expertise into lessons and units of learning so that all students can engage in authentic and meaningful learning experiences. Use college & career readiness standards in conjunction with language development standards to gain a better understanding of the developmental and linguistic pathways to student achievement. Pair the standards-referenced skills and concepts of a topic or theme with the academic language required of those understandings. Formulate content and language targets to guide teaching and learning for a unit for all students. These targets provide a global view of key learning and guide the creation of objectives for individual or related lessons. Maintain grade-level rigor of the content while differentiate language according to the students' levels of language proficiency. Differentiation includes consideration for the students' literacy in their home language as a scaffold for English language development and as a means to communicate conceptual knowledge. Center on academic language use within and across language domains, such as during interpretative listening, interactive reading, academic conversations, and writing across the curriculum. Plan, collect, analyze, interpret, and act on evidence for student learning through performance assessment that occurs within and across lessons. Rely on students as contributors to and evaluators of their own learning as they engage in self-reflection and peer assessment. Don't forget that school is a unique place where every teacher is a language teacher and every student is a language learner.
Response From Maria Montalvo-Balbed
Maria Montalvo-Balbed has developed and taught numerous professional development classes in the areas of diversity, cultural literacy development, and authentic engagement of English learners. She is a member of the ASCD Faculty and the Fisher and Frey Cadre, where she works with schools and districts to implement customized, research-based curricula and instructional strategies:
Of course, it goes without saying that strategies are only the best strategies when they are aligned to the learning purpose. To learn more, see ASCD FIT Model authors Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey.
I do think the following areas of support are critical to a high functioning classroom that supports the needs of ELLs:
Systematic practice of the academic and social discourse. See Jeff Zwiers work for specific strategies on Academic Conversations. Students need to be engaged in continuous and strategic practice of listening, speaking, reading and writing in all courses; not just in Language Arts. The classroom teacher must be highly aware of how to set up social and metacognitive supports for ELLs. Teachers can easily do this by modeling behaviors, think-alouds, and processes, strategies for reading and writing and speaking in different contexts and to different audiences. The language overload of any course for ELLs requires that teachers use language scaffolds intentionally (See Virginia Rojas' toolkit for great ideas). Teachers must be very strategic about teaching ELLs (See ASCD Whole Child Education tenets). The systematic use of visuals/non-linguistic supports.
Response From Tracey Takuhama-Espinosa
Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, PhD, is Dean of the Faculty of Education at the Universidad de las Américas in Quito, Ecuador. She serves on an expert panel for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development to determine Teachers' New Pedagogical Knowledge, including the influence of neuroscience and technology on education, and is professor of a course on the "Neuroscience of Learning and Sustained Change" at Harvard University. She is the author of Making Classrooms Better: 50 Practical Applications of Mind, Brain, and Education Science (W. W. Norton; 2014) and Mind, Brain, and Education Science: A Comprehensive Guide to the New Brain-Based Teaching (W. W. Norton; 2010). Visit her at traceytokuhama.com:
While activities are important and this teacher is determined to find the right activities to reach her ELL 8th grade social studies students, activities are only as effective as the planning context in which they are devised.
Great ELL teachers are simply great teachers. A great teacher knows how to identify desired results before choosing an activity. The teacher should identify the objectives of each class and then try to express these objectives as competencies, or the combination of knowledge (dates, facts, formulas, people, places, etc.), skills, and attitudes (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005). Once clear and concise objectives have been identified, the teacher can then decide what she will accept as evidence that she is reaching these objectives, otherwise known as her evaluation criteria. Finally, she can then consider what activities to undertake. Choosing the activities ("foldables, class discussions, essential questioning, visuals, primary sources" or others) should depend upon the objectives of the class and cannot be chosen in a vacuum. It is likely that this teacher is not meeting the success she hopes for and is working harder than her students because she has not yet identified the main objective of each class and aligned her activities accordingly.
Language skills can be learned through content. Actually, the best way to go about improving English is by teaching it through meaningful content (Snow, Met & Genesee, 1989). One key way to teach is to focus on authentic lesson planning in which the context of objectives coincides with students' own interests. The great challenge of U.S. state curricula is its focus on heavily content-based ideas ("Analyze how the American Revolution effected other nations, especially France"; "Describe the nation's blend of civic republicanism, classical liberal principles, and English parliamentary traditions" [California State Curriculum, Grade 8, 2009, p.33]), rather than on greater, global, yet personal concepts ("Why do nations go to war?"; "What's worth fighting for?"; "How does being free as a person differ from a nation being free?"). For example, devising a debate on "what's worth fighting for?" and then relating it to the American Revolution would be a far more effective way to approach the 8th grade curriculum than through "foldables" or "visuals." Depending on the objective, different activities will be most appropriate.
Note Sep, 2002, article from Roni Jo Draper, Brigham Young University in Journal of Literacy Research (SAGE): Every teacher a literacy teacher? An analysis of the literacy-related messages in secondary methods textbooks at
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