Lesson Plan: 10 Ways to Teach About Geography Lalo de Almeida for The New York TimesPopulation growth in the Brazilian jungle is visible in places like Parauapebas. On the outskirts, slums stretch to the horizon and houses continue to go up. Go to related article » Geography frequently takes a back seat to history in the social studies classroom, but teaching geographic literacy is essential if students are going to understanding the challenges and opportunities of our complex world. We have created 10 activities for teaching about geography using Times content, all related to the National Geography Standards, which were produced by the Geography Education National Implementation Project. Our list is a grab-bag of ideas — from designing maps to analyzing border conflicts — and teachers can use the activities in any order, or as a road map for tracking ongoing coverage of geography-related issues.1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Common Core ELA Standards, 6-12 Reading 1. Writing 1. Speaking and Listening 1.
My 7 Favorite Tech Tools for My Class So many of my Tweeps have been sharing some of their favorite tech tools that they use in their classroom so I figure I might as well too! In no particular order here are my favorite tools to use with my students and a few I plan to use this year that I'm really excited about! Ever since I found out about Remind101.com in July of 2012 I have been obsessed. I have absolutely loved being able to send text reminders to parents about field trips, tests, upcoming activities, all kinds of things! And it helps that Remind101 has one of the nicest teams of people out there that I've met! Sophia.org has been an excellent resource in my classroom. Even though I upload all my videos to several different places for my students, my students have clearly chosen Sophia.org as their favorite place to access videos. I absolutely love Sophia and like Remind101 they have an incredible team of people behind the name! Edmodo.com is a tool that I have used for the past 3 or 4 years.
How I Deconstructed The Common Core When the Common Core draft was first released in 2009, I was intrigued by the idea of internationally benchmarked standards and proceeded to study them deeply. I wanted to understand how they were constructed, and better still, I wanted to prepare myself to support teachers’ in knowing how to teach them. I read them intensely, made connections to Best Practices in education and began to take them apart. I realized that the way we think about how to look at standards would have to change. On this journey, I began by enlisting texts by Marzano, Kaplan, Renzulli and others. I reflected on the entire experience for months and emerged with the decision to help teachers deconstruct the standards–break them down into their constituent parts so that teachers could build them back up in the minds of their students. Example, Deconstructed Here’s an example of a partially deconstructed standard. RI.8.3 Analyze how a text makes connections among and distinctions between individuals, ideas or events.
Things I Will Not Be Missing In My Paperless Classroom. As I head into the new school year, I'm not scrambling for my old lesson plan book or looking for notes in some long buried folder. All of my work is saved in Evernote and I will be sharing the work with my students on the second day of school. As I was sitting and thinking about all of the things I was going to need to start the year, I was struck by the number of things I will not need now that I'm as paperless as I can get. 1. I will not miss these guys at all. All of my student work will be on Turnitin.com or saved in their Evernote notebook that can be shared with me and acts as an e-portfolio. 2. I mentioned these guys above and they make the milk crate problem even worse. Again, having students use their Evernote accounts to save all of their work, I do not need them to keep binders to store assignments. I have wasted countless hours waiting in line for the copier, fixing the jams others have left and trying to figure out how to replace the toner in the new copier. 4. 5.
School Absences Translate to Lower Test Scores, Study Says Published Online: December 11, 2012 Published in Print: December 12, 2012, as Absenteeism Linked to Low Achievement in NAEP Time Study Minutes spent on homework on the rise Premium article access courtesy of Edweek.org. Washington Missing even a few days of school seems to make a difference in whether 8th graders perform at the top of their game, according to a new analysis of results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The report, the first of a planned series of analyses of NAEP's background-survey data, looks at how 4th and 8th graders use existing school time, including their attendance, instructional time, and homework. Fifty-six percent of 8th graders who performed at the advanced level in NAEP reading in 2011 had perfect attendance in the month before the test, compared with only 39 percent of students who performed below the basic level. "Three days, if you multiply that out by nine months, is five weeks a year," Mr. Low Performers U.S.
6 Learning Technologies Teachers Should Break Down And Embrace by James Petzke Teachers in today’s world have finally begun to embrace technology. This makes sense seeing as we live in a world where the ability to work with technology is key in virtually any profession. In fact, teachers that don’t do so are in many ways doing their students a disservice. There are a few, though, that have never really caught on the way they might have. 6 Learning Technologies Teachers Should Break Down And Embrace 1. The latest successful social media platform, Vine in the classroom allows you to create and share short videos. All teachers seem to use some sort of quick one liner, analogy, or joke that helps students understand a topic. 2. I just graduated from High School a year ago, and it shocked me that during my four years I never once had a teacher tell me to use Khan Academy, or implement it in a lesson. If you haven’t heard of it, Khan Academy is a fantastic resource for students to learn concepts. 3. Missing school is always tough on students. 4. 5. 6.
4 Ways to Increase Engagement In The Classroom Do you look out at your class and it seems as if only two or three students are listening to you? The rest are thinking about lunch, how to beat the next level on the video game, or when is your class going to end? Here are some ideas that might help you stimulate your classroom. 1. Get away from the front of the room! Let the students know that you just might walk over to their desk and catch them texting, doodling, or daydreaming. 2. Raise your expectations about what your students are capable of! 3. Why am I learning this? 4. Here’s the thing to remember though, it’s not about the technology . Move, create critical thinkers, make real world connections, and incorporate technology as part of your classroom environment, and you should see your classroom come to life!
Critically Examining What You Teach by Grant Wiggins, Ph.D, Authentic Education In my 100th blog post I complained about the course called ‘algebra’. Some commenters misunderstood the complaint. The issue, then, is not ‘algebra’ or ‘history’ but what we mean by ‘course of study’. Notice that I haven’t merely defined a course. Textbooks Are Tools, Not Courses or Content Areas Next time I will say a bit more about my criteria, but we can’t ignore the other lurking issue in this discussion: ‘coverage’, i.e. teachers marching through the pages in a textbook. The textbook does not know your personal or school priorities; the textbook does not know your students; the textbook doesn’t identify any priorities or through lines that unite all the chapters, etc. It doesn’t matter how good the textbook is. 7 Prompts That Every Teacher Of A Well-Designed Course Should Be Able To Answer Here are some simple prompts that a teacher who has really thought through the course as a course should be able to answer: Websites Books
Innovative teaching, not technology alone, has greatest impact in the classroom, say experts 28 November 2012 Digital technologies in the classroom must go hand in hand with innovative and structured teaching to have a true impact on educational achievements, research from the Institute of Education, London, and The University of Nottingham has shown. In the last five years, UK schools have spent more than £1 billion on everything from interactive whiteboards to laptops and tablets but the study found that buying in the latest technology was no guarantee to raising pupil attainment. The academics from the IOE's London Knowledge Lab (LKL), in collaboration with Nottingham's Learning Sciences Research Institute, say that — just like with traditional school resources — the key to success is the way in which digital technologies are used. Teachers should, they say, be focusing on the learning activities and using technologies to support them rather than using the latest state-of-the-art kit as the starting point for lesson plans.
Going 1-to-1 This Fall? Seven Topics to Include in Your iPad Boot Camp If you’re in the midst of rolling out iPads or tablets into classrooms this fall, we can help. More and more schools have been implementing a 1-to-1 iPad or tablet model, providing one device per student and enabling youth to become more prepared 21st-century learners. While this structural shift is exciting, it also requires significant planning. Adequate teacher training, tech support, loss prevention, bandwidth, and parental involvement are all factors that must be addressed before the devices are even rolled out in classrooms. Technology coordinator for John Fiske Elementary School Kenyatta Forbes recently described some of the pressures of “going 1-to-1,” a transition her school will make this fall. To help ease some of this apprehension she and other educators are working through, we recently created the 1-to-1 Essentials Program for administrators who, like Forbes, will be tasked with rolling out devices into classrooms this fall.