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Storytelling for the YouTube generation

Storytelling for the YouTube generation

Teacher to parents: About THAT kid (the one who hits, disrupts and influences YOUR kid) Amy Murray is the director of early childhood education at the Calgary French & International School in Canada. The following post, which appeared on her blog, Miss Night’s Marbles and which I am republishing with her permission, is a powerful open letter directed to parents about THAT kid, the one other kids go home and talk about, the one who is violent, curses and gets angry in class, the one who parents worry will hurt, disrupt and perhaps influence their own children. Murray is also the co-founder of #Kinderchat (www.kinderchat.net), a twitter-based global community for educators of young children. She is a speaker and trainer on learning through play, self-regulation, behavior management, and the use of technology within the classroom. (IStockphoto) Dear Parent: I know. You’re worried that THAT child is detracting from your child’s learning experience. Your child, this year, in this classroom, at this age, is not THAT child. I know, and I am worried, too. That’s okay, you say. local

You think you know what teachers do. Right? Wrong. - The Washington Post (By Charles Rex Arbogast/ AP) You went to school so you think you know what teachers do, right? You are wrong. Here’s a piece explaining all of this from Sarah Blaine, a mom, former teacher and full-time practicing attorney in New Jersey who writes at her parentingthecore blog, where this first appeared. By Sarah Blaine We all know what teachers do, right? So we know teachers. We know. Teaching as a profession has no mystery. We were students, and therefore we know teachers. We are wrong. We need to honor teachers. Most of all, we need to stop thinking that we know anything about teaching merely by virtue of having once been students. We don’t know. I spent a little over a year earning a master of arts in teaching degree. I didn’t stay. I passed the bar. I worked hard in my first year of practicing law. But I continued to practice. New teachers take on full responsibility the day they set foot in their first classrooms. You did not design lessons that succeeded. You did not.

5 Fantastic, Fast Formative Assessment Tools I thought I could read my students' body language. I was wrong. As an experiment, I used Socrative when I taught binary numbers. Why Formative Assessment Makes Better Teachers Formative assessment is done as students are learning. Here's what happened in my classroom. "We've got this, it's easy," they said. I looked at the other students and asked, "Do you have this?" They nodded their heads furiously up and down in a "yes." My teacher instincts said that everyone knew it, but I decided to experiment. I was floored. I taught for another few minutes and gave them another problem. But the end result was not what you think. I am sold. Good teachers in every subject will adjust their teaching based upon what students know at each point. Formative Assessment Toolkit Learn the strengths and weaknesses of each tool. 1. Socrative can be used for quick quizzes and also on the fly, as I've already shared. 2. Kahoot lets us build fun quizzes. 3. I’m in-flipping my class and using videos. 4. 5.

How to make a fortune without ‘doing’ anything: The Uber, Airbnb story Uber is much in the news recently, for mostly the wrong reasons. One of its senior executives threatened to investigate journalists who wrote negative things about the taxi service platform. An Uber passenger was allegedly attacked by a driver. Without downplaying the seriousness of these events, I believe the fundamental issues posed by Uber have less to do with the company’s specifics and more to do with a business model that works by offloading responsibilities, something that many other platform companies—businesses that make money by making connections rather than providing a real product or service—do as well. This summer, I used Airbnb to rent a house in Claremont, Calif. Four weeks before the reservation date, I tried to reach her. What a great business model. Making a business out of not being responsible Of course, Airbnb is not alone in perfecting a business model in which companies take fees for doing nothing other than facilitating transactions. So, what’s wrong with this?

Aesop's Quest National Punctuation Day 3 Strategies to Improve Student Writing Instantly Editor's Note: A version of this post first appeared on Techie Teacher and Character Coach. "But Miss Parrish, I can't think of anything to write!" Haven't we all heard similar lines in our classrooms? We see hesitant writers sit with a pencil in their hands and a paper on their desks, almost as if they have been handicapped by the task we asked them to do. How is it that some students have so much to say when talking out loud, but when a pencil is put into their hand they suddenly hesitate, struggle and have nothing to say? The answer is to simply have them produce "writing" without technically "writing" at all. Strategies That Work 1. Have your student stand up while you sit in his or her seat. 2. Identify a way that your students can audio record themselves "speaking" their essay rather than "writing" it. 3. Identify an app or tool that will transcribe speaking into text. Communication Before Craft How have you helped students write without putting pen to paper (or pixel to page)?

12 Useful Websites to Improve Your Writing by Johnny Webber 1. Words-to-Use.com – A different kind of thesaurus. 2. 3. 4. 5. 750words.com – Write three new pages every day. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

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