Excellent Tool to Create Rubrics for Your Class November, 2014 Rubistar is a great free web tool that teachers can use to create educational rubrics to use in class. By definition, a rubric according to Geidi Andrade, is "a document that articulates the expectations for an assignment by listening the criteria, or what counts, and describing levels of quality from excellent to poor". As a teacher you can create rubrics and use them for a variety of purposes. These include: grading students assignments, providing focused feedback on works in progress, preparing lesson plans and many more. " Rubrics can teach as well as evaluate. When used as part of a formative, student centered approach to assessment, rubrics have the potential to help students develop understanding and skill, as well as make dependable judgments about the quality of their own work. Rubistar is very simple and easy to use.
Why Walking Is Great For Your Creativity Let’s face it, sometimes those brilliant ideas just don’t come easily. Whether we’re writing a paper, a book, or just trying to come up with an original birthday gift, we’ve all been stuck waiting for inspiration to find us. Finding a solution to these creative blocks is no easy task, but a group of researchers at Standford University set out to do just that. To figure out how to get our creative juices flowing, researchers first considered data showing that exercise prevents cognitive decline. Next, they focused on more short-term mental improvement, and the long-held idea that walking increases creativity. Their experiments are fascinating, and may be exceedingly practical in application. To start, the scientists tested creativity before and after walking on a treadmill. To see if these effects decreased with subsequent walking, they tested people who walked multiple times. Next, the researchers wanted to see if walking outside was more powerful than indoors. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
21 Ways to Check for Student Understanding Terrific Mini Guide to Help Stude... December 26, 2014 Questioning is the key to critical thinking and through questions students get to explore the deep layers of meanings that would otherwise go unnoticed. Of course not all questions have this analytical ability. For instance, closed questions tend to limit the thinking choices available for students. The same with questions that promote factual recalling. In today's post, I am sharing with you this mini guide created by Foundation of Critical Thinking which you can use with your students to help them better comprehend and apply critical thinking in their learning. I learned about this great resource from a post shared by Education to Save The World. Image credit: Foundation of Critical Thinking
Focus on portfolios: 4 advantages of alternative assessment I’m happy to say that my school is currently dipping its toes into alternative assessment in the form of writing portfolios. Although I’m a big fan, it is the norm to view portfolios as a ‘non-traditional’ approach to judging performance. Nevertheless, portfolios, and alternative assessment methods in general, are frequently used in education to evaluate students based on objectives tailored to their learning needs. ‘Path by the river’ by @ALiCe__M from ELTPics 1. The portfolio process reviews a comparatively large body of a learner’s work, rather than a one off performance, to evaluate performance over a course of study. In ELT, research indicates that the portfolio process is beneficial when compared to traditional assessment, because its emphasis is on learners’ strengths as opposed to their weaknesses. 2. Unlike traditional testing methods, alternative assessment techniques are in general performance-based reviews that focus on real-world tasks to display ability. 3. 4. A few links
Smart Strategies That Help Students Learn How to Learn Teaching Strategies Bruce Guenter What’s the key to effective learning? One intriguing body of research suggests a rather riddle-like answer: It’s not just what you know. It’s what you know about what you know. To put it in more straightforward terms, anytime a student learns, he or she has to bring in two kinds of prior knowledge: knowledge about the subject at hand (say, mathematics or history) and knowledge about how learning works. In our schools, “the emphasis is on what students need to learn, whereas little emphasis—if any—is placed on training students how they should go about learning the content and what skills will promote efficient studying to support robust learning,” writes John Dunlosky, professor of psychology at Kent State University in Ohio, in an article just published in American Educator. “Teaching students how to learn is as important as teaching them content.” [RELATED: What Students Should Know About Their Own Brains] • What is the topic for today’s lesson? Related
Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning - Getting Smart by Getting Smart Staff - Assessment, CCSS, Competency-based learning, deeper learning, education, learning, teachers Today Digital Promise and Getting Smart released “Preparing Teachers for Deeper Learning: Competency-Based Teacher Preparation and Development.” This white paper outlines the attributes of next-generation teacher preparation and makes recommendations to support the development of teacher preparation and development systems. Co-authored by Getting Smart’s Tom Vander Ark and Dr. Carri Schneider with Karen Cator, President and CEO of Digital Promise, the paper outlines how the role of teachers is changing amid broader shifts to personalized, blended, and deeper learning. Some element of teacher control over time, place, path and/or pace;Balance between teacher-defined goals, goals as defined by administration through teacher evaluation efforts, and school and district educational goals;Job-embedded and meaningful integration into classroom practice; andCompetency-based progression. For more information, download the paper. The full press release is copied below.
Why "20% Time" is Good for Schools Have you ever met an adult who doesn't really love what they do, but just goes through the motions in their job and everyday life? Have you spoken with men and women who constantly complain, showing no visible passion for anything in the world? I'm sure that, like me, you have met those people. I've also seen the making of these adults in schools across our country: students who are consistently being "prepared" for the next test, assessment, or grade level . . . only to find out after graduation that they don't really know what they are passionate about. These are the same students who are never allowed to learn what they want in school. Enter 20% time. What 20% time allows students to do is pick their own project and learning outcomes, while still hitting all the standards and skills for their grade level. With 20% time, we can solve one society’s biggest problems by giving students a purpose for learning and a conduit for their passions and interests. Students Teachers Parents
14 Free Apps for Higher Order Thinking Apps for higher order thinking can be a great push for your students to explain their thinking and create their own digital portfolio items. Apps that focus on higher order thinking can help your students start using focused thought processes to address new questions, investigations, and basic HOTS skills. Each of these apps can be used to complement and execute Bloom’s Higher Order of Thinking framework, focusing on analyzing, evaluating, and creating. With these high order thinking apps, you can focus your students on: raising questions vital to discussiongathering and assessing information systematicallytesting conclusions against criteriathinking with an open mind about alternative theories and solutionscommunicating complex ideas effectively Please enable JavaScript to view the <a href=" Share this post with friends and colleagues:
10 Interactive Lessons By Google On Digital Citizenship YouTube has a firm place in the current classroom. From Khan Academy’s videos to YouTube EDU and beyond, there’s a reason all these videos are finding a home in schools. In an effort to help keep the ball rolling, Google just launched a set of 10 interactive lessons designed to support teachers in educating students on digital citizenship. Google (which owns YouTube) built the lessons to educate students about YouTube’s policies, how to flag content, how to be a safer online citizen, and protect their identities. Below is a list of lessons, and the recommended flow for delivery. Or you can download the Full Teacher’s Guide or the Full Set of Slides in PDF. The killer feature for this curriculum is the extra features that come with each video.