Engaging English Language Learners in Academic Conversations In this new series, created in partnership with Oakland Unified School District, we delve into three classrooms where English Language Learners (ELLs) are engaged in academic conversations. From talk moves to participation protocols, these teachers share clear structures that encourage students to talk and learn from each other. Inspired by Jeff Zweirs and Marie Crawford’s book Academic Conversations, teachers at OUSD are working on building the oral language skills of all students. It’s clear that academic discussions benefit all students, with particular benefits for ELLs. As Nicole Knight, OUSD’s Executive Director of the English Language Learner and Multilingual Achievement Office says in her blog, “Academic discussion helps all students to develop their reasoning, understand multiple perspectives, and deepen understanding of content.” From these videos, we learn five tips for engaging students in academic conversations: 1. 2. 3. 4. Watch an overview video of this series.
Educational Leadership:Instruction That Sticks:A Practice That Works in Your Classroom —Timothy Dohrer, director, teacher preparation, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois Seamless Differentiation In my math classes, I use a collaborative strategy called trail run. Partnered students complete a cycle of questions of varying difficulty on content that we've recently studied. Students stop at stations and read multiple-choice questions. Strategies like trail run present students with learning tasks of varying difficulty, thus appealing to and challenging all students at once. —Sean Padilla, 7th grade math teacher, School District 102, LaGrange Park, Illinois Belief Statements Belief statements encourage and motivate my students in an urban school. —Kathleen Foster, teacher, Jennings School District, St. Socratic Circles Socratic circles help students understand their reading more deeply. —Louise Robinson-Lay, head of curriculum, Berwick Grammar School, Victoria, Australia Revealing Relevance When students ask, "Where will I use this in real life?" Student Sharing
Five-Minute Film Festival: Developing Global Citizens In our increasingly connected and interdependent world, it’s critically important that young people have opportunities to engage with diverse cultural perspectives, build geographic knowledge, grow global competency, and develop the skills and knowledge necessary to consider and address our shared global challenges. At Global Education Day in Atlanta this year, I was inspired by all the ways that educators are bringing these kinds of experiences into the classroom. How do you teach global citizenship? Check out this video playlist for ideas and inspiration. Video Playlist: Developing Global Citizens Watch the player below to see the whole playlist, or view it on YouTube. Planetary Collective Presents CONTINUUM [Trailer] (3:16) Poets, astronauts, storytellers, and others discuss our shared planetary destiny; in tandem with OVERVIEW, an earlier film about astronauts’ stories of seeing the Earth from space, this clip may help spark conversations about global stewardship.
6 Factors Of Academic Performance A Classroom Of Proficiency: 6 Factors To Guide Your Teaching by Terry Heick First, a definition. An academic classroom is one where the primary goal is to promote proficiency of academic standards. Everything else, while appreciated and winked at, comes after. If that’s your goal, what might your focuses be? A Classroom Of Proficiency: 6 Factors Of Academic Performance 1. Accurately unpacking the standard--not oversimplifying it, nor making it more complex than it has to be. Accurately acknowledging the rigor of the standard–accurately, which means what it says, not what you think it should be. Consider Using: Your PLN. 2. Alignment between student practice with the standard. Those things are great, but if there isn’t alignment between the practice and the standard, the mastery isn’t going to show because what the students aren’t mastering the standard, but rather thinking, making, and creating. Alignment between student readiness and the academic standard. Meet them, then move them. 3.
Teaching Your Students How to Have a Conversation I was recently in a third grade classroom and was struck by the presence of rules that were posted for how to have a conversation. The poster said, "Each person must contribute to the discussion but take turns talking. Ask each other, 'Would you like to add to my idea?' or 'Can you tell us what you are thinking?' Having visited many middle and high schools, I think these same rules could -- and probably should -- be posted there as well. Maybe you have also observed how common it is nowadays for students to not know how to have a conversation. 8 Tips for Speaking and Listening While it is impossible to know all of the reasons, there is no doubt that learning to listen and talk is an extremely important way to broaden knowledge, enhance understanding and build community. 1. Make a point of having one-to-two minute interactions, one-on-one, at least a few times each week with students who struggle conversationally. "Really?"" 2. 3. "What happened to make you feel that way?"" 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Three lessons from the science of how to teach writing | Education By The Numbers What’s the best way to teach writing? The experts have many answers — and they often contradict each other. In contrast to the thousands of studies on effective methods for teaching reading and mathematics, there are relatively few rigorous studies on writing instruction. Steve Graham, a professor of education at Arizona State University, has made a career out of monitoring research studies on teaching writing, to figure out which methods actually work. This article also appeared here. Graham’s review of the research doesn’t resolve the age-old debate of whether students learn writing best naturally — just by doing it — or through explicit writing instruction. But there are effective practices where the research is unequivocal. Here are three: 1. To teach kids to write well, you need to ask them to write a lot. Several studies found unexpected bonuses from extra writing time. However, surveys of U.S. teachers reveal that after third grade, very little time is spent writing in classrooms.
Strengthening Lessons with a Student Work Protocol As the chill in the air gets chillier, and your stacks of student work pile up like fallen leaves, why not pause, take a breath, and take a moment to look at that student work in a new way. Sure, you need to look at the work to assess student progress, provide feedback, and celebrate student successes, but you can also use it to assess, refine, and celebrate your own work. The EQuiP Student Work Protocol is one way to do just that. In part one of our series with Achieve.org, we introduced you to their work with EQuIP (Educators Evaluating the Quality of Instructional Products), an initiative designed to identify high-quality materials aligned to the Common Core. We took a close look at EQuIP’s rubrics and process for evaluating lessons for Common Core alignment, and saw the power of teachers viewing and discussing a lesson together. In this video, you’ll learn five steps for examining a single instructional task within a lesson or unit in order to assess Common Core alignment.
The unexpected math behind Van Gogh's "Starry Night" - Natalya St. Clair A few lesson plans exist for teaching visual arts and self-similarity (objects that have the same pattern) that could be used after showing this lesson. Shodor has some free lesson plans for students in grades 4 through 8. High school students can learn recursion algorithms to create the Koch curve using Scratch for free. Educational technologist Dylan Ryder has also written about creating fractals. A beautiful app worth checking out is Starry Night Interactive App by media artist Petros Vrellis. Download it to your tablet and create your own version of Starry Night. Really interested in mathematics? Turbulence, unlike painting, is mostly a time-dependent phenomenon, and after some time, breaks statistical self-similarity that Kolmogorov predicted in the 1960s. In fluid mechanics, since we can't often solve the equation for flow patterns, we develop a system of scaling between the physical properties. AcknowledgementsNatalya St.
Make It Count: Providing Feedback as Formative Assessment Providing students with feedback on written work can, at times, feel like a burden. Dozens (perhaps even hundreds) of papers clutter your desk, and commenting on each is nearly impossible. Still, we know, both from our experiences and from research, that feedback is essential. John Hattie, Professor of Education and Director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at the University of Melbourne, Australia, believes that feedback must be timely, relevant, and action-oriented. The good news, according to Hattie, is that "students want feedback just for them, just in time, and just helping nudge forward." So how can we provide this kind of feedback -- the kind that students actually listen to, understand, and use -- in a timely manner? Feedback as Formative Assessment Anyone involved in standardized testing knows two things: the results take entirely too long to get back and are completely impersonal, making that kind of feedback essentially irrelevant. Feedback in Action Feedforward
Quick & Easy Formative Assessments UPDATED | Squarehead Teachers Sometimes it feels crazy overwhelming to keep assessing students and know exactly what they do/don’t understand. That’s where these quick and easy formative assessment ideas comes in! My school district sent us a monthly newsletter from the GATE department. This was a particularly helpful chart, so I kept it. Click here to download the above new version (PDF): Formative Assessments In case you’re still thirsty for more formative assessment ideas, check out these ideas:Formative Assessment Ideas on eHow.comExamples of Formative Assessment from West Virginia Department of EducationA Sampling of Types of Formative Assessment on isbe.netFormative Assessment Ideas from the Wake County Public School System21 Ways to Investigate What Students Are Learning by STEMresources.com Like this: Like Loading... Related Wrinkled Hearts: Bully Prevention Lesson Citizenship is crucial to the success of our society. In "Management" Common Core 101 In "Education in the News"
Creating Essential Questions Essential Questions created by Pat Clifford and Sharon Friesen Essential Questions develop foundational understandings. They provide the fundamental organizing principles that bound an inquiry and guide the development of meaningful, authentic tasks. Essential questions have several key components: They arise from people’s attempts, throughout human history, to learn more about the world(s) we live in. Essential questions probably intrigued the ancients as much as they puzzle people living today.Essential questions are so compelling that people have raised them in many different ways.