Anchor Charts 101: Why and How to Use Them, Plus 100s of Ideas - WeAreTeachers Spend any time browsing teacher pages on Pinterest and Instagram, and you’ll run across hundreds of ideas for classroom anchor charts. But you may have lingering questions about what they are, what purpose they serve, how to get started, and when to use them. Have no fear! WeAreTeachers has created this primer to inform you, and we’ve also included a huge list of resources to get you started. We have a feeling that once you get started, anchor charts are going to your new favorite thing. What is an anchor chart? SOURCE: Teaching With Simplicity An anchor chart is a tool that is used to support instruction (i.e. How do I create anchor charts? The first thing you need to know about creating them is that you do not need any special materials or artistic skills—just chart paper and a colorful assortment of markers. As you model a lesson or learning strategy and interact with your students through discussion, you fill in the blank spaces of the anchor chart. SOURCE: The Thinker Builder
…a child first has to learn the foundational skills of math, like______? – Thinking Mathematically I’ve been spending a lot of time lately observing students who struggle with mathematics, talking with teachers about their students who struggle, and thinking about how to help. There are several students in my schools who experience difficulties beyond what we might typically do to help. And part of my role is trying to think about how to help these students. However, first of all I want to point out just how difficult it is for us to even know where to begin! So where do we start? Take a look at the following quote. Really, take a minute to think about this. I’ve asked a few groups of teachers to fill in the blank here in an effort to help us consider our own beliefs about what is important. Here is the complete quote: Is this what you would have thought? Think about it for a minute. Visual perception and visual memory are used when we are: Symmetry games: Composing and decomposing shapes: Relating nets to 3D figures: Constructing unique pentominoes: So I leave you with a few questions:
Growth Mindset: How to Normalize Mistake Making and Struggle in Class | GROWTH MINDSET | MindShift | KQED News Carol Dweck’s research on growth mindset has become essential knowledge in education circles. The Stanford psychologist found that children who understand that their brains are malleable and can change when working through challenging problems can do better in school. Now, many school districts are attempting to teach growth mindset to their students. At the core of this practice is the idea of “productive failure” (a concept Dr. Manu Kapur has been studying for over a decade)* and giving students the time and space to work through difficult problems. These mindset changes are easy to describe and dictate, but more challenging to implement. In the video below on classroom struggle, second grade teacher Maricela Montoy-Wilson repeatedly asks her students to justify their thinking using reasoning and evidence. “Everyone is going to feel stuck,” Montoy-Wilson said. *A previous version of this article neglected to mention the scholarship of Dr. Katrina Schwartz
Missing Factors: On Learning What You Don’t Know – Teaching With Problems I. Rachel Rachel was a student in my fourth grade class. At the start of the year, she showed traits that I worry a great deal about. She was a quiet girl who didn’t raise her hand at even the safest questions I lobbed. (“What is your favorite number?”) This was just my second time teaching math to fourth graders. Over the first few weeks of the year, I asked my class to solve problems in context: 8 cows have 4 legs each; 13 triangles have how many sides? We estimated. It took me a shockingly long time to notice that Rachel wasn’t making much progress. When I began thinking again about Rachel, I searched through old photos of student work from that year. The first photo contains just three problem and their solutions. If 8 x 8 should really be seen, in Rachel’s work, as 8 + 8, then the mistaken sum of 12 would be typical for her. It seemed to me that addition was hard for Rachel, though she didn’t see it that way. Though a mess, her board is full of good math. II. III. IV. Ms. V.
Ten Issues Capturing the Minds of Educators and Parents This Year | MindShift | KQED News Every year there are some topics and conversations that grab readers’ attention more than others. In 2016, MindShift readers engaged most often and deeply with stories about the tricky job of motivating learners, especially when circumstances like poverty, learning differences and trauma complicate classroom dynamics. Educators are looking for ways to reach all facets of the complicated learners that sit in their classrooms, diving deeply into research about self-control, mindfulness programs and teaching strategies to give students structures for their thinking. Motivating students is a perennially difficult aspect of teaching, so it’s no wonder that there is robust interest in the neuroscience behind motivation. On a more practical note, an article featuring 20 tips to engage even the most seemingly reluctant students also grabbed readers’ attention. Parents are crucial partners for teachers in the academic and social development of children. Katrina Schwartz
Effective Instruction Two features of instruction are especially likely to help students develop conceptual understanding of the mathematics topic they are studying: Attending explicitly to connections among facts, procedures, and ideas Encouraging students to wrestle with the important ideas in an intentional and conscious way In essence, if instruction aims to help students develop conceptual understanding, then it must make explicit the crucial relationships that lie at the heart of such understanding. Research findings suggest the following: mathematics teaching that facilitates skill efficiency is rapidly paced; includes modeling by the teacher with many teacher-directed, product type of questions; displays a smooth transition from demonstration to substantial amounts of error-free practice. The teacher plays a central role in organizing, pacing, and presenting information to meet well-defined learning goals. This is available to members of NCTM. Log In
Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns A student takes notes at Woodrow Wilson High School in Washington D.C. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) Do teachers really know what students go through? To find out, one teacher followed two students for two days and was amazed at what she found. Her report is in following post, which appeared on the blog of Grant Wiggins, the co-author of “Understanding by Design” and the author of “Educative Assessment” and numerous articles on education. Wiggins initially posted the piece without revealing the author. local answer-sheet Orlando Shooting Updates News and analysis on the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. post_newsletter348 follow-orlando true after3th false Answer Sheet newsletter Education questions and answers, in your inbox weekly. Please provide a valid email address. By Alexis Wiggins I have made a terrible mistake. I waited 14 years to do something that I should have done my first year of teaching: shadow a student for a day. The schedule that day for the 10th grade student: Key Takeaway #1
Caution Flags For Tech In Classrooms : NPR Ed A group of recent studies on technology in education, across a wide range of real-world settings, have come up far short of a ringing endorsement. The studies include research on K-12 schools and higher ed, both blended learning and online, and show results ranging from mixed to negative. A deeper look into these reports gives a sense that, even as computers become ubiquitous in classrooms, there's a lot we still don't know — or at least that we're not doing to make them effective tools for learning. First, a quick overview of the studies and their results: Last fall, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development published its first-ever, and one of the largest-ever, international analyses of student access to computers and how that relates to student learning. For this report, the researchers asked millions of high school students in dozens of countries about their access to computers both in the classroom and at home, and compared their answers to scores on the 2012 PISA.