Educational Resources & Tech Tools 03/23/2016

• The Ultimate List of Educational Websites - UltraLinx

  Lists of websites for all different aspects of education.

  tags: websites math diy maker coding programming Spanish English language music

• The Marshall Memo Admin - Issues

  • “So often we use assessment in schools to inform students of their progress and attainment. Of course this is important, but it is more critical to use this information to inform teachers about their impact on students. Using assessments as feedback for teachers is powerful. And this power is truly maximized when the assessments are timely, informative, and related to what teachers are actually teaching.”

  • “More and more people seem to agree that digital learning in K-12 classrooms works best when it is used with the oversight of a teacher.”

     

  • Maximize love and manage stress. “Showing affection and patience at every opportunity helps children build confidence to explore the world on their own,”
  • Talk, sing, and point. “Talking and singing to infants and toddlers stimulates their brains and develops their skills,”
  • say Ferguson, Howard, and Walsh. “Pointing helps them connect words to the associated objects.”
  • Teach counting, grouping, and comparing with everyday objects. “Having fun with numbers, names, shapes, and patterns is how children learn to understand their world,” they say. “And it prepares them to learn and love math.”
  • Let children explore through free movement and play. “Curiosity is a child’s built-in engine for learning,”
  • Read and discuss stories. “Whether made-up or factual, the people, places and events of stories are the building blocks for our children’s imagination and much of their learning later in life,”

  • African-American and Hispanic students in the treatment group saw one-point improvements in GPA.

     

    <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->These students had improved scores in end-of-the-year math (but not ELA) tests compared to the control group.

     

    <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->White and Asian students in the treatment group did not register improvements in either of those areas.

  • The researchers attribute these results to the fact that the four writing exercises successfully counteracted stereotype threat among the black and Hispanic students, which raised their academic achievement.
  • Our findings show that self-affirmation can substantially narrow the residual achievement gap that cannot be explained by demographic characteristics or prior achievement, and this is the portion of the achievement gap implicated by stereotype threat.
  • Students need to practice the right things with the teacher circulating to do another check for understanding. For maximum impact, practice sessions should be spaced over time.
  • feedback provides your students with a tangible understanding of what they did well, of where they are at, and of how they can improve
  • The basic idea of mastery learning is to keep the learning goal constant while giving students different amounts of time (with feedback) to master it.
  • “You should only ask groups to do tasks that all group members can do successfully,”
  • Each group member should also be personally responsible for one step of the task.
  • Students need direct, explicit instruction in reading, writing, and math skills, followed by guided practice and feedback so they can use the skills independently.
  • it’s getting students to think about their options, look at how well strategies are working, and be aware of their own skills and knowledge with respect to worthy learning goals.
  • Be a close reader yourself.
  • modeling close reading with students

  • Model it first. When students are novices with close reading, use a document camera to show them step by step how to analyze specific portions of a text and annotate, thinking aloud as you do so.

     

    <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Teach students to look for the evidence.

  • Teach “stretch texts.”
  • Always set a purpose for reading. Have students read a passage once and then pose a specific challenge for their second reading.
  • Differentiate. If a text is above some students’ reading level, they can still think about it in different ways and read “between the lines” by hearing it read aloud or working with a classmate.
  • Go beyond simple comprehension questions, asking students to dig deeper for big ideas, how the reading relates to other texts students have read, and how they might learn more about the topic.
  • Have students come up with questions about a passage and then sort them by those that can be answered with a few words versus those that are worthy of close reading and further explanation.
  • <!--[endif]-->Let them make mistakes. Students will misinterpret, and it’s important to use those errors positively to model the process of using evidence and arguing a point.
  • “When you begin to let students’ questions and ideas about the text take the lead, you’ll find your class will be much more invested in the reading.”
  • the traditional teacher-evaluation process is extremely weak at changing teaching practice and improving student achievement. Their hypothesis is that video evaluation will be much more robust.
  • They also found that less-proficient teachers submitted videos that were representative of their weaknesses.
  • Teachers who recorded their lessons were more critical of their own performance than teachers in the control group, especially with respect to time management and checking on student mastery during instruction.
  • Teachers in the treatment group were quite positive about the conferences they had with their supervisors – they found the talks less adversarial, the tone more supportive, and their evaluations more fair. Teachers also reported fewer disagreements on ratings and were more likely to identify a specific change they would make in their classrooms as a result of the process.

  • Administrators reported that they found treatment teachers less defensive and that the post-observation conferences went more smoothly.

     

  • At the end of the study year, most treatment teachers and administrators were quite positive about the process and were in favor of replacing some or all of in-person classroom observations with the video process. However, there was considerable sentiment (with which the researchers agreed) for keeping at least one in-person classroom observation a year.
  • With volunteer teachers controlling which lessons to video and which of those to submit, there had to be a skew toward well-prepared, well-taught lessons. The only way for administrators to have an accurate picture of the day-to-day instruction that students experience (which is what drives achievement) is to make unannounced, frequent, brief visits to all teachers.
  • An alternative more likely to produce results is administrators visiting classrooms on a regular basis (at least 2-3 a day), thoughtfully observing segments of lessons, looking over students’ shoulders at the assignments they’ve been given, asking a few kids, “What are you working on?”, and looking at what’s on the walls – and then following up with face-to-face affirmation and coaching, preferably in the teacher’s classroom when students aren’t there. Teachers viewing videos of their work is a great PD experience, but the evaluation process can’t be done by remote control. 

  • Provide language supports. The discourse of mathematical argumentation is unfamiliar to many students, and it’s helpful to teach and model language frames, including:

     

    <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->I agree with _____ because _____.

     

    <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->I noticed ______ when ______.

     

    <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->I wonder why ______.

     

    <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->I have a question about ______.

     

    <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->I disagree because ______.

     

    <!-- [if !supportLists]-->-   <!--[endif]-->Based on ______, I think ______.

  • teachers need to give students opportunities to develop their own ideas and have the confidence to validate or challenge the ideas of others. A teacher might show students a series of multiplication problems and then ask them to respond to a generalization: Every time you multiply two numbers, you are always going to get an even number as the product.
  • Manipulate familiar content to be unfamiliar.
  • The key skill with problems like this is students’ ability to ask What if…? and develop a playful posture trying out different combinations of numbers.
  • roblem-solving classes demand that the pupils execute the cognitive bench press: investigating, conjecturing, predicting, analyzing, and finally verifying their own mathematical strategy. T
  • Truly thinking the problem through – creatively applying what you know about math and puzzling out possible solutions – is more important.
  • “A student can learn effectively via computer if an educator is around to assist and supplement, and teachers are realizing the power computers – properly used – have to enhance their craft… [freeing them] to do what only humans can do well – provide empathy, understanding, and mentorship.”
  • About what share of instructional time in high school do you think students should spend receiving instruction independently through or on a computer? The median response – the midpoint between the highest and lowest answers – was 30 percent.
  • ey asked the same question to a cross-section of experts in blended learning.
  • the consensus was about 40 percent of instructional time.
  • Peterson and Horn then asked a representative group of teachers, and their median response was 20 percent. So the public “crowd” was exactly half-way between the blended-learning experts (who would tend to be more favorable to computer time) and teachers (who would be inclined toward more teacher time).

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.