Professional Development & Resource Library

Parent Roadmaps

The following links will bring you to the website for The Council of the Great City Schools where you can find PDF links for both Spanish and English versions of the Parent Roadmaps for language arts and mathematics.

Language Arts

Mathematics

Cult of Pedagogy

Cult of Pedagogy:
Teaching the Art of Argumentative Writing

The above article I found quite interesting and informative.  Please take a look.

The blog Cult of Pedagogy is a great site to review and peruse over the summer.  Please take a look and find some of their interesting articles for summer reading and leading up to September.  It will be here sooner than we would like.

Enjoy the summer and be well.

Word Tamer

Develop characters, settings, and plots with Wordtamer, an interactive site, going through a carnival atmosphere, using literary devices.  The player will journey through the carnival and develop characters, a setting, and a plot for their very own story.  Students watch videos along the way to ensure understanding of crafting a good story.

Weekly Question: Grading Smarter, Not Harder week 5

Weekly Question

"Grading Smarter, Not Harder"

Week 5

How often do you encourage student creativity in your classroom?    What is your rationale for doing so or choosing not to engage students in this way?

Please comment your answer by clicking comment at the bottom.

Free Webinar video, "Grading Smarter, Not Harder"

The following webinar occurred on January 26, 2015 and is archived at www.ascd.org.

Click here for the link.

"Grading Smarter, Not Harder" week 5: Creativity (Part 3)

Using Modern Technology to Encourage Creativity

Part III

Not all schools, or even grade levels, allow the use of personal devices in the classroom.  With that being said, there are other ways to implement some of the following practices in classroom.  Practicing digital safety, and learning how to be a safe and responsible digital learner (and teacher) is a the forefront of educational practices today.  The 21st Century Skills should be implemented throughout all curricula and understood by all educators.

Strategy #1:  Use Twitter for Class Discussion and Test

Pose a question or problem to the class and students have to tweet back their response.  This will give students practice in stating cases and rebuttals as concisely as possible.  Use hashtags unique to the class, i.e. #MrPHistory

Create a Twitter Tuesday where during the last 10 minutes of class, or the day, students can converse

"Grading Smarter, Not Harder" week 5: Creativity (Part 2)

Part II.  Strategies for Grading Creative Projects

Strategy #1:  Major Project Planning Sheet

Make sure all students are aware of the targeted learning outcomes for the project.   A copy of all the figures, planning sheets, tracking sheets, etc., can be found in this PDF.  Figure 5.1 is the Project Planning Sheet we are referring to here.  It is critical students don't loose site of the learning targets of the projects and the Project Planning Sheet will help them stay focused.  It is designed to facilitate a conversation between the teacher and the student working on their project.  As a general rule, Dueck often asks students to include at least 3 learning targets in a project.  Their choice which ones will be included. The central column gives students the chance to explain how they might use different types of media to meet different targets.  It also allows them to plan for maximum effectiveness.  The third column requires students to list key details and elements of the project (i.e. specific facts, sources,

"Grading Smarter, Not Harder" week 5: Creativity (Part 1)

Creativity

In this final week of "Grading Smarter, Not Harder" we look at creativity in regards to assessment and grades.  This review/summary will be broken down into three parts:  I.  Creativity, Engagement, and Motivation, and Potential Problems with Creativity; II.  Strategies for Grading Creative Projects; III.  Using Modern Technology to Encourage Creativity.  

Part I.  Creativity, Engagement, and Motivation

"Creatvitiy is going to be required by future generations to solve both current problems and those yet unseen."  (Ken Robinson, 2001, 2009)

It has been proven that learning and mastery occur much more readily in environment that promote autonomy through self-direction and purpose.  According to Behetto & Kaufman (2013), "creativty must be task appropriate in order to be effective."  Medina (2008) adds that creativity is an aid to understanding.   Many educators have witnessed learning is greatly enhanced through individual creativity, ownership, and empowerment.  The key is engagement to unlock the intrinsic motivation to learn in students.  "Allowing students to be creative in the classroom is a way of personalizing learning." (Robinson, 2001, 2009).

Additional research:

Weekly Question: Grading Smarter, Not Harder: Homework

Homework is considered a stable in schooling.  After reading this review, how have your opinions about the value of homework as a graded assignment changed?

Post your answer and feedback in the comment section below.

"Grading Smarter, Not Harder" review/summary: Week 4: Homework

Homework

Day in and day out students, and teachers, appear to be bogged down with homework.  Staying up late just to complete it can tire out a student for the next day. Much of our class time, and prep time, can be taken up just checking it over, logging it in, and looking at student responses.  Are we doing this right?  Are we providing our student the proper type of "homework"?  What is homework suppose to be?  For what reason?  What is it suppose to look like?  Myron Dueck dedicates an entire chapter on homework and discusses how we are doing it wrong, and what he did to alter his practice of homework to help his students, and himself.

Removing homework from the grade book (usually reflected as completion and compliance) that the aggregate data usually began to more accurately reflect student understanding.

Problems with Grading Homework

• Grading Homework Confuses Completion with Understanding
• attaching a grade to homework enviably leads to grading completion rather than understanding.
• nothing wrong with instilling good work ethic in students, but what is the purpose of assigning homework?  Practice!
• Grading Homework Promotes Busy Work at the Expense of Intrinsic Motivation and Authentic Learing
• evidence shows that intrinsic motivation decreases once people are paid to do what they love to do for fun (Pink, 2009) [No, not the singer.]
• embrace practices that promote investigation and inquiry and jettison those that deter exploration.

Weekly Question: Grading (Week 3)

What is an example of deflating student grades?

Post your answer in the comment section below.

How accurately does the grading system you use reflect student achievement of academic learning?  What kind of change can you, or even us as a school, can make to the system to remove inflation or deflation?      Let's discuss.

Txt Msg Cls Tool

The following site gives you and students a fun way to work with dialogue.  Create fun, made up text messages between two characters from a story, have a dialogue between two historic figures to show analytical thinking and creativity (George Washington texting King George III?, Einstein and Hawking have a scientific conversation?, etc).  The possibilities are endless.  Get the kids writing and thinking outside of the box.  They can take a screenshot and paste into a Google Doc or Slides for a quick presentation. 

Click here to explore more. 

"Grading Smarter, Not Harder" Week 3 Review: Grading

We are use to the old tradition way of grading and reporting, usually the 4 point scale, A, B, C, D, F.  This 0-100 point scale poses a big problem many of us don't usually recognize.  According to Thomas R. Guskey's On Your Mark (2015) the shift to percentile grades during the late 19th and 20th century was gradual.  Few educators questioned it and it was adopted through the American educational landscape.  In 1912 a couple of researches in Wisconsin found the use of percentile grades were not reliable and accurate indicators of student achievement.  Both Dueck and Guskey have looked at the 0-100 point scale and have concluded that this structure implies a 60 point difference between a D and an F.  All other have a 10 point difference between each letter grade.  What an academic penalty we are giving students.

(Guskey, 2015; On Your Mark)

Myron Dueck and Thomas Guskey both agree that his huge range of failure grades puts students at a disadvantage.  Even if a student received a zero on an assessment, it will take about 9 perfect scores to make up the percentile difference to reach a passing mark.  ( More on zeros later.)

Dueck goes on to share what he calls, "The Four Conditions for Punitive Action."  He calls it CARE guidelines.  Care, Aims, Reduction, Empowerment.
Care:  When students opt to ignore assignments, penalties may serve to make teachers feel as though they've addressed the issue, but they do not increase student accountability or responsibility.
Aims:  Punitive grading does not complement the overall aim to measure learning outcomes, increase student confidence, and provide an environment of fairness and equity.
                               measure evidence of learning or capacity against a set of standards.

                               behavioral penalties do not relate directly to learning outcomes (in fact both Dueck and Guskey agree on this as well).

                               "lates" and zeros do not inspire academic confidence.

                               punitive grades diminish fairness and equity

Weekly Question

This week's question is based on the review/summary for "Grading Smarter, Not Harder", week 2.

In addition to tracking scores on test sections, what additional information is recommended including on test tracking sheets?

For a chance to win a half-a-dozen dry erase markers for your classroom, please write your comment in the comment section below.

WikiWhere Map Game

Test Student's knowledge on world geography with WikiWhere?  Students have to try their best to identify cities based on their description.  All city descriptions come from Wikipedia entries.  Set up some rules to make it fun, interesting, and extending the learning process.  If the student is wrong, have them do a little research about the city. 

"Grading Smarter, Not Harder": Testing & Retesting

Testing & Retesting

How can you ensure that an assessment reflects student knowledge?

Let's begin with retesting and the problems with traditional classroom testing systems.  According to Dueck, the following have been identified as problems with the testing system we are familiar with:

• flawed-tests cannot be revisited.
• little resemblance to reality
• test are a snapshot in time
• outcomes affected by unrelated variables
• low socioeconomic conditions are related more so with negative emotional factors
• negatively affect high-performing students as well.
• Traditional testing approaches discourage mastery

We should approach teaching more like coaching.  Whether you are a dancer, an athlete, an artist, or musician, constant practice leads to mastery.

• embrace and celebrate mastery through repeated effort
• put systems in place to support and celebrate student mastery in the classroom.

Traditional approach ignores the learning that occurs during testing

• learning is active, not static.
• students should be given the chance to identify the mistakes made on tests, and re-test, and learn why they made the mistake

Potential Retesting Problems

• Students may need to complete a 2nd test in its entirety
• This can be discouraging to them
• a waste of time for student and teacher
• tiring amount of paper for the teacher
• Retests take up valuable Class Time
• completing the curriculum on time becomes an issue
• Retests can provide data of little value
• did learning really improve?
• Retests may not reflect authentic learning

Using Graphic Novels, Comics, and Manga in the Classroom event

Using Graphic Novels, Comics and Manga in the Classroom

                         Saturday, May 19, 2018 from 01:00 pm to 05:00 pm

For event details click here>>

Thank you Arlene for the heads up on this event.

Weekly Question

Weekly Question:    

After reading the review on "Grading Smarter, Not Harder; Unit Plans" (part 1),   What are the four types of targets to include in unit plans?

To enter for a chance to win some new dry-erase markers:
1.  Follow this blog.
2.  Answer the following question in the comments section below.

Friday, April 27 10pm will be the deadline.

#armmewithexpo

#epcsstaffblog

"Grading Smarter, Not Harder": Unit Plan & Learning Targets (A module breakdown); Part 2

Part 2

Using learning targets efficiently requires us to form what Susan M. Brookhart and Connie M. Moss call a learning target parade.   
Learning targets from a sequence of lessons will add up to a larger unit goal, or state standard.  Daily learning targets include a description with words, pictures, demonstrations, or experiences.

All learning targets must adhere to the following criteria:
1.  Describe for the students exactly what they are going to learn by the end of the day's lesson.
2.  Written in a language the students can understand.
3.  Written in the point of view of a student who has not mastered the knowledge or skill of the day's lesson.
4.  Embodied in a performance of understanding--what the student will do, make, so, or write during the lesson -- that translates the description into action.   Performance of understanding helps students get where they need to be in order to achieve the learning target, as well as giving them evidence of how well they are doing.
5.  Include student criteria for success, or look fors, in a language that describes mastery of the learning target, not a score or grade.

Learning targets describe learning, not activities.

"Grading Smarter, Not Harder": Unit Plan & Learning Targets (A module breakdown); Part 1

Part 1

For my first weekly breakdown of Myron Dueck's "Grading Smarter, Not Harder" online workshop, we will be looking at learning targets.  The role of learning targets in a unit plan is to offer a positive transfer, linking prior knowledge to the ultimate academic goal for the unit.  An important key in ensuring students are learning and retaining the skills and concepts taught to them is letting them know what is coming up in their learning.  Surprises put the students at a disadvantage.  There are three strategies preparing students for the road ahead.
First, offering student-friendly unit plans.  An effective unit plan identifies which type of targets students will meet:

Solar System Exploration by NASA

Explore the planets, dwarf planets and moons of our solar system with NASA's Solar System Exploration.  Interactive displays take students, and teachers, on a trip to each celestial body in our solar system to learn specific features of each.  A great resource for a project, test prep, or just fun exploration.  This will help students studying Earth Science and Space in the upper elementary and middle school grades.

You can find a link to NASA's Solar System Exploration on the Staff Resources Padlet.

Search YouTube videos in the classroom without the distractions of ads and other video on the screen with this website, Tube.

Animated History resource

The following site is a great resource for animations and interactive interface for teaching history and social studies.  There are several activities and animations for teaching the American Revolution, including battles, for fifth grade lessons.

Jungle Jeopardy: An Ecosystem Game

Jungle Jeopardy, a PBS Kids site, is geared for students in kindergarten thru fourth grade.  In this interactive game students are to create a balance in a rain forest ecosystem, keeping alive each animal over a period of 12 days.   Students learn about different species of plants and animals in a rain forest and how they depend on each other.  Experiment with changing one resource at a time (variables) and how the affect the whole system.


You can find a link on our Staff Resource Padlet as well.

Article review: The Magic of Writing Stuff Down

The following article, from Educational Leaders (April 2018) discusses the research behind taking notes and its positive effects on academic achievement.  With the onslaught of technology and laptops in the classroom over the last few years, many have thought using devices will aid in note-taking.  Over the last 20 years, research has shown the old adage is still true, the pen is mighter...!
Retention of information is closely correlated to students taking notes by hand. 

For more information and tips, please check out the article by Byran Goodwin.
                                                                       

"Grading Smarter, Not Harder": A professional review and talking points

Over the next 5-6 weeks I will be sharing reviews and information from an online P.D. course based on the book, "Grading Smarter, Not Harder" by Myron Dueck.  During my studies and projects for the N.J. E.X.C.E.L. my interest has been sparked by the current research and publications of assessments and grade reporting, and how it is changing.  Thomas R. Guskey's "On Your Mark" is an interesting, and easy, read.  He challenges the conventional ways we have been grading and report in school over the last 100 years.

Below are topics I will be reviewing and sharing as discussion points from the course:
Week 1:  Unit Plan and Learning Targets
Week 2:  Issues with Traditional, one-shot unit test structure, development of reassessment structure
Week 3:  Separating Behaviors and Academics when reporting
Week 4:  Purpose of Homework (practice, reinforcement, and preparation)
Week 5:  Creativity and Student Ownership

Follow this Blog for notification of Posts.  

Article Review: Giving Students the Right Kind of Writing Practice

The authors of the following article (Gallagher and Kittle) discuss the importance of the right kind of writing practice.  They firmly believe the only way to ensure a student improves their writing over time is through practice, and enough of it.  The kind of practice is offered to students makes all the difference.  All too often the practice we give kids in school to write actually may hinder their improvement, and turn them off to writing altogether.  The rote standard practice of writing five paragraphs formula stunts their ability to develop their own voice and "denies them the crucial experience of organizing their thinking." (Gallagher and Kittle, 2018). 
Their answer to what the proper kind of practice looks like in the classroom is creating a unit of writing for a particular genre in loops.  Looping during units presents an opportunity of progress through skills necessary to become stronger writers.   Student's volume of writing will increase, leads to deeper understanding, and increases a student's confidence as a writer.  The article takes you through a sample narrative writing unit.  The first lap focuses on short memories as the writer stays and focuses on one specific moment in time.  Students read lots of mentor texts with the teacher, the teach models and writes with them.  This only takes one week.  During the second lap (one week) students still don't write an entire, but write only about a moment in a story (perhaps just a half a page long).  Still studying numerous mentor texts.  We study and write along side them.  Lap three (three weeks) students are asked to create a series of scenes to tell a story.  Students study the shape of stories and our focus is to look at the skills to build on what they learned during the first two laps.  Focus on endings and look at how expert story tellers craft their stories.  The fourth lap (three weeks) allows the teacher to differentiate instruction for those students who are still struggling with crafting several scenes.  Others who are more advanced begin telling stories "through the lens of multiple narrators", a higher level of complexity. 


I recommend this article to everybody, and perhaps this could help us to organize a scope and sequence, or curriculum map for our writing program.  Let me know what you think.  Could this work in you classroom? 

                                                               

(the article is also available on the Staff Resource Padlet, found here >>> )

Padlet: An Online Staff Resource

The following Padlet has been created as a resource for E.P.C.S. staff members.  Available to all staff will be documents, information packets, research, articles, forms, and whatever else you think would be valuable to us.  Please send me items you would like to share with the rest of us and I will update on a weekly basis.  Some of the items on there already I have come across in my classes, researching, and looking for information for the classes I have been teaching.

NJASCD North Networking and Fun

@NJASCDNorth on Twitter

Rocket Science 101 - Build and Launch Virtual Rockets

Rocket Science 101 - Build and Launch Virtual Rockets

Prodigy Math March Madness Bracket

Google Docs Plagiarism Checker for Your Studies

Google Docs Plagiarism Checker for Your Studies

A plagiarism checker for students, and teachers, while composing a written piece.  The use of this add on can help students write more authentically and ensure what they write is in their own words.

[click here >>>]

STEM lesson plans and projects (FREE) from Microsoft

At a low cost for student, this site offers some great projects and lesson plans for STEM based activities.  Many of these projects can be used in the classroom, Science Fair ideas for kids to work on at home, or some down time in class for students to explore and learn on their own.  Click here to learn more.

Make Believe Comix

Creating short comic strips can help students synthesis what they have learned.  Sequencing, focusing on the main idea, creating a visual for a story they are writing, summarizing a social studies or science topic, writing dialogue, or just having fun and begin creative are some of the skills practiced when creating a comic strip.  Make Believe Comix is a resource students can use easily online and share, or print at home.  Students can create a comic strip using three to nine panels.  What can your students create when they use Make Believe Comix?

Cube Creator

Break the writing process into six segments, helping students to write biographies, mysteries, short stories, etc.  On Cube Creators, by Read Write Think, students can enter information with an online template.  Once complete, students can print (with you help at school) or at home, cut and fold to create a cube.  Students can use to summarize what they have read, or use to plan out a writing assignment.

ClassHook: using videos in class; new feature...

From Tech 4 Teachers:

ClassHook is a free service that helps you locate video clips to use in your classroom. ClassHook's best feature is being able to search for video clips according to subject and topic. Most of the video clips that you'll find on ClassHook come from well-known television shows and movies. 

Over the weekend ClassHook introduced a new feature that filters profanity from videos. ClassHook calls the feature "profanity skipping" and it does what the name implies. As a video plays back, any profanity in the clip is skipped. ClassHook developed this feature in response to teachers who said they had found a clip that would be useful in a lesson except for one two swear words. ClassHook's profanity skipping feature will let those teachers use those clips.

PARCC Prep resource: Prepfactory

Online PARCC test-prep is now available for grades 6-10 at Prepfactory.  Sign-up with your Google account, set up a classroom and share the link with your students in order to create assignments.

From Free Tech 4 Teachers site:
Just like their ACT and SAT study guides, PrepFactory's PARCC and SBAC content consists of interactive lessons, practice, personalized study paths, and teacher tools. One of the core elements of PrepFactory's programs is continuous diagnostics that are used to identify the content and the activities that students should spend the most time reviewing. In other words, PrepFactory directs students to work on the concepts they are having the most difficulty mastering.

Beyond the content, PrepFactory helps students familiarize themselves with computer-enhanced question formats. Technology enhanced questions present on the PARCC and SBAC are mirrored in PrepFactory's program, giving students and teachers an extra level of comfort on test day.

Making North America : Interactive Map

Making North America | Interactive Map

Discover how North America took its shape by visiting geological sites across the continent, searching for clues in the landscape, and viewing episodes from the broadcast series Making North America, in this interactive produced by NOVA. In Expedition, hunt for clues that help explain how geological forces shaped North America, find artifacts that reveal how the landscape influenced life, and search for evidence that exposes how humans turned rocks into riches. In Explore, click on map pins to study landscapes and watch video clips that cover relevant science topics. In Watch, stream the series’ three episodes: Origins, Life, and Human. This resource is part of the NOVA: Making North America Collection.

This interactive activity requires Adobe Flash Player.

Visit the program page here.

Newspaper Templates for Google Docs

A fun and engaging way to assess student knowledge and application is to allow students to create a project based on any given topic.  A common project for students at all grade levels is to create their own newspaper.  The following link offers templates for Google documents for students of all ability levels.  Working in pairs or individually students can create their own newspapers based on social studies and science topics (expository writing), review of books, an op-ed (opinion/argumentative), or report on current events (expository, cause/effect).  Printing and displaying on walls, creating online portfolios of work, and peer sharing are some ways to disseminate their work.

Please let me know how these work out for you.  I would love to see the student's work and share some pictures of their work here.

Be well.

Read Write Think's Cube Creators provide templates designed to break the writing process into six distinct parts. There are templates for writing biographies, mysteries, short stories, and a blank template that you can customize. Students enter the required information into the online template. When the template is completed, it can be printed with lines for cutting and folding to create an actual cube.

Medal of Honor

The Medal of Honor CDP is a resource designed by teachers to provide students with opportunities to explore the important concepts of courage, commitment, sacrifice, patriotism, integrity and citizenship and how these values can be exemplified in daily life. The depth and breadth of our students' insight and reflection after interacting with these materials has been remarkable. We are confident that you will find these resources to be as rich and engaging as we have.

Follow the link here>>