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Informational Text Why, Resources, and Administration Using Video

Teacher Collaboration day consisted of fifteen minutes of the why informational text should be implemented throughout the content areas.  We also provided teachers with resources and methods for saving resources.

It was also the first time that our administrative staff conducted one minute videos to provide information to staff instead of meeting as a large group.



Presentation Link

Informational Text Resources

Embraced By Words

Many resources have been discovered over the last few months.  I will be sharing the following resources with teachers tomorrow.

Thoughts Before The Resources:

• You find a great article, you give it to students, they don't read it because they know the teacher will give them everything they need to know from the article.  Determine a new way to allow students time to gather the important information from the text.
• Pose a real life, driving question that can allow students to pull the needed information from the text
• Allow students to state the questions that they have from the text that could enhance the driving question or providing them a purpose to find more text to answer the questions.

Resources:

• Columbia University
• Newsela - Nonfiction Literacy & Current Events
• ASCD Transformative Classroom
• Recommended Books, Suggested Strategies
• The "What Children Should Read" Debate
• 11 Tech Tools To Teach the Common Core Standards
• 10 Ideas For Using Instagram
• 9 Lesser Known Common Core Resources For Teachers
• Selection of Authentic Text & Resources
• Library of Congress Resources 
• Lesson Plans
• Informational Text - Pinterest Board
• Twitter Search - Informational Text

Discovery Education Resources

***Videos in Discovery Education play in Microsoft Explorer & Safari on the iPad
**PHS teachers: Need your username/password? Contact me

Discovery Education on the iPad
Discovery Education is a resource that our school district pays for.  It provides an enormous amount of video and text resources for your content area.

The "Teacher Center" provides numerous resources.  Discover them below...



The "Curriculum Standards Search" allows searching for content based on different standards.  Standards include the "Common Core State Standards" among others.  Discover them below...



The "Advanced Search" allows for searches to be narrowed to include/exclude any aspects of your curriculum content.  Discover them below...

Explain Everything Calculus 2

Explain Everything became the perfect tool for Calculus 2 students to prove that they understood the concepts from their class.

Since so many symbols are used while completing one of these problems, pencil and paper with steps of completion provided great subjects for the camera feature of the iPad.

The true reason for our staff using the Explain Everything app is for the individual assessment piece after group conversation.  Having students discuss the steps provides direct practice for the Common Core State Standards test that is coming.  Helping students prepare to explain processes will be beneficial.

See how the process evolved.

Three Act Math

Today, Mr. Mihalski and Mrs. Gulan provided the challenge of a Three Act math problem.  In preparation for this, I filmed the actual activity and used Camtasia to place the (Dan Meyer) timer and video together.  The students used iPads to review, investigate, and discuss the problem at their own pace.  The great thing about this was that it was messy.  Questioning and not giving was the theme by the teachers so that the students did the work!  It also begins to give students (even though they don't know it) the skill of explaining mathematical reasoning which will be an important skill when the Common Core State Standards SMARTER balanced assessment takes place in the future.

Once the video was created, I presented it to the teachers in the format of an email.
Below are the directions that the math teachers and I developed.  The questions are anticipated questions that we thought the students might come up with.  The math teachers determined the math that transpired from the footage, while the technology integration specialist delivered the video for classroom use.

Act 1: Show this video Students may need a slow version

Act 2: Allow students think time...take on questions.

  Questions that may be asked. 

     1.  How many steps are there?

      1a. How are the steps to be numbered?  Where is zero?

      2.  Do both teachers start on the same step?

      3.  Is Mr. Mihalski taking two steps at a time?

      4.  Do we want to know the step or the time that they will meet?

      5.   Is Mr. Mihalski really wearing two different shoes?

This will be messy.  Avoid telling the students the answers.  However, it may require some input from you.

Act 3: Watch the answer.

*I realize the time in the videos is inaccurate.  While it will be changed for next time, it gave students a great opportunity to use their BYOD and retime the action.  

For the students to view the video footage, I created a classroom blog with the teacher.  This gave the teacher a digital presence on the web.  See the students in action:

SQWORL Perfect Tool For SMARTER Balanced Conversation

Today, I will be leading a SMARTER Balanced discussion and prep for mathematics teachers.  Immediately, I thought of the new tech tool, SQWORL!  This tool allows for multiple URLS to become one URL.  The benefit of SQWORL is that a visual thumbnails are present with the link and a description.

VIEW THE SQWORL of SMARTER Balanced Assessment 
Resource Includes:

• History of SMARTER Balanced
• Company Making SMARTER Balanced
• Wisconsin's DPI FAQ
• SMARTER Examples
• SMARTER Prep Questions
• DAN MEYER's Geometry & Algebra Curriculum

One negative: All of the thumbnails are not being grabbed from the resources.  Hoping over time that thumbnails will show up.

ThreeRing

ThreeRing is bringing a great concept to the web by allowing teachers/students/parents to upload images of work completed.  On top of that, the items can be tagged and searched for easily.

Uploading names of students is easy.  Simply download a copy of your classroom roster in an excel file or word file and place the list of names into ThreeRing.

This will be a great tool for assessing students by standards.  Sharing them with parents and students is also easy.

Pictures can be taken with their iPhone/iPod, iPad, or Android apps.

See the web version of Three Ring

Using these apps allows for you to capture a still image, video, or audio recording.

Teaching Learning Team Establishes Web Presence

Four people will comprise a Teaching Learning Team that will establish relationships with departments to  facilitate their procedure for teaching.  If teachers have an idea, we want to facilitate getting them as many resources as needed to meet their learning targets.

As we formulate these relationships, a web resource area needs to be the "go to" place for teachers to request help from us or acquire resources on their own.  It will continue to grow as our team transforms learning for educators.

My specific section so far will be the CCSS page in which I have created areas for grades 6-12 educators to obtain supplemental problems that will help our students make the transition.  At this time, math and ELA are the sections for supplement problems. In addition, I created a Mobile Resource and Web Resource page.  I think a nice touch was the inclusion of a CCSS news resource that will aggregate its stories from Google news.