Here are the top five posts from Common Core and Ed Tech that you won't want to miss!
Thanks again to all our readers! Keep letting us know what you want to see!
Monday, December 2, 2013
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Using Newspapers to Support the Common Core
We are fortunate in the Bay Area to have a resource for nonfiction reading material for our classrooms, and it revolves around the local newspaper. Newsschool is a literacy program that provides not only the physical newspapers to the classroom, but a fairly complete collection of lessons and resources for teachers to use, at no cost to the school. Newsschool is also available in an e-edition.
The program’s lessons integrate reading into math, science, and thinking skills for all grade levels. Students learn how to read to gain information, determine what’s vital to the task at hand, and use what they read to support their claims. They learn to think critically and support their own opinions with facts. Students can use current events to make connections to what they learning in textbooks and other sources. These skills are all essential aspects of meeting the Common Core.
The Kid Scoop Teacher page specifically addresses the Common Core and how to use newspapers to meet the standards. Teachers and parents will find warm-up activities, guides, videos and writing prompts.
Creative teachers can devise their own units using the newspapers with ed tech tools students are already using.
- Use Fotobabble to put together a food pyramid using grocery store ads.
- Extend Poetry Play but creating a visual component in Prezi.
- Use a slideshow program like Animoto to narrate the Good Turn writing piece.
- Have students write their Monsters Wanted ad in Doodlecast.
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Saturday, November 30, 2013
Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2013: MOOCs and Anti-MOOCs (from Hack Education)
Here's a fascinating post by Audrey Watters called Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2013: MOOCs and Anti-MOOCs, from her blog Hack Education (a personal favorite). It's a thoughtful review of the 'state of the state' regarding MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses).Take ten minutes to read it - very informative, and full of interesting thoughts and perspective. For one, interesting pivots that seem to be starting for both Coursera and Udacity - more focused on corporate training? In 2012, MOOCs looked upon as a possible 'salvation' for education, now, not so much. Hmmm... should be an interesting year...
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Saturday, November 23, 2013
Making the ELA Shifts Using Technology
Achieve the Core has identified three overarching shifts in the move to the Common Core standards for English/Language Arts. Having spent the better of three years unpacking the new standards, these shifts indeed spotlight where a teacher should focus instruction.
Go to the Achieve the Core site to read more on "Making the Shift".
All three remind us of the need to offer more robust content to students so they can build vocabulary, skills (such as inference), and habits (supporting arguments) necessary to develop college and career readiness.
What are these shifts and how can student use of technology address them? Here are a few ideas:
1. Regular practice with complex text and its academic language
Use Little Bird Tales, Storybird, Voicethread, or Haiku Deck to 1) identify rich vocabulary in close reading and write a new story using it; 2) create a book of poetry on the weather, and 3) write your own textbook on animals, weather, geology, outreach activities.
2. Reading, writing and speaking grounded in evidence from text, both literary and informational
Instead of writing an essay, have students create a digital story based on a script. Use Popplet to brainstorm/storyboard; Google Apps to write the script; and Comic Creator, Powtoon, GoAnimate! or video to create the final product.
3. Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction
Non-fiction text can be found on many sites, but be sure to check out Scholastic, Discovery and Digital Public Library. Also check out Newsela for current event articles that are scaffolded to your students’ lexile numbers.
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