Week 7

Blog Questions for week 7

• What is good curriculum design? How does UBD support effective curriculum design? How does continuous improvement apply to curriculum design? Use the handouts as references.

"The purpose of schooling is not to make every child learn everything that is in the official curriculum. It is to help students acquire the competence to be active, valued members of their communities."

Curriculum design is the structure, scope, sequence, content, and skills taught by an educational body. Good curriculum design purposeful, deliberate, creative, operates on many levels, requires compromises, may fail, and has stages. 

-Curriculum design is purposeful.  The main purpose is to improve student learning and clearly state what the real purposes are.

-Curriculum design is deliberate.  It should be an explicit process that clearly identifies what should be done, by whom and when.

-Curriculum design should be creative.  Students should have opportunities to think critically and creatively throughout the unit.  The saying that a student should have their "feet on the ground and head in the clouds" gives a visual of learning. 

-Curriculum design operates on many levels. Curriculum at each level must be compatible with other levels. They design should be natural stepping stones to the next. 

-Curriculum design requires compromises.  It is understandable that parts of the curriculum will not be accepted by everyone. Compromises will need to be taken to meet certain expectations.  

-Curriculum designs can fail.  Components of certain parts of the curriculum may fail or educators may reject different parts of the curriculum.  The idea that curriculum should be continuously improved and corrected is part of the philosophy.  

 A major component of curriculum design is a good assessment program, which will allow teachers and administrators to evaluate how students are progressing and where they need to go. The curriculum can then be adjusted to respond to students’ needs, improving and strengthening it. Curriculum design, then, is not a one-time process. 

The Understanding by Design offers a planning process and structure to guide curriculum, assessment, and instruction. Its two key ideas are contained in the title: 1) focus on teaching and assessing for understanding and learning transfer, and 2) design curriculum “backward” from those ends.

UBD supports effective curriculum design by giving the teacher the ultimate plan for a unit.  Teachers have the complete understanding and philosophy of what is considered "mastery" and "understanding" of the given content.  Knowing exactly what the the Essential Questions are keep a strong focus for student assessment.  

• Read this article from AFT on the principles of professional development. What was the hardest part of writing the UBD workshop today? Why do you think that is?
• "Professional development is an essential element of comprehensive or “systemic” reform. The nation can adopt rigorous standards, set forth a visionary scenario, compile the best research about how students learn, change textbooks and assessment, promote teaching strategies that have been successful with a wide range of students, and change all the other elements involved in systemic reform—but without professional development, school reform and improved achievement for all students will not happen" 
• This rings true for me. I feel that I have not been given proper training in the UBD format that is widely used and accepted by many teachers in our district. Understanding what is an essential question is the heart of UBD and an area we struggled with the most. After some research, I have found some guidance.  One meaning of "essential" involves important questions that recur throughout one's life. Questions are broad in scope and timeless by nature and arguable, such as What is justice? Essential questions are those that point to the big ideas of a subject.  Lastly, "essential" refers to what is needed for learning core content.  In this sense, a question can be considered essential when it helps students make sense of important but complicated ideas and knowledge.
• A question is essential when it: 
1. causes genuine and relevant inquiry into the big ideas and core content;
2. provokes deep thought, lively discussion, sustained inquiry, and new understanding as well as more questions;
3. requires students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support their ideas, and justify their answers;
4. stimulates vital, on-going rethinking of big ideas, assumptions, and prior lessons;
5. sparks meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experiences;
6. naturally recurs, creating opportunities for transfer to other situations and subject

Week 6

Questions to reflect on for Week 6 (Using Articles from Class)

Blog Questions: 
What are some challenges to writing and implementing effective essential questions? Use these two excerpts (Chapter 1) and (Chapter 4) and class discussion as background.

How do you engage students deeply in the content of the curriculum? How do you make them hungry for knowledge? How do you keep them coming back for more? By asking essential questions. Questions that probe for deeper meaning and set the stage for further questioning foster the development of critical thinking skills,   

In order to do this, teachers need to determine the "big idea". The Big Ideas are core concepts, principles, theories and processes that serve as the focal point of curriculum, instruction and assessment. Teachers will need to look at the standards and the key words (nouns, adjectives, and verbs) in the Standards or work "backwards" from the curriculum.  The best essential questions center on major issues, problems, concerns, interests, or themes relevant to students’ lives and to their communities.  They are open-ended, non-judgmental, meaningful and purposeful, inviting the exploration of ideas. 

Teaching for understanding should include key questions when planning any learning activity.  Using the acryonym WHERETO recommended by Wiggins and McTighe will help teachers in their planning.

• W = How will you help your students to know where they are headed, why they are going there, and what ways they will be evaluated along the way?

• H = How will you hook and engage students' interest and enthusiasm through thought-provoking experiences at the beginning of each instructional episode?

• E = What experiences will you provide to help students make their understandings real and to equip all learners for success throughout your unit or course?

• R = How will you cause students to reflect, revisit, revise, and rethink?

• E = How will students express their understandings and engage in meaningful self-evaluation?

• T = How will you tailor (differentiate) your instruction to address the unique strengths and needs of every learner?

• O = How will you organize learning experiences so that students move from teacher-guided and concrete activities to independent applications that emphasize growing conceptual understandings?

It is stated that "the ability to ask great questions often separates great teachers from good ones."  It is difficult for a teacher to ask questions that are powerful, directive and commit students to the process of critical thinking through inquiry.  Implementing effective essential questions can be challenging.  The teacher will need to make sure that every students understands the questions and sees their value.  She will need to implement activities and inquiries for each question. Questions should be sequential and naturally lead from one to another.  Classrooms should have essential questions posted and have students personalize them with their owns examples and stories.  Teachers will need to make sure students are given the right amount of time to examine the question using content maps to relate them all. 

Answer three of the four following essential questions for school reform

• Professional development: How does our staff really view professional development?
• I believe staff values professional developmental especially if it meets their professional goals or interests. Teachers want direction, ideas for activities and programs that support their students' learning. I believe many teachers want what is best for their students.
• Instruction: Are we effectively reaching all students, especially low achievers?
• Assessment: Are we assessing everything we value or only those things that are most easily tested and graded?
• The Common Core Standards ensure that students have the skills and knowledge students need to be successful by providing clear goals for student learning. If teachers are implementing the standards, then they should be evaluating these standards with formative and common assessments. Many teachers are still assessing using multiple choice questions and need to switch to more critical thinking skills that analyze and synthesis.
• Curriculum: For what do we need textbooks? Why? If so, how should they be used?
• The traditional approach is costly. Districts need to look into digital textbooks, tailored teacher-training videos and free curricula available online. There are over 45 states that have adopted the Common Core and cities like New York are forerunners. Nashua is using information available online to shape our expectations locally. Because it is the "Common" Core, it is likely others have faced a common challenge. With all the open source information that different people/districts have put together, do we really need textbooks?

Week 5

Questions to reflect on for Week 5 (Using Articles from Class)

Blog Questions: 

Why are text dependent questions encouraged in the CCSS? 

Text Dependent Template

Text dependent questions can be invitations for students to think deeply about a text through rereading and finding evidence, and compare it with their own perspectives and experiences. Students are thinking about what the text says, how the text says it, what the text means and what the text means to them.  Text dependent questions encourage close reading. Close reading builds the habits of readers as they engage with complex texts and build stamina and skills so they can do so independently.  

A 10 minute video clip that explores complex text with high quality, eveindence-based questions using Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s letter from a Birmingham jail. http://lausd.wistia.com/medias/e4mc0qiaav 

Close Reading and how to use it Prezi http://prezi.com/g7vtfw8xulzj/copy-of-close-reading-and-the-common-core/

What strategies can you use with students to build their skills around close reading? How could you use the Top Hat activity in your classroom?

Close reading is time consuming so the teacher should select short, worthy passages. Then the teacher must ask text dependent questions. Students should take what they have learned from one text and apply it to the next.

Students need to "Read with a Pencil"

1. Annotate the text

2. Highlight or underline key words or phrases they find surprising, confusing, significant or that raise questions.  Underline with a PURPOSE!

3. Make notes in the margins.

4. Look for patterns, repetitions, contradictions or similarities in the text. 

Teach Student to Ask The Questions

1. What is the author telling me here?

Have students notice the details in the passage and can they recount those details in their own words accurately, precisely and clearly? Paraphrasing is the first step in close reading.

2. Are there any hard or important words?

Once students have a basic grasp of what the author is telling them--they are ready to move on to analyzing the content.

3. What does the author want me to understand?

If students begin their analysis with this question, thwy will be ready to make inferences--determining what the author is trying to show without directly stating it.

4. How does the author play with language to add to meaning?

How a text is written is as important as the content itself in getting the author's message across.  

In conclusion, challenging texts need to be read and reread.  Each reading should accomplish a separate purpose. The 1st Reading should allow the reader to determine WHAT THE TEXT SAYS. The 2nd Reading should allow the reader to determine HOW A TEXT WORKS.  The 3rd Reading should allow the reader to evaluate the QUALITY AND VALUE OF THE TEXT and to connect the text to other texts. 

Here is a short guide to:

Creating Questions for Close Analytic Reading Exemplars: A Brief Guide from Achieve the Core

1. Think about what you think is the most important learning to be drawn from the text. Note this as raw material for the culminating assignment and the focus point for other activities to build toward.

2. Determine the key ideas of the text.  Create a series of questions structured to bring the reader to an understanding of these.

3. Locate the most powerful academic words in the text and integrate questions and discussions that explore their role into the set of questions above.

  

4. Take stock of what standards are being addressed in the series of questions above. Then decide if any other standards are suited to being a focus for this text. If so, form questions that exercise those standards.   

5.  Consider if there are any other academic words that students would profit from focusing on. Build discussion planning or additional questions to focus attention on them.  

6.  Find the sections of the text that will present the greatest difficulty and craft questions that support students in mastering these sections. These could be sections with difficult syntax, particularly dense information, and tricky transitions or places that offer a variety of possible inferences.

7. Develop a culminating activity around the idea or learning identified in #1. A good task should reflect mastery of one or more of the standards, involve writing, and be structured to be done by students independently. 

This site has model questions http://nieonline.com/tbtimes/downloads/CCSS_reading.pdf

This site has a Close Reading Strategies Tool Kits http://www.syracusecityschools.com/tfiles/folder716/ELA-Grade06-Unit01-CloseReadingStrategyToolKit.pdf

What do you believe about the current state of education? 

President Obama’s Race to the Top educational competition includes and encourages more reliance on formative assessments. These tests help students and their teachers know how they’re doing. I believe that students want to know where there are and how to improve regardless of their level. Formative assessments prove what the students already know but clearly states the standards and level that need to be address.  It gives the teachers the data to move forward with best teaching practices. 

Specifically in your classroom/ teaching environment- what are three statements that you could make about education?

1. Students learn best by doing, and students benefit from knowledge and experience.

2. The assessments in my room measure student performance and my teaching of these concepts.

3. I expect my students to take responsibility and ownership of their education. In response, I use whatever resources available to help each student meet expectations. After reading the articles on Special Education and ELL, what challenges do you see with testing to Common Core and making appropriate accommodations for these students?

• Special Education Schools need to develop a collective ownership for all the students in the school. Our education program should be to “share responsibility for student achievement among general education staff, special education staff, and other staff of the district.” In order to do this, students need to be educated by all team teachers and they need to share the responsibility of meeting their level of expectation. This leads into finding collaborative planning time. All teachers working with the students need to time to look at data, find ways to support and challenge these students.
• Once schools identify student's needs they will need to plan to meet those needs. Having a common time where students are leveled to their needs is difficult for an administrator to do, however, in order for students to succeed at their level, they need intervention AT THEIR LEVEL.

Week 4

Questions to Reflect on for Week 4 (Chapter 10 and 11)

Within the speaking and listening section of Chapter 10, the role of multimedia in the standards is raised. More specifically, how students should be accustomed not just to using technology, but using it for clear purposes, as described on page 167. How do most teachers currently teach students to use technology to present information in your school (or district)? Are there any teachers or other staff that others could study and plan alongside to maximize best practices?

I have been an advocate of using technology in the classroom for many years. Currently, I have a one-on-one classroom that allows me opportunities many other classrooms do not have. Many use powerpoint to present projects, some use Prezi. My students use google sites to save and present projects along with collaborate with the other students.  Blogger is great way to share and present opinions. Some of the teachers have used Penzu to write daily and present their creative writing to class. Storybird is another way my students have presented their writing. Jing is a great program to have kids do HOW To videos for computer activities. We do this and share our how tos with the staff. 

Just using a camera to create a picture show that may follow a poem or project is an easy way to incorporate technology.  Most of the teachers in my school have received document cameras through donorschoose. These document cameras allow students to present ideas in a three dimensional way.  

We were lucky to get a class set of iPads last year at my school and we have downloaded the iMovie app. This is an engaging way for students to create book reviews or act out a scene to chapter in a book they are reading. We are looking for other iPad programs to use with presenting. Haiku Deck, Keynote, ScreenChomp and Snapguide are some of the recommendations I have found online. I am hoping to discuss this further in class and see what others are using so I can recommend an app to our Principal. 

The language standards stress that students should learn to use grammar and conventions over needing to define them, and that students should learn to choose flexibly from a range of strategies for determining the meaning of unknown words over memorizing vocabulary lists. This is a shift for many schools. How is the teaching of language enacted in your school (or district)?

As a grade level team, we have stopped weekly spelling. Instead, to support vocabulary, specifically in the area of prefixes and suffixes, we have developed a root word program. We introduce 8 root words a week, do activities to support the root words and then test their knowledge weekly.  We continue to do vocabulary reviews with the common core math along with introducing vocabulary in all other areas of the curriculum.  

We will need to look Standard 3 more as a school/district. We will need to share and review speeches and documents use conventions and word choice to reach their audience. Share these with our students and discuss how this impacts our view on what was stated. 

Unfortunately, we have not adapted a program but can still use Scott Foresman as a base. This program emphasizes defining the skill  and not interpreting the skill and then using it in their language.  We will need to change this way of teaching and without a program or roll out for each, many teachers will stick with their way until that happens. 

Chapter 11 discusses missteps from historical reform efforts and provides various research views on potential causes as well as solutions. In what ways has your school (or district) fallen into similar reform missteps in the past? In what ways has your school (or district) successfully implemented reforms in the past?

In the past, the district seems to look at reform as a yearly progression. An example of this, a few years back the district looked at ways to reform writing. Programs to support this were not fully implemented in our school specifically. Our school was asked to implement the Collins Program. Our school was only taught Type 1 and we never received any other training for the other 6 types of writing. At the same time some teachers could take professional development classes to implement the Six Traits of Writing, some did, many did not.  The idea that our students should perform better in writing from the beginning of the year until the end based on the Cornerstone Writing, yet receive no formal training in how to implement a writing program or use the CCSS arcoss the curriculum, means students are not showing progress. Teachers put writing to the side because they were/are not confident  implementing a writing workshop, what to expect from grade levels, how to grade it, when to find the time to read writing and so much more. Professional Development, grade level facilitators that are trained and rollouts to team or school wide programs need to be looked at in order for us to have the knowledge to make a difference. 

Nashua School District implemented the Everday Math Program many years ago. All the teachers in the district used the same program, were given professional development and all teachers were expected to use it. More professional development was given that year and to new teachers starting the following year. We had math facilitators in our building who were up to date on what was expected from us and gave suggestions to support our teaching during faculty meetings. Because we were all using this program, our team of teachers were able to discuss strategies to implement and actually teach each other on methods that were foreign to us.

What have we learned from these experiences that we should keep in mind when implementing the CCSS?

We need time and professional development to understand the CCSS in order to implement them effectively. 

Teachers need time to discuss and analyze the standards as a team and to look at what is expected at their grade level, one above and one below. We need to look at the NH Standards and compare them to the CCSS, looking at what we need to teach now. We need time to see where the gaps are. 

Common Core Standards require educators to teach new material in new ways.  But before teachers start developing lesson plans from scratch, we need time to pool our knowledge, materials and resources. Therefore, time needs to be included into the implementation. For example, our grade level team asked for a professional day to meet for one day to look at the standards/rollouts for math and reading. Making sure we are all implementing them effectively using best teaching strategies.  This needs to be done regularly in all areas of the curriculum. 

Read two articles that I post on Twitter using the #ed540 hashtag (or that you post/find yourself). Respond to them in the blog- did they provide you with any new strategies or information? Remember you do not need to create a Twitter account to find the articles if you don't want to.

 "Ten Most Popular Free Technology Sites" http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2013/09/this-months-ten-most-popular-posts-on.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+freetech4teachers%2FcGEY+%28Free+Technology+for+Teachers%29#.UlH5CNKsiSo

This site included many interesting sites that I will be using.
-I added the Geography site to my Social Studies livebinder for my students to practice for the Geography Bee.
-Class Charts mentioned Dojo. This site is an awesome behavior management program. Students get their own pin and pick their own avatar. The teacher can give points for whatever their plan is for the classroom and can do this singularly as a whole group. Kids love the graphics.
-History of Design mentioned Design Squad site which is very teacher friendly. It has hands on Engineer activities students can do. I would like to use this as an incentive for my class behavior program. They would be learning but having so much fun!
- The 90 page guide to using Blogger in the classroom was great! I would like to do use blogger effectively and this site had many ideas on how to do this.

Stella's Stunners - collection of over 600 "non-routine"
http://www.ohiorc.org/for/math/stella/
The Stella problems are not typical textbook exercises. They are considered "non-routine" problems because the methods of attacking them are not immediately obvious. What a great way to engage the students to start a lesson or end the lesson with problem solving techniques!