4 Inclusive Apps

This week's article comes from ASCD.  Click here to read the article.  This article outlines 4 new apps that teachers have available to them. One of them is Newsela, which is one that we have looked at many times.  The other three, I thought would be interesting for you to take a look at.  Please take a look at this recent article about some new resources.

Consider the following questions while reading:

1.  What a great resource that the open eBooks can be.  How could you use such books in your room?  Were you aware of free "open" books available on the internet?
2.  When I read about Padlet, it made me think about the "parking lot" for questions that often exist at PD for teachers.  I also thought about how it could be used in place of KWL charts.  Are you willing to give this a try in your classroom?
3.  Popplet looks like another story boarding app.  Take the time to review how that might be useful in your classroom.

Follow Up: Paper/Pencil vs Online Testing

With all the information that has come out this week about paper/pencil testing vs. online testing, I thought I would share this presentation with you.  Dustin Ruffell shared this with the admin team to view.  It is the Indian Valley superintendent just sharing information out to their community about this discussion.  This presentation was made after ODE said that those districts that previous selected "online" as their testing method, could not switch to paper/pencil.

Questions to Consider:

1.  Have you adjusted any of your assessments since we started looking at the rigor of these new questions two years ago?
2.  What is a fair way to adjust your questioning procedures?  Change all the questions at once, "field test" some items, a few here and there?
3.  Since we had our March two hour delay, have you looked at the folder for your breakout area and made any adjustments to your assessments?
4.  Is assessment literacy the only way we can help students adjust?

How Student Centered Is Your Classroom?

As we are all deep into another cycle of OTES evaluations, I thought that looking at student engagement would be a good idea.  Student engagement and student ownership cross many areas of the OTES rubric.  Many researches, Haite and Marzano-just to name a few,  have reported extensively on how student engagement and student ownership affect learning.  Click here to read an article about student centered classrooms.  The article is mostly just some questions to help you reflect on what type of learning environment you have in your classroom.  This article is on edutopia.com, if you haven't used that website before, I would encourage you to take a look at the many resources there.

Questions to consider:
 
1.  In what ways do students feel respected, feel valued, and feel part of the whole group?

2.  In what ways do students have ownership of the classroom? Do they ever make decisions about resources, environment, or use of time? When? How often?

3.  Do they have ownership in their learning? Do they have choices and options for projects, assignments, and partners for group work?

Something A Little Different

Click here for a short 3:27 video for you to view this week in our blog.  It is not what I usually do but this video came across my Twitter feed three times this week, so I thought that meant I should share it.  Many of you have seen it already I would imagine, if you haven't enjoy.

Be encouraged.