Category: News & Views

Creating a discourse community in the world language classroom

For students to have adequate opportunity to acquire language and develop proficiency in a language other than English, maximum use of the target language in the classroom by teachers and students is critical. While the research-based recommendation is that target language use represents 90% of teacher and student discourse in the classroom, many teachers struggle to maximize the use of L2 (world language that the student is working to learn during instruction).

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Clear learning targets and feedback strengthen social studies and science learning

How do we know that students understand and are learning what we intend in our classrooms? When do we adjust our instructional sequence or delivery of content to meet student needs? To answer these questions, we first must answer this question: What is the role of formative assessment in our classrooms?

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Using calendars in preschool, why or why not?

Walk into a circle time in preschool in September and in June when the teacher is “doing calendar.”  It’s Wednesday. The teacher asks the children, “If yesterday was Tuesday, today is……?” The cacophony from the children includes the answers, “Saturday,” “Friday,” “Monday,” and pretty much any other day of the week.  It doesn’t change whether it is the beginning or end of the year. Why? Preschoolers are not developmentally grounded in past and future. For the most part, they still live in the now. Days of the week do not make sense-no matter how many times the activity is repeated. Yesterday, today and tomorrow are not solid concepts for three, four and five year olds.

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Close reading with text-dependent questions: conducting a text investigation

Making meaning of a complex text is itself a complex process. When students flex their literacy muscles to read something that is challenging for them, they grow as readers, as thinkers, and as writers.  Helping students develop stamina and supporting a productive struggle with challenging texts through routine practices provides the foundation for strong writing skills.

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Feedback: A Valuable Teaching Strategy for Health Education and Physical Education, Part 2

The health education and physical education article focused last month’s Content Corner instructional improvement article on student feedback. This month’s article examines student feedback to the teacher. There are many sources for feedback about a teacher’s instructional practices. Administrators, peers and students can all provide valuable feedback to teachers that benefits all by responding to specific prompts for actionable feedback. Honest feedback from students can help improve teaching effectiveness. Teaching students the principles of constructive feedback is a beneficial lifetime skill and necessary to providing teachers will helpful feedback. Feedback needs to focus on teaching strategies such as class structure, usefulness of activities/assignments/homework and not personal characteristics or qualities. There are a number of online tools available such as the Great Schools Partnership resources found at info@iwalkthrough.org and “Ten Tools to Try”  available at http://www.georgebrown.ca/staffdevelopment/Student_Feedback/tentools.html#one. Teachers may also choose to develop their own Google forms for student feedback.

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Individual assessment in the large group ensemble

You can’t enter a school in Maine today without hearing conversations about proficiency-based diplomas and standards-based grading. Given this focus, arts educators have an interest in ensuring that they are using standards-based assessments to evaluate a student’s growth and development. The information gathered through assessment should be used to determine whether or not students understand and can apply content, and this process is perhaps the most critical aspect of the learning process for teachers. However, arts teachers nation-wide tend to lean towards assessing non-achievement criteria such as behavior, effort, participation, and attendance.

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Annual Maine DECA conference offers competition and awards

The Maine DECA 48th State Career Development Conference was held recently. The conference featured a competition in which students were presented with challenging marketing and business case problems with volunteer business professionals serving as judges.

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Maine CTE Director recognized by DECA

This month in Tennessee, Maine’s State Director of Career and Technical Education will be honored as the 2016 Maine DECA Association Administrator of the Year. Meg Harvey is recognized for, among many things, her passion for Maine’s youth through Career and Technical Students Organizations (CTSO).

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