Safety is priority one in school transportation. This commitment to safety is why Maine school transportation traditionally has one of the best safety records in the nation. Annual training is the foundation of safety. Each spring school transportation teams participate in six statewide regional school transportation safety conferences.
Category: Professional Development
“Content Corner” releases final round of instructional improvement articles
The Maine Department of Education is pleased to conclude the 2015-16 “Content Corner” collection with this third release of instructionally-focused articles for Maine educators. The third collection of articles completes this year’s focus on effective practices that support student learning in the content areas.
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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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It’s all about the questioning!
This is the third in a series of instructional articles to support teachers in implementing the 8 Effective Teaching Practices outlined in the book Principles to Actions: Ensuring Mathematical Success for All. This article discusses teaching practice 5: Pose Purposeful Questions.
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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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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Personalized learning: voices from the field
Maine educators shared their stories about personalizing learning at the New England Secondary Schools Consortium conference in March. The recording of this presentation is available for Maine educators interested in listening to these powerful accounts.
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Maine School Wellness Summit registration opens
The first annual Maine School Wellness Summit will be held on June 22 and 23 at Bates College in Lewiston, and the Maine Department of Education has now opened registration.
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New School Nurse Orientation training: concussions to bugs and more
Forty new school nurses came to Augusta to attend a school nurse orientation sponsored by the Maine Department of Education this month.
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Department participates in cyber breach training
Maine Department of Education recently participated in Cyber Storm V (CSV), a biennial national exercise conducted by the Department of Homeland Security and facilitated by Maine Emergency Management Agency and the Office of Information Technology.
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Maine DOE Newsroom 