Digital Resources that Support Online Learning at Home

It's an unfortunate situation to have children at home all day. They're used to being in school.

Here's a link, Resources that Support Distance Learning, that gives you some great online resources to help students whether you are a teacher or parent.

There are digital resources to content areas in ELA, math, writing, science, PE, history/social science and others to access at  https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/he/hn/appendix1.asp#six

Dozens of links connect you from to worksheets in  math to to the videos of Khan Academy. Sites are user friendly. For example in order to find a video on Khan Academy, all you do is search for the topic that you want the video on.

One caveat to the website is that a few of the links require you to sign up, which is unfortunate because they want a phone number. 

Social Emotional Skills and Holistic Education

Holistic education focuses on students identity in order for them to become good  community members by teachers instituting appropriate  moral, social, emotional, psychological and academic goals for functioning as a productive member of society.  As a teacher, you have to consider what's going on in students' lives order to teach the students coping skills to deal with challenging situations. Holistic education can really help students who are falling behind. Creating engaging lessons that reach all students is the primary focus of planning for instruction in most schools.  You can combine this inclusion with extensive education in all areas. "All students will learn the skills they need to succeed across all domains, including social, cognitive and academic" (Schwartz as cited in Volk, 2013, para. 5). Students perform better academically when teachers address the social emotional needs of students

Socio-emotional skills are for school, work and life. They include:

•Self-Awareness--conflict mediation, circle talk (talking stick), journaling

•Self-Management—self-motivate, self-control, regulate emotions

•Social Awareness—embrace diversity, empathy for others, role playing, service learning, social justice

•Relationship Skills— rules for working cooperatively, conflict resolution

•Responsible Decision-Making—choices lesson

Holistic education also aligns with an important Teacher Performance Expectations (TPEs) such as TPE element 3 of TPE Stnadard 1, which focuses on relating lessons to real life. 

TPE 1.3 states that beginning teachers will: "Connect subject matter to real-life contexts and provide active learning experiences to engage student interest, support student motivation, and allow students to extend their learning." 

Most importantly, when teachers include social emotional goals as part of student learning they will end up with students who function better in class by being able to work with others in groups with diverse members.

Volk, D. (2013). UW's focus on holistic education is reshaping childhood learning.  University of Washington Magazine. Retrieved from https://magazine.washington.edu/feature/uws-focus-on-holistic-education-is-reshaping-childhood-learning/

Unpacking an ELA Standard for Third Grade

Matthew Bamberg unpacks a third grade English language arts standard.

Ebonics and Language Diversity

Currently, I'm in the prewriting stage for a book about language diversity. The book is based upon a real-life experience about when I taught in Oakland, California. I taught there during the Ebonics controversy (1980s).

That controversy was to have African American students use nonstandard language (Ebonics) as a springboard to learning standard English. I considered that it was just a different way of teaching grammar. I remember being trained how to teach it. It actually wasn't a bad idea because nonstandard language exists in popular culture and now from texting.

Controversy about Ebonics instruction came like a tidal wave because it was interpreted that people were saying that Ebonics was a language just like English.  Ebonics (called African American Vernacular English) has its roots in African language and culture.

ITL 600

Hello ITL Students and Others:

This is my blog.

It reads like a journal. This is my latest entry.

Check out the article about URLs.

Lesson Plan Template

Finding a good lesson plan template isn't easy. You want something that has room to write the five steps, which are:

1. Description

2. Goals and Objectives

3. Materials and Tools

4. Procedure

5. Assessment/Evaluation

Get the lesson plan template.

Writing a Personal Essay

Writing a personal essay doesn't have to be hard. One would think that the most important part of a personal essay would be writing a draft. This isn't so. While it is important, there are other parts of the writing process that are just as important for writing a focused "A" paper.

One of the first tasks you do before you write the rough draft is to have a topic that is appropriate for a personal essay.

As you may recall, a personal essay should be written in first person, usually about an account of an event, a story about a person, a travelogue of a place or  an illustration of an object (in words) that is or was special to you. Well, does that mean you should write about your mom, your childbirth (if you're a woman) or your vacation? Any of these topics are a good choice for a personal essay.

Recall that the writing process:

1. Brainstorming--Create your topic. Narrow it down.

2. Outlining--Yes, this is necessary!

3. Drafting--Writing your draft from the outline.

4. Revising--Looking at the paper and paragraphs as a thorough explanation of your thesis.

5. Editing--Correcting errors in spelling, grammar, capitalization, punctuation and missing words/typos. Run a spell-check during this step.

That's it! Those are the five writing steps. You can do them any way you want with any topic. You can revise while you're editing if you want or vice versa. Whatever you're comfortable with.

Common Core Parody

Depth of Knowledge and Critical Thinking

10 Common Core Math Tips

1. Have students talk through a math problem.

2. Reading and understanding a math problem.

3.  Teaching fractions according to common core. 

4. Use clearly defined units in math problems such as gallon or yard instead of pitcher or slice.

5. Using geometric shapes riddles.

6. Transforming shapes.

7. Video: Teaching division with Common Core.

8. Water math problems from the Peace Corps.

9. Counting on fingers benefits students.

10. Dozens of math word problems.