Thursday, January 24, 2013

The Teaching Channel

Our Mission

Teaching Channel is a video showcase—on the Internet and TV—of inspiring and effective teaching practices in America's schools. We have a rapidly growing community of registered members who trade ideas and share inspiration from each other.
With the help of the Tch community, our mission is to revolutionize how teachers learn, connect, and inspire each other to improve the outcomes for all K-12 students across America.
Share This VideoIn order to accomplish this mission, we have three simple goals, all of them reliant on input from teachers:
• Build professional learning resources that teachers want
• Deepen and improve opportunities for teacher learning
• Elevate and celebrate teachers in our society
Our videos are produced by a unique team of professionals—a collaborative effort between video production experts, education advisors, and the classroom teachers themselves. We should point out that Teaching Channel does not determine or influence the content taught in our videos.
Our video library offers educators a wide range of subjects for grades K-12. The videos also include information on alignment with Common Core State Standards and ancillary material for teachers to use in their own classrooms.
Teaching Channel Presents, a weekly one-hour program featuring Tch videos, airs on PBS stations in nearly 75 million homes across the United States.
A non-profit organization, Teaching Channel launched publicly in June 2011.
******All information taken from Teaching Channel website*******
A link to Teaching Channel

https://www.teachingchannel.org/?national=1

Common Core State Standards


Building on the excellent foundation of standards states have laid, the Common Core State Standards are the first step in providing our young people with a high-quality education. It should be clear to every student, parent, and teacher what the standards of success are in every school.

Mission Statement of Common Core


The Common Core State Standards provide a consistent, clear understanding of what students are expected to learn, so teachers and parents know what they need to do to help them. The standards are designed to be robust and relevant to the real world, reflecting the knowledge and skills that our young people need for success in college and careers. With American students fully prepared for the future, our communities will be best positioned to compete successfully in the global economy.



Below is a link to the Common Core State Standards. This web page is divided by grade level and is a wealth of information available to better understand common core.

http://www.corestandards.org/

Sunday, October 21, 2012

How to Read Informational Text


The most important purpose of informational text is to convey information about the natural or social world, typically from someone presumed to know that information to someone presumed not to, with distinctive features such as headings and technical vocabulary to help accomplish that principle. By our definition, therefore, biography is nonfiction but is not informational text, because its primary purpose is to convey information about an individual’s life. Procedural or how-to text is also nonfiction, but not informational text because it’s primary purpose is to tell someone how to do something, not convey information about some thing.               
Nonfiction narrative or “true stories” are also nonfiction but not informational text, because their primary purpose is to tell of an event or series of events that have occurred. This is not to say that biography, procedural text, nonfiction narrative, and other types of nonfiction are not important; they are just not the same as informational text.
Informational text is key to success in later schooling. We have all heard that from around fourth grade on, “reading to learn” is a major focus in school (Chall, 1983). Students encounter more textbooks and other forms of informational text as they move through the grades. The tests they take contain increasingly more difficult informational texts. College curricula are replete with a variety of informational readings. If we include more informational text in early schooling, we put children in a better position to handle the reading and writing demands of their later schooling. We would like to see a day when children “read to learn” and “learn to read” from the earliest days of school and throughout their school careers. The following is a listing of the five informational text structure:

 1. Description
    
Signal Words: such as, for instance, in addition, also, specifically
Tips: Ask yourself: what specific person, place, thing, or idea is being described? Look for a topic word or phrase and for synonyms.

2. Problem and Solution

Signal Words: problem, issue, since, as a result, solution, idea, so, leads to, causes
Tips: Ask yourself: what is the problem and what is the solution?
Look for the problem first and then the solution

  3. Compare and Contrast
 
Signal Words:  similar, same, alike, both, as well as, unlike, as opposed to, on the other hand, in contrast, instead
Tips: Ask yourself: what is being compared?
How are they the same? How are they different?

4. Cause and Effect
Signal Words: since, because, if, due to, as a result of, causes, leads to, consequently, then, therefore
Tips: Ask yourself: what happened and why did it happen?
Remember, you are looking for a cause, not a solution.

5. Sequence
Signal Words: first, second, third, then, next, before, after, finally, following
Tips: Ask yourself: Is this event taking place over time?
Look for steps or references to time such as dates.
When researchers investigate the kinds of texts children like to read, they've found something that isn't surprising: Different children have very different reading preferences. Some children seem to prefer informational text, some seem to prefer narrative text, and many don’t seem to have preferences for any particular genre. Utilizing these tips for understanding informational text will turn your young reader into an informed reader.

A great FREE resource to add more technology.


Edmodo provides teachers and students a secure place to connect and collaborate, share content and educational applications, and access homework, grades, class discussions and notifications. Our goal is to help educators harness the power of social media to customize the classroom for each and every learner.

Edmodo promotes anytime, anyplace learning. Functionally, it allows teachers to post messages, discuss classroom topics, assign and grade class work, share content and materials, and network and exchange ideas with their peers - but in reality, it is so much more. Take a peek at some of the unique ways teachers are using Edmodo to make their classroom a community.

In late 2008, Nic Borg and Jeff O'Hara, believing we need to evolve our school environment to reflect the connected world in which we live, set out to create a tool that closes the gap between how students live their lives and how they learn in school.

Parent accounts are a great way for parents to observe and stay up to date with their child’s Edmodo activities. With more and more parents signing up for Edmodo, we wanted to provide additional information and tips on how to get started, as well as our most frequently asked questions from parents.

5 Tips to Help Parents Get Started:
1.                    Parents should create a parent account,  not a student or teacher account.
2.                    In order to create an account, parents will need their unique parent code. This is not the same as a group code, which is what students use to create an account. (See the below FAQ for information on where to retrieve the parent code)
3.                    Parents only need one parent code, regardless of whether their student has multiple teachers using Edmodo. Once their parent account is created, they will be able to see all of their student’s classes from that account.
4.                    Parents only need one account at all times. Parents can add multiple students to one account, or remove students if necessary.
5.                    Parents of younger children who are asked to create a student account for their child only need to create one account.  The child/student will use the same account for all their classes and throughout all their years in school. The same rule applies for parent accounts- one account is used year after year, until your student/child graduates.


**all information taken from edmodo.com*****

Teaching History

Here is a great resource to re-enforce your history lessons.
http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/#!home

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Orientation

Introduce yourselves to your colleagues. Make sure to tell us what grade level and subject you teach and one interesting unknown fact about yourself. Also tell us if this is your first online professional development interaction web page and tell us your strategy for making your online learning experience the very best it can be. Share your experiences, fears, or thoughts!