Working towards Excellence

While we all know that key to success is education, it may not be explicitly taught. I was reflecting on my own educational experiences and it wasn't until I reached adulthood that I truly realized that true learning is self-directed and on-going. I believe that our students think learning is irrelevant to their lives and that after grade 12, they will be off the hook. I want to be able to reach each student with the relevancy of public education daily.

Creating and Using Essential Questions

Today we worked on organizing our LA units using essential questions. While this is difficult to do, it is extremely engaging for the students and it helps teachers keep the learning at much higher, relevant level. This is really needed to help our students think deeper and more critically. Hopefully it will transfer to higher scores on their PSSA tests.

Using Music in the Classroom

Does anyone have any research on the effects of using music in the classroom? I know some teachers in my building have used music in their classrooms and it has resulted in a calming effect on the students. They usually use some type of softer, quiet music. Any suggestions out there?

Teaching Resposibility

In my experience, I've found that many learning support students are not responsible. I think some of it has to do with the fact that they are not engaged. Does anyone have a really good strategy or method that they use to teach responsibility that you've seen work?

Curriculum Design

Today I am working with writing curriculum. One of the issues that has come up concerns adding reading strategies to the curriculum. Does anyone already have specific strategies in their own distict curriculum?

Using Blogs with Special Education Students

Has anyone ever tried using Blogs with special education students? I have seen some examples of on-line Blogs using literature with students responding to reflection questions after reading a chapter. I think I would like to try this in class, but I feel like it will take a great deal of time preparing them to use the blog and how to post. It is hard to determine if the time involved in teaching the kids these skills is worth the investment when they have more pressing educational needs that need to be met. What do you think?

Strategy videos on YouTube

Has anyone used YouTube or Google videos to help teach reading strategies? I've found at least 3 that look promising to use. They are specifically modeled by the teacher with students. These are short videos that don't take longer than 3-5 minutes and they can be useful to both the teacher on how to teach the strategy and also the student on learning the strategy as well as seeing other students use it. Here is one on listening and spelling.