39: Essential Questions

Chapter 5 in Wiggins, Grant P., and Jay McTighe.  Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1998.  Print.    What are essential questions? thought provoking questions that guide students to key big ideas in the discipline broad questions full of many transfer opportunities engaging, stimulates lively discussions requires students to consider […]

122: Characteristics of Quality Questions

Chapter 2 in Walsh, Jackie A., and Beth d. Sattes.  Quality Questioning: Research-based Practice to Engage Every Learning.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2005.  Print.       Quality questions promote 1 or more carefully defined instructional purposes When teachers are very deliberate and clear about the purposes of their questions, they can better assess student performance. When […]

206: Why and How to Teach Science to Children?

Chapter 1 in Krajcik, Joseph, S., Charlene M. Czarniak, and Carl F. Berger.  Teaching Science in Elementary and Middle School Classrooms: A Project-based Approach.  Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2003.  Print.       Summary of National Goals: Summary of National Science Education Standards, Project 2061 Benchmarks for Science Literacy, NSTA’s Position Statement: On Learning: Students should explore broad concepts or […]

199: Text, Subtext and Context (Theodore Roosevelt & the Panama Canal)

Chapter 3 in Lesh, Bruce A.  “Why Won’t You Just Tell Us the Answer?”: Teaching Historical Thinking in Grades 7-12.  Portland, Me.: Sten house, 2011. Print.       A Common Language for Investigating the Part: Using content, context and sub-text to summarize and evaluate historical sources can work for all units Need to repeatedly use content, context […]

197: Facilitating a Historical Investigation

Chapter 1 in Lesh, Bruce A.  “Why Won’t You Just Tell Us the Answer?”: Teaching Historical Thinking in Grades 7-12.  Portland, Me.: Sten house, 2011. Print.       Develop driving question that will focus student inquiry: Question should be provocative Question encourages investigation and discussion Question should align to central concepts / skills in standards Question should […]

196: Making Historical Thinking a Reality

Chapter 1 in Lesh, Bruce A.  “Why Won’t You Just Tell Us the Answer?”: Teaching Historical Thinking in Grades 7-12.  Portland, Me.: Sten house, 2011. Print.       Features of Traditional Method of Teaching History: History textbook is the core instrument Teaching / learning processes: reading textbook lectures, movies memorization, fact retention unanalyzed consumption of facts […]

192: PBL Tips on Beginning on the End in Mind

Chapter 8 in Markham, John Larmer, and Jason Louis.  Ravitz.  Project Based Learning Handbook: A Guide to Standards-focused Project Base Learning for Middle and High School Teachers.  Novato, CA: Buck Institute for Education, 2003.  Print.     Ways to start the year: Seniors paired with juniors on a mini-project that has seniors teaching juniors how to work effectively […]

183: Crafting the Driving Question

Chapter 3 in Markham, John Larmer, and Jason Louis.  Ravitz.  Project Based Learning Handbook: A Guide to Standards-focused Project Base Learning for Middle and High School Teachers.  Novato, CA: Buck Institute for Education, 2003.  Print.       Driving questions are provocative engages student throughout the duration of a project example: Do music videos paint an accurate picture […]

158: During Reading Activities (2 of 2)

Chapter 5 in Daniels, Harvey.  Subjects Matter: Exceeding Standards through Powerful Content-area Reading.  Print.       For part 1 of During Reading Activities, go here. Coding Text Focus Reading as Thinking Inferring, Interpreting, and Drawing Conclusions Description Students puts codes in margins of books (can do this on post-its for school and library books) […]

105: Setting Goals & Giving Feedback

Chapter 8 in Marzano, Robert J. Debra Pickering, and Jane E. Pollock.  Classroom Instruction That Works:  Research-based strategies for Increasing Student Achievement.  Alexandria, VA:  Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2001.  Print.       Research on Goal Setting Goal settting – setting a direction for learning 3 Research Generalizations Instructional goals narrow what to focus on need to be careful about […]