Greetings!
|
Amazing drawing by Aurora Britton, a genuinely awesome human.
|
Learning Standard Links
Learning Standards Mind Mapping
During today's first activity, we'll utilize my mind mapping protocol to make our own connections between the CCLS and Next Gen learning standards. A quality mind map has very little to do with the arrangement of the data itself - it's all about the explanation. There are an infinite variety of correct solutions, and it is very difficult to be incorrect.
|
|
The images to the left depict my mind-map protocol. It's a great way to allow homogenous groups of students to interact with factual knowledge within their ZPD while simultaneously encouraging cognitive connections between concepts.
...basically you arrange slips of paper with information in a way that helps your personal, actual human brain to remember the information. |
|
Mind Mapping DirectionsMind Mapping is one of the best tools we use to organize information in our ELA classroom. Essentially, we create "mind palaces" or "brain attics" to store information in purposeful, meaningful ways so it can be recalled easily when we need it. Sometimes we use this methodology for simple factual recall (like vocabulary words and definitions) and other times we use it for broad concepts (like quantifying the evolution of equality.)
**While the description of the "brain attic" in the video above is fraught with errors, the idea of a "mind palace" is well supported by cognitive research.**
|
Longitudinal Standard Tracking
|
During this activity, we'll track how ELA skills and content advance across grade levels in the CCLS and the Next Gen Standards. What you'll notice is that much of the language remains the same from year to year. It's only through slow, gradual change that learning occurs. Also, by tracking the skills and content as they advance, it's possible that some creative uses for learning standards may present themselves so that they can serve as more than an afterthought on the top of a lesson plan.
|
While Scribd is a cool feature to embed in a website, if you're like me and you interact better with new information using a more familiar interface, feel free to view the Longitudinal Standards tool as a normal, Google Doc.
Text-Dependent Question Writing
|
In many ways, writing effective, text-dependent questions is at the core of the common core. It's easy to think of text-dependent questions as low Webb's DOK parroting about shirt colors and ship's names, but genuinely, with a little time and creativity they can be incredibly engaging questions that allow students to bridge the gap between their lives and the text in ways that would be impossible otherwise.
To learn about, and practice writing text-dependent questions, enjoy this presentation. |
Common Core Vocabulary Connections
|
This presentation is intended to draw connections between the education words we already know, and the renamed versions of those words endorsed by the Common Core.
|
Standards-Based Lesson Planning
|
What's the point of a Common Core webpage without a section devoted to lesson planning based on the standards? Take a walk through "unpacking" the Common Core Learning Standards and brainstorm the myriad ways that Common Core lesson planning easily fits in with what we already know is best for kids based on our classroom experience, and hopefully, based on the other three lessons linked on this page.
|
Navigating the Common Core Modules
|
In this presentation, you'll skim through the NYS CCLS Modules made by Expeditionary learning and, by cycling around Webb's DOK you'll look at the modules from a global, big-picture perspective, and then slowly zoom into a lesson-level vision of how the modules work in a classroom, for an actual teacher. Really, the goal is for students to come out with an accurate understanding of how the modules are organized, and what a module-based classroom could look like in both an "adopt" and an "adapt" district.
|