Using Google Docs to prepare students for Smarter Balanced Assessments

Posted by Majid Manzarpour

Jennifer Oliveira is a Google Certified Trainer who works at Del Mar Union School District in San Diego, California. She has over 18 years of experience in the education field and specializes in Google Apps & Chromebook deployments. You can find her on Google+ and the Google Apps Marketplace.

If you haven’t taken the opportunity to preview the Smarter Balanced Testing practice tests, now would be a good time. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) is one of the two nationally approved assessments aligned with Common Core, as well as being an adaptive assessment, suitable for all students including students with disabilities. 

"Although our new WI state test is called the 3-8 Grade Badger Exam, I am told the students need to have the following technology skills to be successful." Kathy Hoppe.

Last year, school districts around the country piloted the English Language Arts (ELA) and Math tests and this year schools will have another opportunity to preview the test. In our elementary district, we had classroom teachers logon to their grade level and see what the kids would see. Going through the third grade assessment as a teacher my initial thoughts were more self-conscious, “This is a third grade test. I can do this. I passed third grade.” As I worked through the test, my thoughts shifted to concern, whether our elementary students would be successful. I don’t have any doubts about whether or not they have the knowledge. It’s more about the format. For many us, transitioning to a computer adaptive assessment is new territory. Our students, and many students around the country, are used to multiple choice, pencil and paper exams and some students have had opportunity to complete a multiple choice assessment on a computer. 

The Smarter Balanced assessment asks students to use a variety of technology skills to respond to multiple formats of questions. Now, my thoughts shift yet again. Our students know how to be successful at this test, they just need some help connecting the dots. Using Google Apps in elementary schools can strengthen technology skills needed in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC).

How it looks in SBAC: (Image from SBAC Practice Test Portal)	How Google Docs can help: (Image from Google Apps for Education)
In the ELA portion of the test, some of the questions require students to highlight phrases as part of their answer. For example, students need to read passages, then choose by highlighting the correct answer. Sometimes they need to highlight two possible answers. (image from SBAC Practice Test Portal)	Students can practice highlighting phrases in their writing showing examples of certain writing strategies, vocabulary, or editing skills.
Both ELA and Math require dragging and dropping. In the ELA portion, students might need to rearrange sentences so the paragraph makes chronological sense. In the Math portion, students need to drag numbers to boxes to show missing measurements. Sometimes they need to drag numbers to create two-digit numbers (see example below).	Using Google Docs, students can practice moving sentences from one part of their writing to another by dragging and aligning the cursor with the new location. In Google Draw, students can create shapes and move them around the page to create an image.
In the Math portion, students might be asked to draw a line to divide a shape. (image from SBAC Practice Test Portal)	Using Google Draw, students can practice creating shapes with the line or shape tools.
In the Math portion, students are asked to devise an equation to match the area of a grid.	Using Sheets, students can format and outline cells to create shapes, then create matching equations for area or perimeter.
The ELA portion has some open-ended responses. In some instances, students are asked to revise an already created paragraph.	Using Google Docs, students can practice writing reading responses or brief explanations, comparisons, or opinions. Students can then share with a peer who can add or revise the writing.
The ELA portion has a few audio or visual components.	Using Slides, students can prepare presentations, then compose questions for peers to answer. For added fun, invite students to create hyperlinks to slides within the presentation to create a quiz.

Using Google Apps and other practical applications, students can enhance the technology skills needed to be successful on Smarter Balanced. They may not realize it they have the skills, we can help them make the connection.

from http://blog.synergyse.com/2014/03/using-google-docs-to-prepare-for.html

"I Don't Know What to Write About."

"I Don't Know What to Write About."

For those of you who know me, you know that one of the greatest joys in my role as a literacy specialist is working with young writers.  When I observe those students who are reluctant writers, I find that the biggest obstacle is that they don't know what to write about or so they believe.  The first thing I encourage them to do, as well as their teachers, is to keep a writer's notebook with the first entries to be of things that they notice.

Ralph Fletcher says, “Writers are like other people, except for at least one important difference. Other people have daily thoughts and feelings, notice this sky or that smell, but they don’t do much about it. All those thoughts, feelings, sensations, and opinions pass through them like the air they breathe. Not writers. Writers react.”  

One way to react is to record their reactions in a notebook...just like these two young girls who were recently featured on The Today Show.  Watch the clip yourself or show it to your students.  Get inspired to start notebooking and never have to wonder what to write about again.

http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/50506311#50506311

This blurb comes from http://lookinatliteracy.blogspot.com/ with Mary Huberty. Mary and I worked on a Notebooking Two District Partnership with UWGB. Notebooking is an exciting way to get kids excited and ready to write.

Fascinating ..........this reminds me of a superb teacher I know here who loves promoting books!

Children Don’t Know How to Close the Vocabulary Gap

by Lisa Hansel
December 3rd, 2014

Most children don’t even know there is a vocabulary gap. They don’t know that reading about a wide variety of topics is the best way to acquire new vocabulary. They don’t know that books (even children’s books) use a wider variety of vocabulary than adults’ conversation. They don’t know that reading several texts on the same topic—and thus staying focused on that topic for two to three weeks—can make vocabulary learning up to four times faster.

Nor do they know what they need to learn. They don’t know what science, history, geography, civics, art, and music content they will be asked to master in later years (if they are lucky enough to attend schools that have a rich curriculum). They don’t know how much more fulfilling their lives would be if they “had a dream” or asked “What’s in a name?” or grasped “one giant leap for mankind.”

What children know is what they’ve been taught—at home, by commercials, at school, by neighbors…. Fortunately, virtually all children do share a wonderful quality that makes them eager to learn: curiosity.

To close the vocabulary gap, adults must do a better job of capitalizing on that curiosity to broaden children’s knowledge. And we must do it early, while the curiosity is so strong and the vocabulary gap is relatively small.

Since you’re reading the Core Knowledge blog, you already know that the first thing to do is write a content-rich, carefully sequenced curriculum for preschool through at least the elementary grades. What else can we do? One thing I think teachers and parents should consider is more carefully curating the books that children have to choose from. With a little gentle guidance, children can become curious about a great variety of topics. Take archeology for example. What kid would not be fascinated by digging in dirt and excavating tombs to find ancient people, stories, and treasures?

For resistant readers, let’s get creative about branching out from their current interests (which, don’t forget, are rarely “natural”; they’re often induced by commercial enterprises). Star Wars could be a great invitation to some astronomy books. Perhaps Sponge Bob could lead to marine biology. Especially if these subjects are introduced with read-alouds by a parent or teacher, kids can get hooked—and get the crucial introduction to a topic that makes comprehension easier—before they try to read about these topics  on their own.

Child in need of guidance courtesy of Shutterstock.

Susan Neuman and Donna Celano provide an excellent example of curated choice vs. free choice in their decade-long study of two Philadelphia libraries: Chestnut Hill, in a high-income area by the same name, and Lillian Marrero, in the low-income Badlands area.

In the Chestnut Hill library, children always seem to enter the preschool area accompanied by an adult—most often their mother but occasionally a father, a nanny, or a grandmother. In comparison, in the Badlands, young children almost always enter alone, sometimes with a sibling but very rarely with an adult. Occasionally, an older brother or cousin might help locate a book or read to them. But more often than not, we see short bursts of activity, almost frenetic in nature. With little to do, children wander in and out with relatively little focus. Rarely are books checked out.

For children in Chestnut Hill, the activities are highly routinized. Invariably, the accompanying parent takes charge, suggesting books, videos, or audio books to check out. Sometimes the parent might pull a book down and let the child examine it or ask a child what types of books to look for. But the parents are clearly in charge: in a very authoritative manner, they sometimes note, “That book is too hard for you,” “That is too easy,” or “This one might be better.” Parents steer children to challenging selections, sometimes appeasing them with a video selection as well. Visits are brief, highly focused, and without exception, end with checking out a slew of books and, often, DVDs.

Inside the spacious preschool area at Lillian Marrero, separated from the rest of the library by “castle walls,” we find bins and baskets, crates and shelves full of books, and small tables with computers…. A mother sits 10 feet away in a chair marking her book with a yellow highlighter while her 6-year-old son explores the stacks alone. He forays several times for books, returning with selections to show his mother for her approval. “No, we’ve already seen them,” she says, sending him back to find something new. He returns several minutes later. Collecting what appears to be one, two, or three items from him, the mother gathers the rest of her belongings. Before she heads for the door, she points to the librarian who is now sitting at her desk. “Say bye to the lady,” the mother says to the little boy. “Bye-bye, lady,” he dutifully responds….

For early literacy, these differences have profound implications. In the spirit of concerted cultivation, toddlers and preschoolers in Chestnut Hill appear to be carefully mentored in selecting challenging materials; in contrast, those who experience the process of natural growth in the Badlands receive little, if any, coaching. Left on their own, these children resort to playful activity of short bursts, picking books up and putting them down with little discrimination and involvement. In Chestnut Hill, activities are carefully orchestrated to encourage reading for individual growth and development; in the Badlands, no such mentoring is available—the children are on their own.

Jane E Pollock helps us reflect on our Interactive Notebooks

Jane E Pollock helps us reflect on our Interactive Notebooks

Here is a visual reminder of the format for the Interactive Notebook.

Planning for critical thinking and the 9 high-yield strategies is key for the teacher. Using an Interactive Notebook then insures that the students are engaged at a high level too.

Here is a visual you can use.

Excellence is understanding those who worry about being worthy certainly are.....

Excellence is understanding those who worry about being worthy certainly are.....

As we close out on 2014 in the coming weeks, we look at what has been accomplished thus far. So much has been accomplished - curriculum work, piloting ELA, scoring guide attempts, reading focus, Educator Effectiveness and then magically putting it together to inspire our students--- and we should sigh with satisfaction at all the pieces we continuously juggle better than we think we do. It is at this time that we must remind ourselves that, teaching is challenging.  It is continuous progress not perfection, because things are changing at such a rapid pace, that matters. It is not teachers and educators who get feedback and look back and regret, but those who look forward, reflect and continuously refine that are the excellent ones.  The struggle will continue yet the fight is worthy for someone called to be deemed an "educator" whether that is a teacher, support staff or administrator.  It takes the whole school community to support and grow our most precious "products" --- the flowering and flourishing children.  Way to go educators - way to water those seeds of learning.  You are most deserving for a break to prepare for the continued journey in the new year.

The Best Ways to Prepare Students for Common Core Reading Tests

In an article in The Reading Teacher, Timothy Shanahan (University of Illinois/ Chicago) says the “data-driven” approach to improving reading achievement – using item analyses to identify the skills students haven’t mastered and drilling test-aligned curriculum items – doesn't work. Why? “Research long ago revealed an important fact about reading comprehension tests: they only measure a single factor…” says Shanahan: “reading comprehension. They don’t reveal students’ abilities to answer main idea questions, detail questions, inference questions, drawing conclusion questions, or anything else.”

Shanahan believes there are two reasons traditional standardized reading tests fail to produce useful data on subskills:

• First, reading is a language activity, not the execution of various subskills. To make sense of a text, students must simultaneously use a hierarchy of language features. When a student answers a main-idea question incorrectly, it doesn't mean the main-idea part of the student’s brain isn’t working. Here are some possible explanations:

- The passage looked too hard and the student didn't have the confidence to read it all the way through.

- The student is a slow reader and didn't read far enough to grasp the main idea.

- The student’s decoding skills are weak and a lot of important words weren't understood.

- The main idea was embedded in a particularly complex sentence, and although the student understood the rest of the text, this sentence wasn't understood.

- The text had a lot of synonyms and pronouns and the student wasn't able to form a coherent idea of what it was all about.

So what does explain students’ performance on standardized tests? Text complexity, says Shanahan: “[I]f the text is easy enough, students can answer any type of question, and if the text is complicated enough, they will struggle with even the supposedly easiest types of questions. That means reading comprehension tests measure how well students read texts, not how well they execute particular reading skills…”

• Second, reading tests are designed to separate proficient from struggling readers. To achieve this and create reliable tests, psychometricians reject questions that don’t have the best properties. “Test designers are satisfied by being able to determine how well students read and by arraying students along a valid reading comprehension scale,” says Shanahan. “They know that the items collectively assess reading comprehension, but that separately – or in small sets of items aimed at particular kinds of information – the items can tell us nothing meaningful about how well students can read.”

Won’t the innovative tests being created by PARCC and Smarter Balanced do a better job? Not at producing useful data on subskills, says Shanahan. “These new tests won’t be able to alter the nature of reading comprehension or the technical requirements for developing reliable test instruments.” The simple reason is that they can’t be long and fine-grained enough. So does that mean the PARCC and Smarter Balanced tests will be useless to educators and parents? Not at all, says Shanahan: “These tests will ask students to read extensive amounts of literary and informational text, to answer meaningful questions about these texts, and to provide explanations of their answers. These tests should do a pretty good job of showing how well students can read and comprehend challenging texts without teacher support.”

So how should we prepare students to do well on the new tests – and be prepared for college and career success? Not by focusing instruction on question types, says Shanahan – instead, by striving to make students “sophisticated and powerful readers.” Here’s how:

• Have students read extensively within lessons – not free reading, but reading that is an integral part of instruction, with students frequently held accountable for understanding and gaining knowledge. Round-robin oral reading is highly inefficient, says Shanahan. “Teachers like it because it provides control and it lets them observe how well a student is reading, but a reading comprehension lesson, except with the youngest children, should emphasize silent reading – and lots of it.” And this should also be happening in social studies, science, and math classes.

• Have students read increasing amounts of text without guidance and support. Many reading lessons involve students reading a paragraph or a page followed by teacher questions and group discussion. “This model is not a bad one,” says Shanahan. “It allows teachers to focus students’ attention on key parts of the text and to sustain attention throughout. However, the stopping points need to be progressively spread out over time… Increasing student stamina and independence in this way should be a goal of every reading teacher.” It’s noteworthy that the shortest prototype that PARCC and SBAC have released so far is 550 words long.

• Make sure the texts are rich in content and sufficiently challenging. “Lots of reading of easy text will not adequately prepare students for dealing with difficult text,” says Shanahan. They need to be reading grade-level texts with gradually decreasing teacher scaffolding around vocabulary, sentence grammar, text structure, and concepts needed to reach target levels.

• Have students explain their answers and provide text evidence supporting their claims.This is an important part of increasing intellectual depth and constantly moving students toward reading more-challenging material.

• Engage students in writing about text. Writing does a much better job of improving reading comprehension than answering multiple-choice questions, says Shanahan: “Although writing text summaries and syntheses may not look like the tests students are being prepared for, this kind of activity should provide the most powerful and productive kind of preparation.”

(from the Marshall Memo 12.9.2014) “How and How Not to Prepare Students for the New Tests” by Timothy Shanahan in The Reading Teacher, November 2014 (Vol. 68, #3, p. 184-188), http://bit.ly/1wr4JOa; Shanahan can be reached at shanahan@uic.edu.

Pulling yourself back ........to a place of knowing

Learning about the OODA Loop has helped me when I begin to get overwhelmed by my task list or the expectations in any area of my life.  I was introduced to this concept by John Kuglin.  In working with John in the area of growing my technology skills, he often reminded educators in the room that pulling back to a place of knowing before regrouping and moving forward is key.  Check out this TedTalk on the OODA Loop.

Click here. OODA Loop 

Character Traits - teaching the concept

WOW - What a rigorous discussion this morning with all of you at Evergreen?  This is the exact same thing we want to have when we engage with students.  Shelley Wagner's question about feelings versus traits (great thought, here is a list that define character traits - how would feelings versus interests versus traits be different?)  I loved all of the questions this morning --- this truly was exciting professional development to me.  Thanks Jackie for spurring our deep conversation regarding character traits.  Here are some resources for everyone that were shared at the meeting.

Character traits have in common particular elements. We do not attempt to list them all, but you will want to make note of five major similarities:

The FIVE Bolded ones seem to be easier to begin with in elementary school.

1. Understanding flowing into desire and then action. All character traits are built intellectually first. We must understand the trait. Understanding flows into desire for the trait. Desire leads to action as we begin to exercise the trait consistently.

2. Assumption of personal sacrifice if necessary. The exercise of any character trait may require known or unknown personal sacrifice. We must be willing to relegate personal interests to second place in order to exercise character rightly.

3. Acceptance of consequences beforehand. In the exercise of any character trait, we can expect consequences: pleasant or unpleasant. We must choose, even before we exercise the trait, to accept the consequences, whatever they may be.

4. Constancy even when no one observes. Character traits can never be exercised for the benefit of spectators. The nature of character traits is such that they must be exercised faithfully, whether or not anyone is observing.

5. Inability to cancel out another trait. No one character trait ever cancels out another character trait. They are never mutually exclusive. That is, one never excludes or precludes another. Example: Tactfulness can never cancel out honesty.

Every definition below includes those five elements by default. You will want to add them to your study of a specific character trait.

Click here for more informaiton: http://character-in-action.com/character-trait-definitions/

Learning About Grit with Michael Rosandich, Kevin Brodzik this morning in Brookfield..........fascinating

Angela Duckworth and the Research on 'Grit'

   BY EMILY HANFORD

How gritty are you?

Take the Grit test.

Before she was a psychology professor, Angela Duckworth taught math in middle school and high school. She spent a lot of time thinking about something that might seem obvious: The students who tried hardest did the best, and the students who didn't try very hard didn't do very well. Duckworth wanted to know: What is the role of effort in a person's success?

Now Duckworth is an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and her research focuses on a personality trait she calls "grit." She defines grit as "sticking with things over the very long term until you master them." In a paper, she writes that "the gritty individual approaches achievement as a marathon; his or her advantage is stamina."

Angela Duckworth (Photo: University of Pennsylvania)

Duckworth's research suggests that when it comes to high achievement, grit may be as essential as intelligence. That's a significant finding because for a long time, intelligence was considered the key to success.

Intelligence "is probably the best-measured trait that there is in all of human psychology," says Duckworth. "We know how to measure intelligence in a matter of minutes."

But intelligence leaves a lot unexplained. There are smart people who aren't high achievers, and there are people who achieve a lot without having the highest test scores. In one study, Duckworth found that smarter students actually had less grit than their peers who scored lower on an intelligence test. This finding suggests that, among the study participants -- all students at an Ivy League school -- people who are not as bright as their peers "compensate by working harder and with more determination." And their effort pays off: The grittiest students -- not the smartest ones -- had the highest GPAs.

The Grit Test

Duckworth's work is part of a growing area of psychology research focused on what are loosely called "noncognitive skills." The goal is to identify and measure the various skills and traits other than intelligence that contribute to human development and success.

Duckworth has developed a test called the "Grit Scale." You rate yourself on a series of 8 to 12 items. Two examples: "I have overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge" and "Setbacks don't discourage me." It's entirely self-reported, so you could game the test, and yet what Duckworth has found is that a person's grit score is highly predictive of achievement under challenging circumstances.

At the elite United States Military Academy, West Point, a cadet's grit score was the best predictor of success in the rigorous summer training program known as "Beast Barracks." Grit mattered more than intelligence, leadership ability or physical fitness.

At the Scripps National Spelling Bee, the grittiest contestants were the most likely to advance to the finals -- at least in part because they studied longer, not because they were smarter or were better spellers.

In October 2009, Angela Duckworth gave a TED Talk titled "True Grit: Can Perseverance be Taught?"

Grit and College Completion

Angela Duckworth is now turning her attention to the question of grit and college completion. In a studyfunded by the Gates Foundation, Duckworth and a number of other researchers are trying to understand what predicts college persistence among graduates of several high-performing urban charter school networks: YES Prep Public Schools in Houston, Mastery Charter Schools in Philadelphia, Aspire Public Schools in California and Achievement First Schools in Connecticut.

New ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones.

- Grit Test

These charter school networks serve mostly students from low-income and minority families. The schools were founded to close the "achievement gap" between these students and their higher-income peers. The ultimate goal of these charter school networks is to get students to go to college and earn degrees.

The charter schools have succeeded in providing strong academic preparation. Most of their students go to college. Yet the students graduate from college at lower rates than would be expected based on their academic preparation.

The charter schools want to know why that is. Angela Duckworth wants to know if grit has anything to do with it.  Click to keep reading.

Newseum

Becky Inda, 6th grade teacher at Woodfield Elementary, shared the website Newseum:Front Pages with the Social Studies 6-8 Team when we met for our Articulation Meeting this week.  It has newspapers from around the world and is appropriate for use for teachers and probably 5/6-8th grade students.

Becky taught us how to work with Newseum and Google to translate the information so that we could read newspapers from around the world.  How neat!  Thanks Becky for sharing this with us -- and then helping me share out to all of you.

I personally love reading international newspapers from places I have visited or look forward to visiting some day.  The perspective on the news is, of course, quite different sometimes and is key for us as Global Citizens to know about.

Steps to Translate -
1. pick a newspaper from the Front Pages Newseum website
2. go the newspaper website (there is a button on the newspaper site to click)
3. If you are logged into Chrome, a pop-up will ask you if you want the paper translated

This is exciting!

Weebly is an easy way to organize yourself, your class, ........................

Weebly can be used to organize many different levels of materials for use - as a teacher, a student, and just for personal use.  You don't have to publicize all of your weebly sites.  I use a site just to organize the amount of materials for my professional reading and one for my hobbies.  You can import many other sites into it too...............John Kuglin once said, "You have to get the technology working for you instead of you working on the technology.  Once you use it throughout your whole life as a total transformation you will find it much easier to do."

Here is a link for Weebly:  Try it out.  It is free  Click here.

 Google Classroom  is a new way to communicate with your students on projects.  There is a lot less stress in finding ways to organize the information that you need to distribute as you can assign them assignments very easy and the work they complete from those assignments comes back to you in an organized manner while it logs how many students still need to turn in the work.  Deana Kulow told me about this free Google App that you can get in the Google Store and so I am trying it out with the Music Team.  They are an adventurous team!

Video for your learning Click here

Accountable Talk - clarity for students

Thanks to Renee for sharing this handout that everyone at our meeting today wanted a copy of when they saw it sitting on the tables for the next class of students.  Kudos to great work and sharing helps the team.

Hi Kathy,

Here's a copy of the handout on Accountable Talk. They help students recognize the purpose for each of their comments during group discussions. Hope you can find a good use for them :)

Renee Heyden

7th Grade Language Arts

Fox River Middle School

Waterford Graded School District

heyden@waterford.k12.wi.us

So why can't so many kids sit still........

The Centers for Disease Control tells us that in recent years there has been a jump in the percentage of young people diagnosed with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, commonly known as ADHD: 7.8 percent in 2003 to 9.5 percent in 2007 and to 11 percent in 2011. The reasons for the rise are multiple, and include changes in diagnostic criteria, medication treatment and more awareness of the condition. In the following post, Angela Hanscom, a pediatric occupational therapist and the founder of TimberNook, a nature-based development program designed to foster creativity and independent play outdoors in New England, suggests yet another reason more children are being diagnosed with ADHD, whether or not they really have it: the amount of time kids are forced to sit while they are in school. This appeared on the TimberNook blog.

EEP = SLO and PPG...............

Need some quick assistance.  Thanks to Sara Schoepke and our EE coaching team.

Tech PD website ~ under Educator Effectiveness Resources http://techpd.weebly.com/

Here you will find supports for NWEA data, SLOs, PPGs, and steps/support for TeachScape. The templates for SLO and PPG are here! Fill in the blank, Mad Lib format......... Very helpful!

EducatorChat website ~ under Educator Effectiveness http://educatorchat.weebly.com/

Here you will find the templates and artifacts documents to support the Educator Effectiveness Plan.

Our wonderful team of EE support:
Super EE Coach - Sara Schoepke (Technology Integrationist)
Trailside EE Coach - Brad Singer (6th grade teacher)
Fox River EE Coaches - Rachel Bergman - special area teacher support (Art teacher) and Brian Shew (7th grade science teacher)
Evergreen EE Coaches - Rana Freeze - interventionists and Evergreen (ELL and Math Interventionist) and Jackie Itzin - interventionists and Evergreen (reading teacher)
Woodfield EE Coaches - Megan Geary (1st grade teacher) and Bev Peterson - special ed support (Special Ed Teacher)

Learning takes time for children and adults -- even you!

Give yourself time - are you learning how to give new running records, how to write an SLO, trying to work thru running guided reading groups.................give yourself time to grow.  It is okay.  Learning isn't always easy but remember to be easy on yourself.  :)

The Four Stages of Learning

The learning process has often become more difficult than necessary because of the bad feelings people get when they make mistakes in learning. The bad feelings come from judgments like, "not doing it right," "not good enough," "can never learn this," etc.

Ironically, not doing it right and making mistakes are vital steps in the learning process. Yet too often our attention goes to trying to avoid the bad feelings, rather than to the learning at hand. Understanding the four stages of learning a skill can help keep the learning process focused on learning to do something, and not feeling bad about ourselves for not already knowing how. Here are the four stages of learning as uncovered by Abraham Maslow:

1. Unconscious Incompetence

"I don't know that I don't know how to do this." This is the stage of blissful ignorance before learning begins.

2. Conscious Incompetence

"I know that I don't know how to do this, yet." This is the most difficult stage, where learning begins, and where the most judgments against self are formed. This is also the stage that most people give up.

3. Conscious Competence
"I know that I know how to do this." This stage of learning is much easier than the second stage, but it is still a bit uncomfortable and self-conscious.

4. Unconscious Competence

"What, you say I did something well?" The final stage of learning a skill is when it has become a natural part of us; we don't have to think about it.

Teamwork: Simply stated, it is less me and more we.

Need to up your knowledge on the struggles of our homeless families...........

audio by title homeless children youth and families

Homeless Children, Youth and Families

37:51 minutes (9 MB)
By Diane Nilan, 2008

Diane Nilan is an advocate, working to raise awareness of homelessness for children and teens.

In July 2005 Nilan created HEAR US, a nonprofit organization to give voice and visibility to homeless children, youth and families. In November 2005, having sold her house, car and most of her possessions, Nilan purchased an RV to set out on an extraordinary venture: to create a documentary featuring kids talking about their homelessness.

Diane Nilan’s unconventional approach takes her to places not typically thought of as experiencing homelessness: rural areas, resort communities, affluent cities and towns. She’s invited homeless children, teens, and parents to share their thoughts on video, highlighting the plight and dreams of the most invisible homeless population: young people and families.

Learn about HEAR US at:
http://www.hearus.us/

Read Diane's blog at:
http://beta.razoo.com/member/dianen/blog

This lecture was organized and recorded by the SUNY Fredonia Teacher Education Club on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2008 at 7pm in the Williams Center, SUNY Fredonia.

Soft Skills to Pay the Bills — Mastering Soft Skills for Workplace Success

• Download the entire document (PDF)
• Order a hard copy (for youth services professionals)
• View en Español
• View the Soft Skills video series

Overview

"Skills to Pay the Bills: Mastering Soft Skills for Workplace Success," is a curriculum developed by ODEP focused on teaching "soft" or workforce readiness skills to youth, including youth with disabilities. Created for youth development professionals as an introduction to workplace interpersonal and professional skills, the curriculum is targeted for youth ages 14 to 21 in both in-school and out-of-school environments. The basic structure of the program is comprised of modular, hands-on, engaging activities that focus on six key skill areas: communication, enthusiasm and attitude, teamwork, networking, problem solving and critical thinking, and professionalism.

Click here for more.

STUDENT TIP: Essential NETiquette for Students

 

FROM:  Google+ DPI GAFE
Original:  6/11/2014 Educational Technology and Mobile Learning

Netiquette ( net + etiquette) is the code of proper conduct applied to virtual online spaces. This code is dictated by common sense rules ( manners ) and social conventions. Teaching students about netiquette is just as important as teaching them to use technology in their learning. Crafting a netiquette memo for your class and informing your students about the importance of these rules will definitely help you create an engaging, respectful, and meaningful learning environment where collaboration and diversity of opinions are celebrated.

Read more or join the Career Pathways blog here.

World Language Classes 21st Century Style

In a world of global accessibility, why not connect with students abroad?

World Language --- 21st century style!  Click here for ideas.

The Elephant in the Language Classroom

www.edutopia.org

Collaborative learning should be an essential element for world language teachers who want their students to understand, enjoy, and use that new language.

How Finland Keeps Kids Focused Through Free Play

An American teacher in Helsinki questioned the national practice of giving 15 minute breaks each hour—until he saw the difference it made in his classroom.

TIM WALKERJUN 30 2014, 9:42 AM ET

wsilver/Flickr

Like a zombie, Sami—one of my fifth graders—lumbered over to me and hissed, “I think I’m going to explode! I’m not used to this schedule.” And I believed him. An angry red rash was starting to form on his forehead.
Yikes, I thought. What a way to begin my first year of teaching in Finland. It was only the third day of school and I was already pushing a student to the breaking point. When I took him aside, I quickly discovered why he was so upset.
Throughout this first week of school, I had gotten creative with my fifth grade timetable. Normally, students and teachers in Finland take a 15-minute break after every 45 minutes of instruction. During a typical break, students head outside to play and socialize with friends while teachers disappear to the lounge to chat over coffee.

Click here to read more.  WOW - I sure wish I could do some action research studies on this!