Staff & Curriculum Development
Support and Solutions - Issue 16
About the Newsletter
The Madison-Oneida BOCES Staff and Curriculum Development Newsletter is a platform that we use to provide you with resources, things to know, tools to use, and ideas to explore.
The materials are curated by our department: If we share them, it's because we have looked at them and we think they might be worthy of your limited time!
So check it out. Click on the things that you think will help you and skip the things that won't. And remember, we are here if you need us!
The "Stupidest" Person in the Room
When I was in high school, there was a girl in my class who pestered our math teacher. A lot. All the time. If she didn't "get it," she would raise her hand and ask. If we were doing practice problems, she would walk to the teacher's desk and ask for help when she got stuck.
The teacher was not "mean" or "bad," but this was not necessarily a "safe" classroom, so I kept my head down and accepted that I was simply not going to understand the material.
It wasn't until years later that I realized how incredibly brave my classmate had been.
It's hard for most adults to admit that we "don't know" or that we "don't understand," and here was this gangly, and often teary (with frustration), 16 year old who had the chutzpah to ask an obviously irritated teacher to explain it again and again... until she got it.
The results are predictable. One of us moved on to more advanced math classes... one of us continued to not understand.
Are we brave enough as adults to say, "I don't understand?"
Are we safe enough as educators to allow those around us -- students, parents, colleagues -- to say the same?
--JC
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CONTENT & PEDAGOGY
And speaking of questions...
First in Math
In April 2020, an appropriation for $7.5 million over 5 years was enacted to support math fluency and the love of math within elementary students (K-5) across New York.
With this, NYSED announced the launch of the EMAP initiative and made First in Math available to all New York State districts and students for FREE. This structure provides access to online, standards-based, math games that provide additional practice for grade-level math fluency. The program is available electronically both at school and at home, so families can continue to support their child's math learning.
The use of this optional program is flexible. It is NOT a curriculum! To access it, please reach out to your building administrator.
Want to more? Check out these links:
First in Math Video Introduction
First in Math .pdf Introduction
Instructional Minutes
Maria Papa has designed these quick videos for our current reality: when we have limited time but want to keep learning professionally! Enjoy!
Do You remember?
If you did not attend, they are still fantastic tools for your personal growth and learning as you teach math!
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The Reading Corner
How We Read
This excellent resource can be downloaded and shared with families and students to help them develop an understanding of the way our brains process written language.
From the Dallhouse...
The tool below was found on The Reading League’s Science of Reading Facebook Page.
When assessing students' reading using the dimensions of reading, this graphic can be used to help you form flexible groups and/or diagnose the dimension to go back and work on.
From the graphic, explicit, specific, focused lessons and application time should follow.
A further explanation of this chart from Dallhouse Speech and Language can be found below the image.
From Dallhouse Speech and Language
"Several months ago, I received a referral for a second grader who had poor reading comprehension skills. However, instead of exploring why, their intervention was A LOT of comprehension practice. The thing is, it wasn’t their comprehension that was weak – during the assessment we found that the breakdown was actually at the phonemic awareness level as they were unable to blend and segment phonemes. Subsequently, I posted a 'hierarchy' that I use to guide my assessment of 2nd graders. Of course, this is not comprehensive, for example poor reading fluency can occur when word recognition is strong but rapid naming is weak. Morphological, semantic, orthographic and phonemic knowledge all contribute to decoding skills and must be assessed.
Strong reading comprehension is 'a symptom' of fluent decoding skills and oral language abilities and poor comprehension can be a red flag for underlying difficulties in one or several areas – both in the word recognition and language comprehension (including listening comprehension and discourse) strands of the reading rope. Like all aspects of oral and written language, vocabulary is one area that needs to constantly be monitored and developed. I wanted to add oral language comprehension into my original post to highlight its importance.
Orthographic mapping, the process through which successful readers become fluent readers, occurs at the marriage between the spelling, pronunciation and meaning of a give word. DECODING and UNDERSTANDING the word are essential, so that when proficient reader sees a word, the pronunciations and meanings instantly become accessible (Henbest and Apel, 2018).
Vocabulary influences reading at all levels – from decoding to word recognition, to fluency and of course, comprehension. Without understanding the relevant vocabulary, our readers cannot flex vowels in a word to match familiar (and more challenging multisyllabic) words, use correct phrasing and intonation when reading or understand the content that they read."
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RESOURCES AND IDEAS
Regional Teachers, Learning Together
Check out our list of active PLCs sponsored by the Mid-State Teacher Center. They would love to have you join them!
Resources Galore!
Looking for a new or diverse class read? The MOBOCES Media Library has 12 new titles available to borrow in quantities large enough for the entire class. Click the link below to see the new titles and click on a book cover to see related teacher resources.
https://www.teachingbooks.net/qldnte2
The MOBOCES Regional Sora Shelf also has hundreds of eBook titles available for an entire class. Check out those lists here...https://www.teachingbooks.net/ql78cxq and here… https://www.teachingbooks.net/qlw6nsx
All of these titles can be directly assigned to your students for an extended loan period. Email cbrewer@moboces.org to find out more.
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From the Classroom...
Swishers and Choppers!
Some of our school districts have added Heggerty resources to their Tier 1 Reading Instruction, as well as to Tier 2 and Tier 3, to teach students the code.
Watch one of Camden School District’s Intervention Team Specialists, Kailee Petrie, work on a Heggerty lesson with some of her students in her AIS reading class. Look for the swishers and choppers!
Looking for support? Have an idea to share? Have a video that we should add? Reach out to us at scd@moboces.org. Also, check out our webpages by clicking on the logos below!
November 17, 2021
Center for Instructional Support /
School Library Services