Curriculum Contemplations
YOUR ONE-STOP SHOP FOR CURRICULAR HAPPENINGS FOR MARCH
How to Fix a Broken School? Lead Fearlessly, Love Hard
ELA ELABORATIONS
Webinars On Your Time
Have you ever thought you would like to have more information on an educational topic and wondered how you might find professional development? Would you like to choose a time for professional development with others that works with your schedule? Arizona Department of Education has free professional development opportunities that allow you to do just that. Click the link to see what Webinars on Your Time are available.
MATHEMATICAL MUSINGS
Beware Of Fake Math Modeling Problems
Here’s a question to think about: if you completely remove a problem’s context and can still solve it, can it really be mathematical modeling?
Response: Instructional Strategies Teachers Might Be Missing
For centuries, mathematics classes have focused on numbers, expressions and equations. This is especially true of elementary school mathematics and the algebra taught in middle and high school. But new brain research is showing that our brains think visually about mathematics and even when we perform a bare number calculation five different pathways are involved, two of which are visual (Menon, 2014). When students are asked to visualize while studying mathematics, their achievement and engagement increase significantly (see for example Reimer & Moyer-Packenham, 2005; Boaler, 2016).
Asking students to think visually and encouraging them to come up with their own visual representations is different from seeing a visual representation given by a textbook or teacher.
Click here to read more.
APPLY FOR A DESMOS TEACHING FELLOWSHIP
Hi! If you (a) love teaching, (b) love math, and (c) love Desmos, you should apply for a Desmos Teaching Fellowship. We’ll fly you out on an all-expenses paid trip to Desmos HQ in San Francisco from July 13-15, 2018, where you’ll:
- Get early access to our most powerful tools and activities.
- Talk math and teaching with interesting new colleagues.
- Learn how our faculty helps teachers use our powerful technology.
SCIENTIFIC SOLILOQUIES
Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K-12: 2018
Managing Group Work
Although group work has its advantages, it can present issues in the middle school classroom. In this column, we share problems to look for when implementing group work in your classroom and strategies for dealing with them.
Lab Out Loud
Launched in October 2007, Lab Out Loud is a biweekly podcast from NSTA on science teaching, science news, and anything else with “science” in it.
Science teachers Brian Bartel and Dale Basler discuss science news and science education with leading scientists, researchers, science writers, and other important figures in the field. A selection of links and notes accompanies each episode, enabling the listener to dig deeper into the topics discussed.
COMMUNAL CONVERSATIONS
TECH TOOLS YOU CAN USE: FLIPGRID
This has been hands-down the most talked about tech tool of the past year, and for good reason.
So what is Flipgrid? It’s an app where someone, usually a teacher, poses a question or prompt, and students respond to it with short videos. Once they’ve finished their video, they can leave responses to other students’ videos.
This tool would be a great way to get students talking about any topic, reflect on a book or film, or ask questions about something you’re exploring in class.
At a time when we are all getting less and less comfortable with face-to-face communication, preferring instead to talk through text, Flipgrid gives us a way to bring our real voices, our actual faces, our true, less-edited selves back into play.
PARENT PARTNERSHIPS: Parent, Family, Community Involvement in Education - An NEA Policy Brief
In the past, parent involvement was characterized by volunteers, mostly mothers, assisting in the classroom, chaperoning students, and fundraising. Today, the old model has been replaced with a much more inclusive approach: school-family-community partnerships now include mothers and fathers, stepparents, grandparents, foster parents, other relatives and caregivers, business leaders and community groups–all participating in goal-oriented activities, at all grade levels, linked to student achievement and school success.
TEACHER SPOTLIGHT: Ms. Claudia Valenzuela-Garcia
To develop problem solving skills in mathematics, students must have lots of practice solving challenging problems. One way students might increase their problem solving capacity is by comparing two strategies for solving the same problem. When students are given the opportunity to talk to one another about math, they develop practice with important life skills such as being able to explain their thinking and to listen to and question the thinking of others.
On a warm day in October, Ms. Valenzuela-Garcia’s fifth grade class at Esperanza Elementary, students were doing just that...
TEACHING & LEARNING DEPARTMENT
Tammi Baushka - Literacy Program Specialist
Rebecca Ridge - Literacy Program Specialist
Julia Lindberg - LAD Program Specialist
Kristel Foster - LAD Program Specialist
Maggie Hackett - Math & Science Coordinator
Frank McCormick - Instructional Technology Coordinator
Email: maggieh@susd12.org
Website: susd12.org
Location: 2283 East Ginter Road, Tucson, AZ, USA
Phone: (520)545-2000
Facebook: facebook.com/SunnysideUSD
Twitter: @SunnysideUSD