As the work around the Core Task Project faded, new endeavors, largely based on working in classrooms, required a new website. That space is www.justtwoteachers.com. If you are here for resources, and keep running into dead links, your best bet is to visit the new site. If you need help finding something, feel free to email me at coretaskproject@gmail.com. Thanks!
I think every classroom teacher fears that because of some unexpected and dreadful event they cannot plan for an absence. Moreover, it might be the case that the teacher cannot contact the building to explain what is happening. This was the impetus for creating my own set of 5th grade emergency sub plans.
There is no claim to perfection with these plans but the hope is to maintain an appropriate level of rigor while your school contends with your absence. The plans serve as a menu that the person covering your classroom can opt into.
None of the content in the plans relies on specific classroom routines or procedures. Moreover, it is not part of a continuum of learning so it can simply be used without a lot of knowledge building. All the content borrows from content published on the Internet.
You can download everything you need in the Classroom Management section of my classroom website (here).
At the Northern Nevada Council for Social Studies, I presented on using the 4th grade OUTs to maximize literacy skills with intermediate students. The 4th grade OUTs—Opening Up the Textbook—is a curricular resource matched to Nevada’s state history. Developed by the Nevada Museum of Art, Truckee Meadows Community College and 50 4th grade Washoe teachers, the resource nurtures important historical thinking dispositions. Moreover, they are a great match to the Nevada Academic Content Standards and the emphasis on reading complex texts, navigating academic vocabulary, and answering text-dependent questions.
Social Studies Conference PowerPoint
Hoover Dam OUT
OUT in Action video
Other OUTs can be found here.
At Washoe County School District’s conference, MTSS in Action: Strengthening the Relations between Students and Educators around Academic and Behavior Performance, I shared a session on using Kohlberg’s 6 Moral Principles in the classroom. The idea came from former classroom teacher Rafe Esquith (video linked in the PowerPoint) as a way of creating a strong classroom culture and fostering a language to effectively communicate expectations.
You can watch all of the videos shared via the PowerPoint that includes David Brooks, Martin Seligman, and Rafe Esquith. All of the handouts are linked below.
Kohlberg in the Classroom PowerPoint
Crosswalk Kohlberg Principles to Student Friendly Terms
WOOP Toolkit for Educators
Character-Growth Card
Thank you to Washoe’s STEM Coordinator Kelly Barber for telling me about http://rightquestion.org/. I had emailed and asked about getting started with a Genius Hour in my classroom and she suggested I take a look at the website. This got me to the Right Question YouTube page and a webinar they did on getting started with QFT—Question Formulation Technique.
If this is something you have considered, the short 25 minute webinar proves to be a really strong overview. It gives you the steps for the process, the evidence to support QFT, and suggestions for implementation. This is certainly not an easy lift but having a starting place helps. You can find the webinar here.
This afternoon, staff from Washoe County presented on the Read by Grade Three state initiative during the Board of Trustees meeting. Begin at 2:58:28 to gain some context and clarity on how the district plans to navigate the law and the grant application WCSD is submitting to the state.
The professional learning initiatives are described at minute 3:08:09 by Lauren Ohlin, the district’s Director of Grants. Watch here.
There has been some buzz about the overcrowding issue in Washoe County and the implications for students and families throughout our district. The most thorough public examination of this came Tuesday when the Board heard an overview from Dr. Paul Lamarca, Dr. Kristen McNeil and Pete Etchart.
To gain a sense of what was shared, consider the slides below. You can read through Regulation 6111 here. You can also watch the presentation beginning at minute 1:22:18 here.
On Super Bowl Sunday, a few hours before the game, I created a DonorsChoose.org account and started a project. My hope was to raise $800 in order to get four Chromebooks for my classroom. Just five days later I learned my project was fully funded. Naturally, I’m suddenly a believer in DonorsChoose.org and I will use it again.
If you are unfamiliar with DonorsChoose.org, you can read a much more thorough description here. In short, DonorsChoose.org allows a teacher to create a project that is shared with the public. Community members can then make a tax-deductible donation and when your project is funded, approved vendors ship you your items. DonorsChoose.org does not take a cut of any of the monetary donations but they add a “suggested donation” to your project. This may explain why my final project cost was closer to $1000 than the $800 in laptops I received.
The Good: DonorsChoose.org is intuitive and there are videos and tutorials to help you generate ideas, titles, and narratives. You are not expected to fill-out a lot of forms or comply with typical grant criteria. It took me less than an hour to complete the description of my project and find the items I was looking for from the approved vendors. Relative to the $800 I was asking for, the one-hour of time seemed reasonable.
The Bad: There are some minor formatting issues at DonorsChoose.org including separate paragraphs of text I submitted becoming one large paragraph. As a teacher, I didn’t want the public to think I did not know some basic conventions of English. Likewise, you do not get to choose your pull quotes that may or may not be the elements you want to highlight.
The “suggested donation” of $150 automatically becomes part of your project cost, which I had not anticpate.
Final Verdict: If you are a classroom teacher, I recommend using the site. I grew frustrated with the lack of consistent access to workable computers for my students and DonorsChoose.org gave me a strategy to remedy this issue. I suspect all classroom teachers have a wish list and DonorsChoose.org may be the perfect way of filling your room with the things you need.
You can view my DonorsChoose.org profile here and my Chromebook project here.
This week marks the beginning of the “20 Day Twitter Challenge.” The 20 days are an opportunity for educators to collaborate and share ideas, anecdotes, questions, pictures, and student artifacts around the implementation of the Nevada Academic Content Standards and the Common Core.
Consider being part of the conversation that begins Thursday, February 25th.
I recently started making regular visits to the website https://next.bloomboard.com/. I like the site because professional experiences have been curated around content directly matched to the classroom. Topics include early literacy, writing, classroom management, planning, Shakespeare, blended learning, Project Based Learning, math… in short, just about everything a sited-based educator is going to want ideas and support with. Paramount, all the experiences are free.
To illustrate what I am speaking to, consider this example Narrative Reading, Writing and Comprehension in Fifth Grade. The Topic has you review some learning, look closely at a couple of lesson plans, and watch a lesson demonstration. This is not profoundly different than most workshop models except any learner can opt into the experience. Moreover, you can see that the progression of experiences is targeted and specific.
There is also a community aspect to the site. Apart from learning from others, an educator can create their own content and learning exercises. This is the case with Karen N. Nemeth is an author, consultant and advocate for early education for children who are dual language learners. She has written books for teachers, administrators, families, and children on this topic. Karen has leadership roles at NAEYC, NABE and TESOL.
It is certainly worth taking a look at Bloomboard. Perhaps you will discover that platforms like this can level the playing field and allow all educators—regardless of what kind of state and district professional support they have—opportunities to learn and grow.
Core Task Project 