Administrative and Supervisory Meeting, January 24th 2014

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

At the winter Administrative & Supervisory meeting, governance worked through content matched to the Instructional Practice Guides and the Common Core. This included a focus on writing, within the context of CCSS, and Core Action 2—employ questions and tasks that are text dependent and text specific.

Linked below are the resources shared. Full access to the Read Aloud Project and all of the district supported Edmodo groups can be found here.

PowerPoint for A&S January 24, 2014

In Common with examples for K-12

Vocabulary Comparison from HM to RAP to CK

The Writing Revolution excerpt

The Writing Revolution Scaffolded Frame

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Access to CCSS Edmodo Groups

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

The document describing the Edmodo groups that support free materials and professional development aligned to the CCSS has been updated. You can access the document here or here.

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Gaining Access to the Read Aloud Project for K-2

Posted on January 23, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

Educators, from throughout the country, are gathered in Las Vegas to train on the Read Aloud Project (RAP). RAP is an effort to create Common Core-aligned lessons for K-2 picture, informational, and chapter books. Lessons include text-dependent questions, Language exploration, Speaking and Listening activities, Writing activities, and creative performance tasks.

Lessons are being created that fall into the following categories: Weather and Seasons, Earth and Space, and Families from Around the World. Additionally, by joining the group, you can gain access to all the training materials.

Access to 12 popular Edmodo groups, including RAP, can be gained by using the links and codes in a document linked here.

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Free Programs to Help Students Learn to Type

Posted on January 20, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

As many of you know, portions of the 2014-2015 PARCC and SBAC assessments will require students to type their responses to questions. (You can take the SBAC practice test here.) Consequently, there is a renewed push to help students become more proficient with keyboarding so they have the requisite skills to be successful with the coming tests. There are two free online programs that any student can begin using to assist with this. The first is Dance Mat Typing from the BBC. Admittedly, students will have to contend with listening to a snake with a Scottish accent and theater spelled theatre; but, the program is systematic in its approach and reasonably engaging.

The second program, www.typingweb.com, requires free registration but might be more helpful for the classroom setting because teachers can create student rosters and monitor progress. Student reports can be exported and tests administered. The downside is that free comes with advertisements. Those ads can be removed but there is a fee.

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Vocabulary and Complex Texts

Posted on January 19, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

Dr. Freddy Hiebert, in a video webinar posted here, explains the importance of vocabulary in determining the complexity of text. Hiebert notes that ten percent of the words in text are considered complex with text, used to inform, having a higher proportion of these words.

Hiebert 90%At the end of the 17-minute video, Hiebert describes a free resource, replete with 34 lessons, that any educator can download and begin using in their classroom. The resource, Exceptional Expressions, can be found at the website www.textproject.org.

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Blue Friday, A Focus on Writing

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

Implementation Specialists, site coaches, and personnel from district departments gathered to review content that will be shared with elementary schools on February 5th. The focus for the 5th is on writing with professional learning around Dr. Louisa Moats, the writing resource In Common, and the scaffolded writing lessons matched to the Basal Alignment Project.

All of the content works with the Instructional Practice Guides. The PowerPoint can be downloaded here with links to the video and and many of the print material linked in the slides.

The Writing Revolution scaffolded model

The Writing Revolution excerpted text

5 Steps to Accessing Scaffolded Writing on Edmodo

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Writing and the Common Core: Samples & Techniques

Posted on January 16, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

The 3rd through 6th grade teachers at Alyce Taylor Elementary got a preview of the content to be shared at the January 17th Blue Friday, the Administrative and Supervisory meeting on January 24th and the Pink Wednesday on February 5th. The focus of the hour was on writing with the Common Core.

Taylor staff reviewed In Common, a resource that a) provides hundreds of samples of Common Core-aligned student work from K-12 classrooms around the country and b) helps teachers gain fluency in identifying Common Core-aligned writing techniques at every grade level.

You can review the PowerPoint (here) as well as the entire In Common resource packet for K-12 here.

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Scaffolded Writing Lessons

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

This blog, along with the district, have been on quasi-hiatus during the winter break. We’re back to work and we’ll be focusing on writing and Core Action 2, from the Instructional Practice Guides, over the next couple of months. To help get us started, we’ve created a pictorial guide to accessing the Scaffolded Writing lessons matched to the Basal Alignment Project. The writing lessons allow students to get into the habit of using claims, evidence and reasoning in their writing.

You can download the guide here.

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Video Tutorial for the Basal Alignment Project

Posted on January 3, 2014 by Aaron Grossman

Teresa Hammond and Amanda Flora, from the West Virginia Department of Education, have produced a video describing how teachers can access the Basal Alignment Project resources. Additionally, the video outlines the different elements of a BAP including the front matter, the text-dependent questions, and the vocabulary quadrant. You can watch the four-minute video here.

The BAP is collection of replacement lessons for the most commonly used basal readers.

NOTE: There are multiple ways of accessing the BAP materials. West Virginia has created a space, as shared in the video, and you can find them at www.achievethecore.org (here) and on Edmodo (codes and groups here).

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PBS News Hour: CCSS

Posted on December 31, 2013 by Aaron Grossman

The PBS News Hour posted a measured piece on Common Core and their effectuation. Jeffery Brown interviews Claudio Sanchez of NPR, Amanda Ripley, author of “The Smartest Kids in the World” and Education Correspondent John Merrow. The panelists give greater context for the adoption of the CCSS and the execution of state implementation efforts. For those simply trying to gain a factual understanding of CCSS, the news segment is well worth watching.

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