2015 Learning from the Field Conference

Listening to all the great educators across the state of California share their stories of success and tribulations in delivering meaningful professional development workshops. The Instructional Leadership Corps is a collaborative project with the California Teacher Association, National Board Certified Teachers, and Stanford University. The purpose of this project is to build teacher leadership, develop purposeful professional development using the Common Core State Standards, and guiding the participants (Teacher Leaders) as they deliver it to teachers in their districts. Teacher-led workshops are the most profound method to guide educators in the classroom, since we are the experts on the field constructing curriculum and units of study using CCSS.

My presentation for today is:

Selecting and Using Resources for Advancing and Understanding of ELA and ELD Common Core Standards

Please click HERE to access today's slides 

Handouts for today's presentation: 

Close Reading Instructional Sequence Template with ELD component

Performance Task Planner

These are our Learning Goals:

• Become familiar with the demands of the new ELD Standards and see the connections to the ELA CCSS
• Structure a Performance Task for K-12
• Technology Resources for deeper learning to enhance lessons

 

Resources

CA ELA/ELD Frameworkhttp://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/rl/cf/elaeldfrmwrksbeadopted.asp

CTA IPD Website

www.cta.org/ipd

Literacy Design Collaborative

http://www.ldc.org

Understanding Language

http://ell.stanford.edu

BetterLesson:  http://www.betterlesson.com

Use Better Lesson to browse thousands of rich Math and ELA lessons from high-performing Master Teachers. 

Also, navigate through my blog's tabs to see more links and examples of tasks I have posted in the past. I also have tons on links to take you to other resources on the performance task tab.

Join the NEA Professional Practice Communities!

What is this?

The NEA Professional Practice Communities, a place where teachers, parents, school support and administration professionals, and community members share ideas and resources to improve student success. It is free and open to all!

Click on the following link to join my online community:
Common Core K-5

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Common Core Resources for Parents to Help their Student with their Challenging School Assignments

In this Common Core Café for Parents workshop, parents will learn about Common Core online resources they can use to help their Intermediate and/or High student with homework assignments, projects, and challenging math problems that will help them achieve the rigor and expectations of the Common Core standards.

Our goal is to build a bridge of communication with parents, community members, and educators across Montebello Unified School District to help our students achieve the rigor of the Common Core State Standards. The goal is to provide parents with useful resources that they can use the next day with their child. As educators, we are always thinking of ways we can partner with parents to help them support their child’s education. I compiled the resources with the collaboration of an intermediate teacher, Angelica Paz, and a high school teacher, David Keys. We hope that the parents find these resources as useful as we have in our classroom. 

Click HERE to see our parent handout

 

Resources for to Help Your Child at Home

School loop: Begin with looking at your school’s School Loop web page. Go the each of your child’s individual teacher. Teacher may have helpful websites, resources, or lectures posted.

StudyJams! Offers multiple learning methods to match the different learning styles of your students. www.studyjams.scholastic.com

This is the resource I mentioned today about showing lessons in video form that will help your child build on their classroom knowledge or reteach a concept they need extra help on.

Another place to look for high-quality teacher-produced lesson plans that align to the CCSS is LearnZillion (www.learnzillion.com), a learning platform that combines video lessons, assessments, and progress reporting, In addition to sortable Math and ELA video lessons, they offer a handy Common Core navigator.

At AR BOOKFIND you can search for Accelerated Reader book titles based on reading levels, authors, topics, or titles of books. http://www.arbookfind.com

Your youngsters can talk to other students about math, pose math questions, and try the problem of the week. Math Forum also includes software reviews and a search feature for finding other math sites. http://www.coolmath.com

Airplanes and flight are the subjects of this high-flying math site. Solve word problems, learn how kites stay up in the air, watch animations to learn about people like Amelia Earhart, and even design your own plane. http://www.planemath.com

Learn about our Solar System, take a star tour, see how gravity and inertia work, or play a fun lunar landing game. In addition, you can learn about physical science, life science, animals, chemistry, and technology. http://www.sciencemonster.com

How Stuff Works brings you hundreds of articles that cover a wide range of subjects like 3-D graphics, animals, video games, engines, roller coasters, toys, electricity, computers, and much more. http://www.howstuffworks.com

These are Ms. Paz favorites that she mentioned today:

CNN Student News

Newsela

Reading Rockets

Khan Academy

PBS Elementary Science

Elementary Science

Brain Pop (this is also one of my personal favorites)

Council of the Great City Schools Parent Roadmaps:

Math

 http://www.cgcs.org//site/Default.aspx?PageID=244

ELA / Literacy

http://www.cgcs.org/Page/328

National Parent Teachers Association (PTA)

http://pta.org/parents/content.cfm?ItemNumber=2583

Achieve the Core

www.achievethecore.org

Common Core State Standards Text Exemplars

http://www.corestandards.org/assets/Appendix_B.pdf

Mr. Keys referred to this website as one he uses often in his class: www.commonsensemedia.org

Common Sense Media is dedicated to improving the lives of kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in a world of media and technology.

National PTA Parents' Guide to Student Success: Provides examples of the changes in English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics instruction at each grade level, as well as provides parents guidance for conversations with their child's teachers.

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Close Reading - Cafe Session 2

We have a full house today of teachers K-12 grade attending the Close Reading session. We are going to focus on: 

• How to select a balance of texts that prepare students to read challenging fiction and non-fiction at their level
• How to teach students to read texts above their “comfort zone”
• Learn to write text-dependent questions for both narrative and expository genres, and how to provide entry-points for all children through visual media, and annotation
• How to incorporate writing as part of a rigorous close read

To access our slides for today, please click HERE.

The following slide shows the strategies that we will cover today in our session: 

 

In our session, teachers discussed the "close reading" or reading comprehension strategy they currently use in the classroom. We wanted to encourage teachers to collaborate in a professional learning community environment.

Angelica Paz sharing her double-entry journal strategy.

Teachers are engaged in their learning and reviewing our provided strategies.

David Keys sharing his High School "Close Reading" strategy, which was "Read like a Historian" taken from the Stanford University Website.

Click HERE to a previous post on just "Close Reading" for more resources and examples. 

  

 

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Good Teaching Conference North, San Jose, California

There is truly something special about coming to the CTA Good Teaching Conferences. It’s energizing to the profession to see educators commit their weekend to attend a conference that provides us with experts in their content area and workshops that speak to all of us.

This morning I presented with three remarkable educators, Barbara Ransom, Norma Sanchez, and Ashely Cooper. We presented “Treasure Hunting: Common Core ELA, Math, and Science Lessons, Units, Tools, and Resources”

Live Streaming of our session: 

 

I will post more information on this soon! Including some new resources that I have found.

My second session is Diving into Depth of Knowledge, Make Sure They “Get It”: Comprehension Skills in the CCSS.

You can access my slides HERE. 

The session was also live streamed! You can view my whole session in the video below: 

Currently, educators I have come across have asked for more “close reading” resources. I have created a few templates that will help teachers in planning their own lessons. Below are just a few that I have recently drafted. Take the time to look through my blog for more that I have posted in the past. 

Close Reading Template #1

Close Reading Instructional Sequence Template 

Close Reading Template

Creating Text-Dependent Questions Guide

 

Click HERE to a previous post on just "Close Reading."

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