Add Some of These Great Teaching Strategies to Common Core Lessons:)

Classroom instruction will need to be much more interactive than in the past if students are to truly benefit from common core based lessons.  For this new approach to teaching to be successful, teachers must have access to a wide variety of instructional strategies on a moment's notice so that every student can be actively involved in every lesson. 

Here is a site that has a fairly extensive list of them.  Click on the label for each section and a detailed description of the activity appears.  Notice that many of these ideas are not new.  The difference is that they will be used on a more regular basis with common core based lessons along with random call-ons so that every student is held accountable for learning the material.  Teachers will no longer just call on the students with their hands up.  Since they already know the answers to the teacher's question, they do not offer the teacher true feedback on how well the entire class has understood the lesson.  Random call-ons on students is far more accurate.  If the majority (80-90%) have correct responses, the teacher can continue along in the lesson. INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES TO HELP ELLS AND OTHERS ACCESS CONTENT AND LANGUAGE

Please note that this list only contains some practices.  Teachers should try the ones that they feel most comfortable with initially.  With time, teachers can add on a few more activities a little at a time.  Asking colleagues for ideas is also effective.  New teachers and veterans normally have many great things going on in their classes, and, as teachers, they enjoy sharing instructional strategies with colleagues. 

The bottom line is to fully engage ALL students in the learning.  This is the only way to begin to reverse the high failure rate of ELLs.

Denise

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Make CIVICS Accessible to ELLs With This Site!

Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was the founder of this site.  Her goal was to provide children and adults with the tools to educate themselves on how our government works.  The goal is a noteworthy one since many students and some adults truly don't fully understand how our government operates.  

This site is free, but you need to register.  As a teacher, once you register, you can access not only their many free resources (including complete curriculum units), but also create classes on the site for your students to use.  The more time schools spend on teaching civics in school, the more informed our next generation will be in carrying out their civic duties, voting, volunteering, etc.  For a democracy to work, it must have educated citizens to run it.  

With COMMON CORE STANDARDS being rolled out in every state but four, this site would enable our ELLs to fully grasp how our government functions.  Even the games found here reinforce the concepts taught in the curriculum units.  

CIVICS  --  register here.

CIVICS FOR TEACHERS  -- find complete curriculum units by state.

Denise:)