Teacher resources and professional development across the curriculum

Teacher professional development and classroom resources across the curriculum

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Learner Log

A place to explore teaching and learning

Summer Learning: Games

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cattraptionIs it too rainy or hot to go outdoors? Pull out the familiar childhood games of cards, Mousetrap, and Rubik’s Cube. Or learn the mathematics behind game theory in unit 9, “Game Theory,” of Mathematics Illuminated.  Why is poker considered an imperfect game? How do different cultures define ‘fair’? How can language use work like a game?

Mousetrap

Ever wonder where the concept for the original Mousetrap (published in 1963) game came from? It was inspired by Rube Goldberg (born July 4, 1883) a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, sculptor, and author known for his drawings depicting complicated and comical contraptions that perform simple tasks.  In workshop 3, “Transfer and Conversion of Energy,” of Science in Focus: Energy, see if you can tell where the energy comes from as you move through different stages of the Cat-Traption, a Rube Goldberg-style machine.  Try making your own Cat-Traption at home.

Rubik’s Cube

Erno Rubik, born July 13, 1944, is the Hungarian inventor of the Rubik’s Cube. Physics for the 21st Century, unit 9, “Biophysics,” section 5, Free Energy Landscapes, explains hierarchical states using a Rubik’s Cube. In biology, the distance between these states can explain, for example, how far two species are apart on the evolutionary tree.

Student Interactives

Students can play through a variety of online interactives on the Learner website. Start with Amusement Park Physics. Students build a rollercoaster and test the safety of the design. Click on the “Choose One” tab in the top right of the page for additional interactives in language arts, social studies, science, and math, including Elements of a Story and Math in Daily Life.

Reflecting on the School Year

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[Updated from May 27, 2016] Summer is the perfect time to pause and look back at the school year. How did it go? What challenges did you face? What improvements can you make for next year? Is there anything new you would like to try with your students next year and how can you prepare this summer? The following resources offer guidance with your reflections.

What is your teacher metaphor? As a teacher, are you more of a conductor or an air traffic controller? Have you ever tried to define your teaching? The Metaphorically Speaking interactive in The Next Move workshop spurs you to think of a metaphor to describe your teaching to others, and also to help you develop a focus. Read what other teachers have used as metaphors for their own teaching. Share your own metaphor and how this metaphor influences or guides your teaching in the comments section!

Did you struggle with keeping your students’ attention or motivating them? Neuroscience & the Classroom  shows how brain research can inform instructional practices. Learn to effectively manage a variety of learning styles and attention spans. Use the course’s search function to find the topics you want to explore.

Connecting With the Arts, program 8, “Reflecting on Our Practice,” provides strategies for solo and group reflection to improve curriculum and refine lesson plans.

How can you encourage literacy in the home? How can you better support your English language learners? How can you work on comprehension skills? Teaching Reading Workshop, K-2, offers reflection worksheets for each session. Glean ideas from these reflection sheets, and adapt them to other subject areas and grade levels.

Consider creating informal professional learning communities over the summer or build your case to develop them during the next school year. Critical Issues in School Reform, videos on innovation in professional collaboration, outline group reflection activities (like the Tuning Protocol and the Consultancy) that examine student work and classroom instruction.

Do you want to feel more confident presenting and leading discussions on political and constitutional topics with your students? Watch former judges, political pundits, journalists, and others use the Socratic seminar to discuss and analyze ethical issues in our series Ethics in America and Ethics in America II.

How can you develop students’ literacy skills in the subject you teach? Reading and writing are no longer the sole responsibility of the English classroom, but a critical part of how students explore and understand complex concepts across all disciplines. Using the resource Reading & Writing in the Disciplines, examine general disciplinary literacy strategies and practices and then focus more deeply on your own discipline. You will gain insight into how to support your students’ literacy skills while meeting content goals.

Image copyright: ljupco / 123RF Stock Photo

Earth Day and Beyond: Resources to Engage Your Students

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Image: NOAA, from Essential Lens

Every year, we honor our Earth by participating in outdoor projects and events on April 22. In fact, with the magic of flowers blooming and plants greening all around us this time of year, the entire spring season is the perfect time to study nature and the environment. Discuss current and future environmental issues, including possible solutions, with your students. The following resources provide ideas for science, social studies, and literature classrooms:

 

 

 

  1. Engage students in discussions and activities about climate change and the human impact on the environment using rights-cleared photographs and lesson materials from the “Earth, Climate, and Change” and “Garbage: The Science of What We Throw Away” collections on Essential Lens: Analyzing Photographs Across the Curriculum.
  2. Learn about a team of MIT scientists working to make solar cells more efficient in Chemistry: Challenges and Solutions, “Matter and the Rise of Atomic Theory.”
  3. Hear thought-provoking views and research findings from experts in the field, including entomologist E.O. Wilson in The Habitable Planet, unit 13 video, “Looking Forward: Our Global Experiment.”
  4. Two interactives in The Habitable Planet allow you and your students to manage an energy crisis. The Carbon Lab explores how human influence on carbon output affects the future health of the Earth’s atmosphere.  In the Energy Lab interactive, try developing a portfolio of energy resources that cuts back on CO2 and considers the pros and cons of multiple sources of energy.
  5. Gage Reeves asks his 5th graders to relate their reading about global warming and climate change to events and products in their community in Teaching Reading 3-5 Workshop, classroom program 13, “Reading Across the Curriculum.”
  6. Consider the possible conflicts that arise when living in a future society affected by significant global warming and other challenges by reading “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia E. Butler.  The Expanding Canon: Teaching Multicultural Literature, session 7, “Critical Pedagogy,” includes an audio clip of the author and a synopsis of the story.
  7. Learn about where oil comes from, how it is extracted and used for energy, and the effects of using oil as an energy source on the environment in Earth Revealed, program 26, “Living With Earth, Part II.”
  8. Explore environmental mysteries like the causes of ice ages and consider how life shapes the earth in Planet Earth, program 3, “The Climate Puzzle,” and program 7, “Fate of the Earth.”
  9. Economic stories show how pollution is a “negative externality” that can have serious consequences for economic efficiency in Economics U$A, unit 8, “Pollution and the Environment.”
  10. The World of Chemistry, program 17, “The Precious Envelope,” explains ozone depletion and the greenhouse effect on the earth’s atmosphere.

The Role of Questions in the Classroom

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In a class of 35 students a few years ago, it was the start of the semester. After a few icebreakers and introductions, I asked students to take out a pen and paper and ask me 3 questions that they’d like to be answered this semester. My students were stumped. Many of them sat silently staring at the paper, and me, for 20 minutes.

The education system is designed to provide information to students, but it’s not designed to help students ask questions. Year after year, we tell students that they need to memorize information because it’s going to be on the test. Strategies of memorizing and regurgitating information are mostly what students need to succeed in the education system. However, those methods of learning are not always useful in the real world.

My students struggled to formulate questions about what they hope to learn throughout the semester. By using inquiry-driven pedagogy, educators can help to foster a culture of curiosity, creativity, and more importantly, critical thinking in students. Younger students naturally use inquiry as they build on their own curiosity and try to understand the world around them, much like scientists do. How can teachers support inquiry skills as students grow older?

Watch The Expanding Canon, “Inquiry: Rudolfo Anaya and James Baldwin,” to learn how inquiry-based learning can be leveraged in a literature or language arts classroom. For example, students not only use questions to explore themes that interest them, they can learn to ask questions about the goals they hope to achieve on a certain project and the discovery process:

  • What is the problem I want to solve or issue I want to explore?
  • What do I hope to accomplish by the end of this project?
  • What is my vision for this project?
  • What are some of the challenges that I will face while completing this task?
  • How will I know I’m successful?

Inquiry in education gives us the opportunity to ask questions that let us become aware of those issues that we can then engage in to create impact. The most important aspect of all of this, is that inquiry is self-driven. Our job as teachers is to provide the tools that enable and empower students to actively own their thinking.

When we help students to ask questions and understand the context of their learning, they’ll be able to critically think about their own process of learning, and how to better advance within that process. Moreover, students can’t google what the right question to ask is, they have to understand how to ask questions.

To see an example of inquiry and problem-based learning, and how you can leverage it in the classroom, take a look at this overview of Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and Socratic Questioning in workshop 1 of Making Civics Real.

Rusul Alrubail, in addition to writing about education for Edutopia and Learner Log, also works for Ci.Strategy+Design, which helps students, entrepreneurs, and organizations to understand and recognize their perspective within their system and networks.

Image copyright: hootie2710 / 123RF Stock Photo