TEI Tuesday Tip for 1/28

EduWidgets Make Content Fun!

For all of you who love to experiment with cool "techy" tools, the Virginia Department of Education has just recently introduced a new interactive, online authoring tool called EduWidgets. I read about it from a January 17, 2014 Superintendent's Memo. It prompted me to set up an account and explore what resources it has. This interactive tool looks promising and is currently in beta testing. You may never decide to author new content, but you can try out the variety of "exemplars" in its Shared Widgets. It puts the tools for creating interactive content into your hands and enables you to create TEI question types. I love that it is designed for Virginia teachers! http://www.eduwidgets.org

For more detailed information, read the welcome information below, from the email I received after applying for my account.

Welcome to EduWidgets, content authoring tools provided by the Virginia Department of Education. These tools enable teachers to develop interactive lessons and share them within online courses, iBooks, and Web sites. The tools also enable students to become content creators; students may create interactive sequences, timelines, graphs, and images.

Student and teacher creations may be published on the Shared Widgetspage and tagged by keyword, subject, grade level, and Virginia's Standards of Learning (SOL). All widgets must be reviewed and approved before publishing; teachers approve publishing requests from their students. Administrators may approve publishing requests from both students and teachers.

EduWidgets teachers play an important role; teachers may create student accounts and approve publishing requests from students. Student accounts are managed using the tools available under the Manage Students tab.

Teachers ensure the quality of the content published by reviewing and approving widgets created by their students. Published widgets appear under the Shared Widgets tab on the main Web page and are visible to all users. Published widgets cannot be modified. Widgets with incorrect or inappropriate content should not be published; teachers provide this quality assurance for the program. If a published widget contains inappropriate or incorrect content, it may be flagged and notification sent to division administrators for removal.

Note: The EduWidgets software was developed using HTML5 to create widgets that work with all tablet platforms and modern browsers. As a result, for best performance it requires Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. Although Internet Explorer 11 supports many features, it is not fully compliant with HTML5.

TEI Tuesday Tip for 1/14

The Teacher Toolkit

Need a fresh idea for effective teaching strategies? The teacher toolkit is a website developed as part of a teacher training grant in Texas. The purpose of the website is to share teaching strategies that can be used for: classroom management, opening activities, checks for understanding, partner/group/independent practice, reading strategies, games and closing activities.
Each tool has an explanation of how and when to use it, a template students can use to implement the tool and a place to take notes about how you use each tool. Many of the tools also have a short video which gives an overview of the particular tool.
Check it out and try something new!

TEI Tuesday Tip for 12/17

Developing Pass Advanced Readers with TEI

Today's TEI tip spotlights the division reading specialist for King George County Schools, Laura Jo Darcy. Laura Jo's deep knowledge and passion for excellence in literacy, pedagogy, and effective instructional practices are demonstrated throughout the division. Her ongoing professional development in schools focuses on aligning the curriculum with best practices in literacy and the development of students as readers and writers. Laura Jo's blog, Reading Pass Advanced, is an excellent tool for understanding how to become more effective with reading instruction. Perhaps what inspires me most about Laura Jo is her desire to work alongside teachers and students modeling best practices in reading and writing.

Enjoy LJ's spotlight which features specific lesson ideas and templates for instructional activities related to graphic notes TEI. Then take some time to bookmark her blog, Reading Pass Advanced!

Here's to another day of "thoughtfully engaged instruction"!

 

TEI Tuesday Tip for 12/3

TEI Tuesday Stars!

 

You're Never Too Young to Learn!

Today's TEI tip showcases the work of an amazing group of 5th grade students. Their teacher, Mrs. LeFeave, approached me about teaching them to write their own TEI questions using ActivInspire software. After working with these talented designers, they were able to create their own hot spot questions to help practice identifying prime and composite numbers. They took on the challenge to learn how the software worked and I can say, their enthusiasm and eagerness was quite refreshing to work with! I compiled their work into one flipchart which you can use with your students.

Prime and Composite Flipchart

Here's to another day of "thoughtfully engaged instruction"!



TEI Tuesday Tip for Tuesday, 11/26

Allenteachers

WOW, you MUST check out this website! Allenteachers is "dedicated to building dynamic, affordable resources and applications for education." They have created some amazing, interactive resources that are formatted to simulate TEI questions. Their interactive assessment materials and resources  can be used to thoughtfully engage students in thinking as well as prepare them for the increased rigor on standardized testing.
Like any resource, the effectiveness lies in how you use it with your students. What connections are you building with your students to help scaffold their learning and strengthen their content understanding? Take a few minutes to play with some of the resources and consider how you could use them with your students. I think you will very pleased with how they are self-checking as well.
To be honest, this website makes me want to learn how they created these wonderful activities! Here's to another day of "thoughtfully engaged instruction"!

TEI Tuesday Tip for 11/19

The TEI tip for today spotlights Sealston Elementary's Math Lab Coach, Rebecca Jones!

Rebecca finds creative ways to engage students in the math process skills that are part of the rigor behind TEI questions. She has found that Class Dojo is a great behavior management tool that encourages positive behaviors when working collaboratively. Getting students to use increased rigor requires that we give them opportunities to show growth through the struggles of thinking mathematically.

TEI Tuesday Tip for 11/12

Hot Spots: All 'Er Nothing!

All 'Er Nothing is a catchy song from the1955 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Oklahoma. In this song, cowboy Will Parker makes it clear to his charming beau, Ado Annie, that with him, it's all 'er nothing! This reminds me of Hot Spot TEI items. With these questions, it's all or nothing! At first that sounds quite harsh, particularly to younger students, but why not give this Hot Spot Challenge a second thought. How can you cultivate a desire to make hot spot items a challenge that students buy into?

While I love the flipcharts with ActivInspire, I am often asked how you can track and record progress with TEI items on them. My focus for this TEI tip is on making the Hot Spot Challenge a part of these wonderful flipcharts. Like any good instruction, the key to getting students involved is designing a lesson that builds on their understanding. Just giving students hot spot after hot spot, might get, a bit "heated". At what point in your lesson is it the right time to practice hot spots?

Notice the progression of learning in the attached rounding flipchart. I have built in several ways to help students understand the process of rounding numbers. After they have had practice, they will use the Google form to take "The Hot Spot Challenge".  The Google form (seen below) will give you the kind of feedback that you can use to track how well students are doing with answering hot spot TEI questions.

You can create Google forms that use a script to grade the quiz or assignment. Here is a link to the directions, which makes this an even more appealing way to track progress.
Directions for creating self-grading quizzes in Google Docs.
 

Here's to another day of "Thoughtfully Engaged Instruction"!