Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2010
Building A Philosophy To Have The Best Education Money Can Buy
You Can Manage From A Home Base
Differentiated Instruction with Guidance, Resources, and Strategies
For this unit, you need: video: Akeelah and the Bee
Printout from Party City’s donated lesson plan when movie debuted:
Akeelahandthebee.com/education_guides/guide.pdf
You Need A Guide
I teach and tutor one-on-one in many different content areas because I am trained to teach Gifted and Exceptional Education. In summary, my current certifications (nine) are based upon my education in what is now called 'differentiating' instruction. When working with an individual student, as I have done in a private school in Atlanta and in rural homes near Athens, I study the strengths and interests of my student. I work to integrate those abilities into a lesson plan to build upon what she or he already knows, to strengthen that knowledge and skill, and to build upon making connections across the content areas. I use that student’s strengths in every lesson in every subject area.
Your Guide Suggests and Implements Cooperative Learning
For example, if I am teaching a student with the course load of Senior English (British Lit at this school), Economics, Computer Applications, and Algebra I, I have a conference with the individual content area teachers to get their approval to add some elements that can be a grade in more than one course. Again, by example, my senior student wrote a business plan for a business he created in his own mind, a sandwich shop. For his computer applications class, he was assigned the business plan, brochures, opening day flyers, a logo design, stationery, a menu.
One Example of Many Possibilities Multiplying What You Learn
With energy and interest, he created colorful brochures, flyers, a logo, placemats with games for children, and a menu—including a unique name for his store. He even put his logo on a t-shirt to include with his presentation; and he put the entire presentation on disk to present on the computer.
Meanwhile, after looking over some of the portions of his economics lessons and related terminology, as his tutor, I had a conference with his economics teacher. In addition to his written test for the semester, the student was also able to count his project as one of his major grades in economics by writing a presentation explaining a long list of terms including: capital, entrepreneur, labor cost, net income, profit and loss, sales tax (and more). He interviewed a banker about a loan as part of the economics grade.
This was one of several tasks that went across the curriculum in his coursework. The connections helped him to understand and to comprehend what he was reading.
Pay Attention to the Possibilities to Multiply Connections and Guidance
Without a guide to make these connections, however, there is a real gap in the student’s ability to do this kind of connecting on his or her own. In fact, some of the institutionalized ways to do this are faulty. For example, in one school where I taught, students were ‘supposed’ to be taking U.S. History while studying American Literature. This could be quite helpful in understanding both and in doing related projects (as you can do if you are learning on your own or teaching students who need the perspective of a timeline and setting while studying history and literature.)
Sometimes, in connecting what you know, you can understand a question on a standardized test by realizing that there is an anachronism involved. This president could not be speaking on TV because TV was not yet in people’s homes when he was the leader of the United States of America. Realizing these anachronisms (something out of place, timewise—picture building a stage set for the musical Grease and using a beautiful 2010 convertible on the stage as part of the set. That would be an anachronism because the play is set in another time period, long before the 2010 car was produced.
You Can Make the Connections Yourself
This scheduling, decided as desirable by people who were paying attention to connections, of U.S. History and American Literature rarely happened. Furthermore, the teachers did not cooperate to be on the same timeline. This is not the fault of the teachers. They each have a set of standards to be covered during the semester. While differentiating in the classroom and covering standards, there is little time to spend coordinating with other groups. Tomorrow, I will talk about the best and simplest strategy to study U.S. History—some questions easy to predict on many standardized tests, including the SAT, Scholastic Aptitude Test.
Notice on game shows like: Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader that choosing the money or a history question is sometimes when the contender decides on the side of keeping what she has already won. This is because a history question is often an either/or situation in answering. You either know the answer or you do not.
Sometimes you can figure out the answer in math or in language arts. In future lessons, I will show you some advantages you can build in answering history questions, too. But, as a studying strategy, know that social studies questions on standardized tests are the most predictable in topics rather than in specifics, plus you can pick up points reading graphs, charts, and maps.
What Purchases Are Solid For Many Uses in Homeschooling and Home Study of Any Kind?
For homeschooling, a good study guide for a revered standardized test such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, a screening device for college applicants, makes a strong skeleton for building an entire curriculum. During 2010, I favor the Princeton Review. One important aspect of the Princeton Review is the complete description of why the test is designed the way it is and how it is scored. You can get this information at the College Board site; and I recommend doing every Question of the Day and studying a part of this site each time you do the question of the day.
My Grandmother (or Grandfather) Went To College And Never Studied for the SAT
All the baby boomers will say, as I do: We did not know about why the test was written. We did not have practice questions. We did okay. Right? If you are reading this, you may be a student or a parent of a student, and the ‘baby boomers’ are your grandparents.
Life May Not Be More Difficult Now, But the Manuals Are In An International Code Now
We are being truthful about what we did without, but there is no reason for you not to take advantage of what is available to do as well as you can on tests that are used as gatekeepers.
Even if you do not plan to use the scores for college applications, the knowledge you gain from studying for the SAT is helpful with life management. You have to use logical thinking to do well. You have to make connections to what you already know. This making connections—along with making mistakes—is how you learn anything.
Use Advanced Discussion Techniques With Your Children and Friends
Within a classroom of several students, I use strategies to allow the students to choose different types of activities to practice learning new concepts. I even use different strategies of ways to associate the students with each other, so they can combine shared talents and complementary abilities. Some of these methods are the more familiar ways, such as pairing two students to work on a project--and not so familiar ways: the use of jigsaw groups and Socratic Circles.
Life Lessons About Working With Groups Come From Successful Management of Different Group Schemes
Hint: You may get some valuable insight in the techniques of Socratic Circles and Jigsaw Groups to use for Work Meetings. They are designed to be forums of expression and research in a cooperative model, including all without embarrassment or force.
In these models of discussion, there is less emphasis on the ‘team’ working together by all thinking the same thing and more emphasis on the ‘team’ working together by using all the individual expression and effort. In the popular ‘team’ sports imagery used in public school, these discussion models are more like emphasizing that you have a strong passer, a strong defender, a strong guard, a strong kicker, a strong ….swimmer…who finds an entirely different route for everyone. The members of the group do not always play a constant, stock, role.
From home tutoring and homeschooling, many parents and/or guardians, realize the value of changing the approach when a student is faltering in a certain area. For teachers to do this in public school, we have to use strategies that involve groups; or we use specialized instruction from certain teachers (certified as I am to teach Gifted and/or students with a particular learning challenge--such as attention deficit or dyslexia, considered to be 'specific learning disorders' but actually including an array of challenges for an individual.
Life Lessons About Metacognition
For everyone, child or adult, who has some challenges to face, such as a standardized test or a certification test, or even applying for a scholarship or applying to private school, college, or for a particular course, there are some general helpful strategies. These relate to solutions about how to study; how to contain and retain examples, evaluations, and assessments; and how to prove success in education--if only to receive a diploma or to be certified in a certain area.
Building A Portfolio
My homeschooling lesson plans include the directions to keep up an individual portfolio. The portfolio assessment is an excellent way to build on the current success and to plan a desirable goal for an individual. Resources are available by using the Internet because the standards for an International Baccalaureate school, a school meeting some international standards, are easy to understand and to access. Using this type of lesson plan, with the visible growth of a portfolio, helps with far more than the individual course completion. By reviewing the portfolio, an individual begins to see the story and to build the character of the star of that story.
You do not have to be at home for school all of the time to take advantage of some of the private school and public school strategies I will help you to incorporate in your own study at home. The entire family benefits from the positive, creative, and dynamic lessons from the best methods and best practices used by educators today. Fortunately, if you have access to a computer and to the Internet, your resources are limitless.
Tomorrow: What is the top skill to allow confidence, success, and achievement? What can you do, daily, to build upon this personal skill?
