This annotated bibliography is reformatted and customized by the Center for Positive Practices. Some of the authors featured on this page include Tori Hollas, Aman Yadav, Emily Morgan, Ashleigh Swinford, Debbie Sonu, Linda E. Martin, Jaime Coyne, Marla A. Sole, Chris Stephenson, and Jo Ann Cady.
(2016). Teaching through Trade Books: Roly-Poly Pill Bugs, Science and Children. Pill bugs, also called roly-polies, are small terrestrial isopods that are abundant in temperate areas throughout the world. Because they are engaging, harmless, and easily collected, they provide an excellent opportunity for children to learn about invertebrate body parts, behaviors, and information processing. This column includes activities inspired by children's literature. These activities allow students in grades K-2 and 3-5 to experience the "Next Generation Science Standards" ("NGSS") science and engineering practice of Designing Solutions, while addressing the crosscutting concept of Structure and Function. [More] Descriptors: Elementary School Students, Elementary School Science, Entomology, Science Activities
(2016). Examining Teacher Attrition and Other Related Issues: A Conversation with Dr. D. Ray Reutzel, Teacher Educator. Teacher educators work diligently to prepare future teachers while navigating the surrounding political realities that challenge our schools. Demands placed on teacher educators are growing and are increasingly more complex. Well-prepared and successful teachers are exiting the profession at alarming rates in several places in the world, including the United States, Canada, and Australia (Borman & Dowling, 2008; Clandinin et al., 2015; Mason & Matas, 2015). These concerns have fueled a renewed focus on teacher preparation programs by state and federal policy makers as well as scholars who have spent their entire careers studying the state of teacher education. Scholars across different educational fields remain concerned and continue to examine teacher attrition issues that encompass school communities as well as the role higher education institutions need to play in preparing and supporting teachers in practice. In this article, Dr. D. Ray Reutzel, a well-known scholar in the field of Reading and Elementary Education, responds to questions posed in a conversational interview to help illuminate his perspective on these issues. Reutzel has authored approximately 225 published research reports, articles, books, book chapters, and monographs and has received more than $16,000,000 in research/professional development funding. Additionally, Reutzel is an elected member of the Reading Hall of Fame. Most recently, he accepted a position at the University of Wyoming as Dean of the College of Education. [More] Descriptors: Faculty Mobility, Interviews, Teacher Education Programs, Advocacy
(2014). "Common Core Implementation Best Practices", Center for American Progress. This document presents the testimony of Carmel Martin, Executive Vice President for Policy at the Center for American Progress, delivered at the New York State Office of the Governor Common Core Implementation Panel on Wednesday, February 19, 2014. In this statement, Martin began by saying that The Center for American Progress believes that this is the biggest education reform in decades. If done well, the present reform effort will lead to dramatic improvements in educational opportunities. Such opportunities, are essential to building a strong middle class and creating an economy that works for all, not just those at the top. In her statement, Martin applauded New York as a leader on some aspects of implementation but pointed out that efforts have not been consistent across the state. Several areas that the Center for American Progress believes the state of New York's leaders must aggressively tackle in order to make that translation from standards to effective instruction include: (1) An investment in professional development; (2) Time for teachers to collaborate and learn new ways to adjust instruction to meet the challenge of the new standards; (3) An aggressive campaign to engage teachers and parents around the value of the standards and the changes required to implement them; and (4) Tools to enrich instruction. Martin reminded the panel that these initiatives will require all of the leaders across the state to come together, move forward, listen closely to the advice of classroom leaders, namely teachers, as well as parents so they can provide students with the critical supports necessary to be successful. Martin concluded her testimony by saying that while it is appropriate to expect more of children and educators, we must also expect more from policy leaders to deliver resources and supports needed to translate standards into instruction, and help engage parents while helping them understand the goals behind the standards. [This testimony was presented before the New York State Office of the Governor Common Core Implementation Panel (Feb 19, 2014).] [More] Descriptors: Common Core State Standards, Educational Change, Best Practices, Faculty Development
(2016). Odd Shape Out, Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School. The Odd Shape Out task was an open-ended problem that engaged students in comparing shapes based on their properties. Four teachers submitted the work of 116 students from across the country. This article compares various student's responses to the task. The problem allowed for differentiation, as shown by the many different ways that students could decide which shape was the odd shape out. In addition, students from all middle school grade levels could access the problem. It also addressed several of the middle-grades content standards and several of the mathematical practices. Students used Common Core's Standards for Mathematical Practice (SMP), in particular, SMP 6 (using precise vocabulary) and SMP 7 (seeing structure among the shapes). As they compared their answers and debated the validity of other points of view, they were also engaging in SMP 3 (making arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others) (CCSSI 2010). [This Solve It task first appeared in the December 2015/January 2016 issue.] [More] Descriptors: Learner Engagement, Comparative Analysis, Middle School Students, Mathematical Applications
(2016). Designing K-2 Formative Assessment Tasks, Teaching Children Mathematics. Formative assessment is a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students' achievements of intended instructional outcomes. Formative assessment means assessment embedded in instruction. That definition was adopted in 2006 by the Council of Chief State School Officers' (CCSSO) Formative Assessment for Students and Teachers State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards. Tasks are both instructional and informational; children learn mathematics and teachers have data and a framework that helps them continually notice and gather knowledge about their students' thinking. Formative assessment blends seamlessly into instruction, guiding teaching without stealing instructional time. In this article, the authors focus on only one component of formative assessment–the instructional task–and how teachers can design and choose tasks. [More] Descriptors: Formative Evaluation, Student Evaluation, Feedback (Response), Mathematics Instruction
(2016). Computational Thinking for All: Pedagogical Approaches to Embedding 21st Century Problem Solving in K-12 Classrooms, TechTrends: Linking Research and Practice to Improve Learning. The recent focus on computational thinking as a key 21st century skill for all students has led to a number of curriculum initiatives to embed it in K-12 classrooms. In this paper, we discuss the key computational thinking constructs, including algorithms, abstraction, and automation. We further discuss how these ideas are related to current educational reforms, such as Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards and provide specific means that would allow teachers to embed these ideas in their K-12 classrooms, including recommendations for instructional technologists and professional development experts for infusing computational thinking into other subjects. In conclusion, we suggest that computational thinking ideas outlined in this paper are key to moving students from merely being technology-literate to using computational tools to solve problems. [More] Descriptors: Thinking Skills, Elementary Secondary Education, Technological Literacy, Educational Technology
(2016). Constructed-Response Problems, Teaching Children Mathematics. With rigor outlined in state and Common Core standards and the addition of constructed-response test items to most state tests, math constructed-response questions have become increasingly popular in today's classroom. Although constructed-response problems can present a challenge for students, they do offer a glimpse of students' learning through multiple angles (Kim and Cho 2015). [More] Descriptors: Mathematics Instruction, Teaching Methods, Problem Solving, Responses
(2016). Examining Text Complexity in the Early Grades, Phi Delta Kappan. The Common Core raises the stature of texts to new heights, creating a hubbub. The fuss is especially messy at the early grades, where children are expected to read more complex texts than in the past. But early-grades teachers have been given little actionable guidance about text complexity. The authors recently examined early-grades texts to discover what makes them complex and now report that there is a lot that can help teachers, specifically, young children's texts are special, a handful of text characteristics can signal text-complexity level, sometimes the interplay of text characteristics modulates text-complexity level, and knowing why a text is complex can facilitate text selection. [More] Descriptors: Early Childhood Education, Reading Materials, Difficulty Level, Reading Achievement
(2016). Preschool Literacy and the Common Core: A Professional Development Model, Journal of Education and Learning. Many states have adopted the Common Core Standards for literacy and math and have begun enacting these standards in school curriculum. In states where these standards have been adopted, professional educators working in K-12 contexts have been working to create transition plans from existing state-based standards to the Common Core standards. A part of this process has included re-aligning professional development models to support implementation of these new standards. While K-12 professional educators have been hard at work in this changeover, little attention has been paid to early childhood contexts and the need of pre-school curriculum to support learners in moving toward new kindergarten goals in the Common Core. This study examines the alignment between an existent professional development model for preschool literacy widely employed in one Southern state and the new Common Core Standards. The researcher's goal was to examine the existent professional development model to determine if the offered curriculum supported teachers in supporting learners' knowledge and skills expected in a kindergarten classroom preparing students for the common core. The researchers sought to determine where the curriculum supported learners in this new standards environment as well as to recommend revising the professional development content as necessary in light of the new standards. The overarching goal of the study was to support preschool teachers' abilities to prepare their students for the new expectations for school-based literacy. [More] Descriptors: Preschool Education, Emergent Literacy, Common Core State Standards, Professional Development
(2016). The Quasi-Human Child: How Normative Conceptions of Childhood Enabled Neoliberal School Reform in the United States, Curriculum Inquiry. This paper argues that normative conceptions of the child, as a natural quasi-human being in need of guidance, enable current school reforms in the United States to directly link the child to neoliberal aims and objectives. In using Foucault's concept of governmentality and disciplinary power, we first present how the child is constructed as a subject of the adult world, then trace how such understandings invite school policies and practices that worked on the child, rather than with the child. In order to understand how the child comes to be known and recognized as a learner, both at the intersections of normative conceptions of childhood and material expectations of the student, we use Biesta's three domains of education: socialization, qualification, and subjectification as an organizing framework and draw primarily from Common Core Learning Standards and related policy reports with the aim of reorienting educational work away from economic and political universals and toward a subjective response to the child as a human being with concerns, rights, and as a subject worthy of recognition. [More] Descriptors: Neoliberalism, Educational Change, Socialization, Educational Policy
(2014). Addressing the "Shift": Preparing Preservice Secondary Teachers for the Common Core, Reading Horizons. Common Core represents a shift in content-area literacy instruction, broadening from a narrow focus on generalizable skills to also include a disciplinary perspective of literacies specific to the specialized language and habits of thinking within particular subjects. This requires teachers to be knowledgeable in their content and possess competence in pedagogical practices that allow them to scaffold their students' literacy development within these disciplines. We examined how the implementation of a Disciplinary Literacy Project into a content-area literacy course influenced preservice secondary teachers' disciplinary literacy practice. The findings suggest structured inquiry into disciplinary communities enhances preservice teachers' understanding of disciplinary literacy, but this knowledge is not easily transferred into classroom instruction. Implications for future research on disciplinary literacy models and preservice teacher preparation are discussed. [More] Descriptors: Common Core State Standards, Preservice Teachers, Secondary Education, Content Area Reading
(2016). Multiple Problem-Solving Strategies Provide Insight into Students' Understanding of Open-Ended Linear Programming Problems, PRIMUS. Open-ended questions that can be solved using different strategies help students learn and integrate content, and provide teachers with greater insights into students' unique capabilities and levels of understanding. This article provides a problem that was modified to allow for multiple approaches. Students tended to employ high-powered, complex, familiar solution strategies rather than simpler, more intuitive strategies, which suggests that students might need more experience working with informal solution methods. During the semester, by incorporating open-ended questions, I gained valuable feedback and was able to better model real-world problems, challenge students with different abilities, and strengthen students' problem-solving skills. [More] Descriptors: Problem Solving, Mathematics Instruction, Feedback (Response), Teaching Methods
(2016). Fostering Perseverance, Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School. Sustaining engagement with a mathematics task is not a novel suggestion for effective mathematics teaching. "Principles and Standards for School Mathematics" (2000) specified that "students need to know that a challenging problem will take some time and that perseverance is an important aspect of the problem-solving process and of doing mathematics" (NCTM 2000, p. 186). Yet there is often an expectation in mathematics class that solutions should come quickly, and teachers work against a norm that has equated fast responses with proficiency in mathematics. The Common Core's Standards for Mathematical Practice (SMP) (CCSSI 2010) have brought renewed attention to the importance of perseverance in mathematical problem solving. In this article, we offer a set of classroom practices that foster students' perseverance in problem solving. [More] Descriptors: Persistence, Mathematics, Mathematics Instruction, Mathematics Education
(2016). Factor and Remainder Theorems: An Appreciation, Mathematics Teacher. The high school curriculum sometimes seems like a disconnected collection of topics and techniques. Theorems like the factor theorem and the remainder theorem can play an important role as a conceptual "glue" that holds the curriculum together. These two theorems establish the connection between the factors of a polynomial, the solutions to a polynomial equation, and the graph of a polynomial function. They generalize what is previously learned in first-year algebra, reinforce important ideas about proof that students learn in geometry, and foreshadow important ideas of calculus. There is much more to appreciate about these two theorems than one might think. [More] Descriptors: Algebra, Mathematics, Mathematical Formulas, Mathematics Teachers
(2016). Jumping In: Redefining Teaching and Learning in Physical Education through Project-Based Learning, Strategies: A Journal for Physical and Sport Educators. Project-based learning (PBL) is an inquiry-based instructional approach that allows students to gain knowledge and skills by investigating and respond to engaging, complex problems or challenges. For some, PBL may seem like an unnatural fit in PE classrooms. However, this article describes how, with careful and creative planning, PBL can easily transition into the PE class as well. [More] Descriptors: Physical Education, Active Learning, Student Projects, Inquiry