EDU 222

Embedded Formative Assessment by Dylan William has a number of great resources and ideas for any teachers- from new to veteran- that can easily come into play in their classroom. William is focused on how to improve the classroom for our students, and how to make teachers more effective through different forms of formative assessment. Chapter 1 discusses the importance of academic achievement, and some of the factors that come into play for student achievement. Many schools are underfunded, which can lead to a lack of resources for students. However, one of the most important resources that every school has is teachers. William proposes that firing or re-locating ineffective teachers is not the solution: rather, we should be assisting our current teachers and teaching them on how to be better educators. His major solution? Embedded formative assessment! To follow this, Chapter 2 discusses the definition of embedded formative assessment, and why it is so beneficial to our students a...

Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History What is 'Gilder Lehrman'?  Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History is a nonprofit organization which focuses on history education for grades K-12, as well as some services for the public. They have over 70,000 documents to use, as well as a variety of lesson plans. What Is It Good For?  Gilder Lehrman has a search engine for lesson plans, videos, and essays, primarily.  You have to choose either a time period, content type, topic, or keyword. There is also a search engine for just sources.  What Would A Typical Class Using 'Gilder Lehrman' Look Like?  Any sources you use from the collection provide the following information: summary of the item, people associated with the item, historical era, keywords and subjects, and the "sub era"— or, the more specific time period. Here is an example. Each lesson (hyperlinked is an example lesson) begins with a couple of essential questions— to ...

DocsTeach and Archives.gov What are 'DocsTeach' and 'The National Archive'?  DocsTeach is a website which puts its focus on primary documents. It categorizes them so they can easily be found with keywords, and they are ever expanding. There are currently more than 10,000 documents on their website. The website also offers some lesson plans revolving around specific documents. Archives.gov comes hand in hand with DocsTeach, as they are connected. The National Archives has a section for educator resources, where you will find a number of different helpful resources. Among these are National History Day resources, working with primary sources worksheets, and opportunities for visiting students in the classroom. What Is It Good For?  DocsTeach is best for its primary documents , and the lesson guides that come with them. On their lesson plans, they even have a classification system that includes the lesson's placement on Bloom's Taxonomy, what hi...

EDUTopia What is EDUTopia? EDUTopia is a resource for teachers for the betterment of their students, to encourage active learning. EDUTopia highlights activities, approaches, and practices that work effectively. EDUTopia currently is putting an emphasis on fact based research, assessing quality effectively, as well as effective and creative use of acquired information. They provide a number of articles as well as videos for teachers. What Is It Good For?  EDUTopia is a great resource when looking for answers to questions you have as a new or even experienced teacher. There are separate categories including: New teacher, Social and emotional learning, Brain based learning, Integrated studies, Project based learning, Technology integration, Comprehensive assessment, and Teacher development. How Can I/Would I Like To Use It? Here are a few of the articles I found most helpful: How Restorative Justice Helps Students Learn  - A strategy for discipline tha...

Stanford History Education Group "SHEG" What is the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG)? The Stanford History Education Group (or, SHEG) is a website run and contributed to by Stanford staff, students, faculty, and visiting scholars. SHEG provides a number of resources for teachers, including pre-made lessons and pre-made assessments (with rubrics!). What Is It Good For?  SHEG is best used for their pre-made lessons, which include historical subjects as well as civic subjects. Each lesson plan introduces the topic effectively, outlines some things to discuss, and provides worksheets. They are somewhat bare bones at times, allowing the teacher plenty of room to expand and change around what they need. What Would A Typical Class Using 'SHEG' Look Like? This would be a great resource at a time when you are unsure/unable to plan your own in depth lesson in order to get a great foundation for a subject/concept you are teaching. You are given bas...

Facing History What is Facing History? Facing History places a priority on educating students on subjects that deal heavily in racism, prejudice, and antisemitism. Facing History believes that educating students on these subjects will create a "more humane and informed citizenry". These lessons are essential not only to inform students of our world's history of oppression as well as to potentially act as a preventative measure. Facing History offers educator resources (lesson plans, library with ebooks, activity and classroom engagement strategies) as well as professional development opportunities (workshops, courses, seminars, webinars...).  What Is It Good For?  Facing History has a large database of lessons, units, books, and feature collections stored in each 'topic' — time period or overarching theme. The units, lessons, books, and feature collections are well thought out and engaging. The website also has a large database of teaching strateg...

For our presidential impeachment unit, the family and friends interview  project for this unit is a mini project which involves interviewing family and friends who were alive and aware during either Nixon's attempted impeachment or Clinton's attempted impeachment. These interviews can help shed light on not only the events themselves, but also the way that American citizens perceived them at the time. It's also a great way for students to strike up a conversation with their friends and family about what they're learning! I see tremendous value in talking with friends and family members about an event that happened in the past for a couple of reasons. 1) It makes the event more real.  Although history is entirely made up of events that truly did happen, it can be hard to visualize an event happening until you speak with someone about how they saw and experienced it. It is one thing to discuss these events passively, it is another to seek out the event in the eyes of ...

I chose three different subject teachers when it came to getting resources for this particular assignment. At first, I thought that maybe it would be best to do this because I could share these resources with colleagues. In another way, I thought about how looking at resources from different subjects would be beneficial to me in the long run. I also only have two social studies teachers, which would mean I would need a teacher from a different subject anyway. But, in the end, the reason I chose three different teachers had very little to do with any of this: I chose these three teachers because I loved them when I was in high school. These were the teachers who made learning engaging. These teachers stayed after school with me, asked me about my day, taught things in a way I understood, re-explained things a hundred times if it wasn't clicking... these were the teachers whose classes I looked forward to, not necessarily because I enjoyed the content, but because I knew I was goin...