Last day of Institute

Thanks for being such a great bunch of Residents! I'll miss working with you! Keep in touch and please let me know if you need anything!!!!

music classroom management

Marc (my boyfriend; instrumental music teacher) highly recommends this book for music teachers. It's available from $11 (used) at amazon.

Crowd Control: Classroom Management and Effective Teaching for Chorus, Band, and Orchestra by Susan L. Haugland (Paperback - Jul 28, 2007)

Sample Music Unit Plan

Again, this does not correspond to Baltimore City's curriculum, but I found this sample music unit plan. Maybe it will help...click here.

teaching art

Everyone should consider searching amazon for subject-specific books. One of the art folks asked about art books...I found these titles on amazon:

How to Teach Art to Children, Grades 1-6 by Joy Evans and Tanya Skelton

A Survival Kit for the Elementary/Middle School Art Teacher (J-B Ed:Survival Guides) by Helen D. Hume (Paperback - May 15, 2001)

Dynamic Art Projects for Children: Includes Step-By-Step Instructions and Photographs by Denise M. Logan (Spiral-bound - Sep 2005)

Complete Art Curriculum Activities: 150 Easy-To-Use Art Lessons in 8 Exciting Creative Media for Grades 1-8 by Barbara McNally Reuther and Diane Enemark Fogler (Paperback - Oct 2001)

Art Is Fundamental: Teaching the Elements and Principles of Art in Elementary School by Eileen S. Prince (Paperback - Jul 1, 2008)

There are more but that's just a few that looked interesting to me.

Reading Diagnostic Assessments-DIBELS

Here's a great site with free reading diagnostic assessments.

http://dibels.uoregon.edu/

math gateway skills tests

Here is a free, printable math gateway skills test website:

http://www.singaporemath.com/Placement_Test_s/86.htm

Sample Art Unit Plan--New Jersey

While this is a little different than what we discussed, this should give the art teachers some idea about what a unit plan might look like. If you copy and paste it into your web browser it will open a word document with the unit plan.

schoolsite.capturepoint.com/assets/resources/Unit%20Plan%20-%20Hyer.doc

Standards

Music and Art national standards, detailed:

http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/teach/standards.cfm

Maryland State Department of Education

http://www.marylandpublicschools.org/msde

Foreign Language Standards

http://www.actfl.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3392

Music National Standards through MENC

http://www.actfl.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3392

*****Voluntary State Curriculum—all subjects

http://mdk12.org/instruction/curriculum/index.html

*****BCPSS’ TSS

www.bcpss.org

Differentiation

More sites for differentiated instruction with tons of learning styles quizzes and resources:

http://www.internet4classrooms.com/di.htm

http://www.polk-schools.com/Differentiated.htm

Spanish Class Differentiated Instruction

Interesting article I just found:

http://www.sedl.org/loteced/communique/n06.pdf

Music Educators

This is probably obvious for you music teachers but www.menc.org is the site for the national association for music education and has many resources including forums to ask questions.

How to help specific students with challenging behaviors

For those few students in a class that exhibit behaviors that seem not to change despite a strong rule/reward/consequence system, teachers should consider using:
--functional behavioral assessments
--behavior intervention plans

A functional behavioral assessment (FBA) is used to figure out what outside factors are influencing a student to exhibit the behaviors. Basically, you want to monitor the child and record:
-what is going on before the student exhibits the behavior
-what is going on while the student exhibits the behavior
-what happens after the student exhibits the behavior
Often, a student's behavior is directly related to the environment around him/her.

A behavior intervention plan (BIP) can be made with the information gained from the FBA. This plan is something that the teacher and student can build together. In it, specific goals are created and a specific broken-down plan for how the teacher and student can work together to achieve it. You can use the following links for some guidance on this or just research FBAs and BIPs.

http://specialchildren.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=specialchildren&cdn=parenting&tm=30&f=10&tt=13&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.advocatesforspecialkids.org/pb_plan_kind_adhd.htm

http://specialchildren.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=specialchildren&cdn=parenting&tm=5&f=10&tt=13&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.projectstay.com/pdf/BehaviorInterventionPlan.pdf

http://cecp.air.org/fba/

http://www.updc.org/ubi/bip.htm

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/16/13/97.pdf

http://www.usu.edu/teachall/text/iep/forms/plan.pdf

My MAT Portfolio

For you Spanish teacher folk, and anyone else really, here's the link to my Master's portfolio.
http://cte.jhu.edu/EP/presentation/rdr/kimberlysportfolio

School Supplies

Check out the coolest store ever; Learning How.

learning styles in Spanish classroom

There is an article here on learning styles in a foreign language classroom. It's a little jargon-laden but the point is kids' learning styles do matter, so using assessments to diagnose them is crucial.

Differentiation in Art Class

Apparently there's a book available about differentiation in the art classroom. It's called "Meeting the Needs of Your Most Able Pupils: Art. Gifted and Talented Series" and it comes with a CD I think and it's by Kim Earle, published in 2006. It's a little expensive but it's available at Amazon used starting at $47 here.

inclusion of students with disabilities

Someone asked yesterday on our "parking lot" how to differentiate for students with special needs while maintaining their dignity. I found a great article about inclusion of autistic students which you can read here but the conclusion was basically that the family's disclosure of the disability, and the teacher's efforts to introduce the student and explain the strengths and weaknesses of the child to the class make an enormous difference on the reaction of classmates. The article also concluded that a teacher's attentiveness to signs of social exclusion of the student are key (so they can intervene in specific instances).
Another article here encourages teachers to approach the students with disabilities to teach them social skills so they can succeed in regular education classrooms. This article also promotes that approach.

P.S.: It seems some of the links aren't working but I'll leave this post up because I summarized the articles anyway.

Rubrics

This is my favorite rubric maker! I love rubistar!

Learning Styles

Here is a link to a learning style inventory that you can share with students or use yourself. (Why use them yourself? Because teachers tend to over-use their own preferred learning style in their teaching!)

Inventory 1

I'll try to add to this as I come across others (I'm sure there are more little-kid friendly ones out there).