Greetings from the Learning Bridges Team!
We want to provide YOU with FREE resources
and focus on special opportunities that might be helpful for your school improvement efforts.
We invite you to print the resources
that you can use in your classroom or school. We also hope you will share the newsletter
with your colleagues so that they might also receive the FREE resources. When it
is possible, we will connect the resources to your
state's content standards - whether those are
research-based instructional strategies/interventions or parent
activities.
We will feature one of the powerful online courses, an instructor, and a teaching
resource - all connected to your state standards and assessments.
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!
When you try an instructional strategy, share a parent activity with parents, complete
online professional development, or use one of the teaching resources, we hope you
will come back and share your
thoughts with us online. Read what other teachers have said, too!
We invite you to join our team as a Bridge to a New Way of Teaching and Learning!
Greetings from the Learning Bridges Team!
We want to provide YOU with FREE resources and focus on special opportunities that might be helpful for your school improvement efforts.
We invite you to print the resources that you can use in your classroom or school. We also hope you will share the newsletter with your colleagues so that they might also receive the FREE resources. When it is possible, we will connect the resources to your state's content standards - whether those are research-based instructional strategies/interventions or parent activities.
We will feature one of the powerful online courses, an instructor, and a teaching resource - all connected to your state standards and assessments.
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU!
When you try an instructional strategy, share a parent activity with parents, complete online professional development, or use one of the teaching resources, we hope you will come back and share your thoughts with us online. Read what other teachers have said, too!
We invite you to join our team as a Bridge to a New Way of Teaching and Learning!
Read more
Featured Online Class - EDCI 607AA Foundations of Culturally Proficient Teaching
EDCI 607AA Foundations of Culturally Proficient Teaching
This is a foundation course that is not typical, nor is it deficit based. Foundations of Culturally Proficient Teaching presents an asset model where the focus is on the learner. The biggest myth in education is that we can close the gap by only focusing on improving achievement (i.e. curriculum, instruction and assessment), when the truth of the matter is that to close the gap we must also focus on the students’ culture and examine the conditions that create barriers to inclusive instruction. Participants examine their own culture, their students’ culture, and examine how culture and economics (wealth and poverty) impact their view on which students are teachable and which students are not.
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FREE Instructional Strategy - Teaching Critical Thinking - Effect Size = 1.32
Teaching Critical Thinking - Effect Size = 1.32 Impact on Achievement - Superior
When students can think critically, they are able to gather, synthesize evaluate and use information. They are able to find relationships between pieces of information to create and test rules of categorization. They use proper argumentation to evaluate, defend, or critique their own and others ideas. They can find and evaluate solutions or alternative ways of treating problems. Student think and problem solve logically to hypothesize, make inferences, and arrive at conclusions based on evidence. This allows your students to make informed decisions.
A review of state standards reveals that critical thinking is required in all content areas and in all grade levels. Students need to be taught to think critically to be prepared for any kind of assessment.
There are 9 critical thinking skills:
- Classifying
- Comparing/Contrasting
- Analyzing Graphs or Information
- Analogical Thinking
- Deducing
- Synthesizing
- Evaluating
- Predicting
- Inferring
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FREE Parent Activity - Language Arts - Grade 6
Language Arts - Grade 6
Standard: Elements of Literature: The student recognizes complex elements of plot (e.g., cause and effect relationships, conflicts, resolutions, etc.)
Students, who can look for the PATTERNS that exist in stories, are better able to think critically about that content. They can more easily compare and contrast stories to other stories or their personal lives. They are able to draw conclusions and make generalizations about stories with similar patterns. Students can analyze stories more easily when they can recognize the elements of plot.
HERE'S HOW YOU CAN HELP AT HOME!
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Featured Instructor- Tamara Edwards
My name is Tamara Edwards. I find such joy in my work with Learning Bridges. Honestly, I feel I have gained more from my students (fellow teachers) than they even gain from me. I love to hear the different things that they are doing in their classrooms. It is inspiring and reassuring to hear of such great things happening in so many classrooms across this country.
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Featured Teaching Resource - How the Brain Influences Behavior
How The Brain Influences Behavior
Management Strategies for Every Classroom
David A. Sousa
In easy-to-understand language, the author presents current information on brain development and function and highlights factors that affect social and emotional decision making and negative behaviors like impulsivity, defiance, and violence.
Comprehensive yet concise, this guide for K–12 teachers and counselors provides methods for teaching self-control and fostering positive relationships with troubled students and provides case studies that match effective strategies with specific behaviors.
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Discussion Topic - What do YOU think?
A Third America - Permanent Underclass
A new College Board document, The Educational Crisis Facing Young Men of Color" reported in Education Week (Quillen, 2/3/10) that, "Male students who are members of minority groups continue to face overwhelming obstacles to pursing their academic aspirations. The result is a little-talked about "third America" that is predominantly male, largely incapable of contributing to society, and often destined to be incarcerated." U. S. Representative (AZ) Paul Raul Grijalva says, "It's gotten to the point where we're talking about, almost, a permanent underclass in this country, and that is a very, very dangerous development." Grijalva is a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
The College Board report suggests that male students across minority backgrounds cite these reasons: lack of male role models, a search for respect outside of education, the sense of a failing education system, poverty, language barriers, community pressures, and a loss of cultural memory.
What do YOU think? Is this a crisis being overlooked? If so, what do you think should be happening?
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