KML Curriculum and Instruction Blog

I ran across an link  with several interesting thoughts today.  It hit at the heart of a potential huge strength of technology.  Technology has the potential to customize education (differentiation) for each individual student.   I really enjoyed its links to  Adaptive Learning Technology Companies like  Achieve 3000  or  The Aleks Corporation .  I could see great potential with this type of curriculum integration at our school.

The KML Schools Art Curriculum Committee recently held it's first Art Make & Take. KML federation grade school teachers from a variety of schools and grade levels attended.  They left with lesson and project plans as well as at least one sample project that they created.  The teachers also had time to build professional relationships and gain insight into how others teach art. The Make & Take focused teachers on the intentional teaching of line, one of the elements of art, while also introducing the work of master artists as examples.  The lesson plan about line offered a comprehensive view of what students should understand and be able to do by the end of eight grade.  Teachers can choose what information is appropriate for their students based on grade level and prior knowledge.  The projects allow for adaptation to a variety of grade levels as well. The committee plans to offer Make & Takes on a monthly basis, each focusing on a different elem...

Last night I participated in a webinar on project based learning.  The presenter shared ideas for projects that has done.   She developed project descriptions (similar to recipe cards) for project that could be applied to all subjects and all age levels.   Below I listed some the websites that can be used to develop performance tasks (like those that Keith Bowe has been encouraging us to use to design learning opportunities for our students to develop and demonstrate deep understanding) and projects.   She also shared seven of the project descriptions for free.  I could send those to you as a pdf attachment if you e-mail me requesting one. Be strong and courageous, Matt Moeller Webinar Topic: Project and Problem Based Learning as a Recipe for Real Life Ginger Lewmann Host: Kyle Schutt Date and Time: Tuesday, January 21, 2014 7:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time (New York, GMT-05:00) Tuesday, January 21, 2014 6:00 pm, Central Standard Time (Chicago, GMT-06:00...

If you're looking for ways to have your students take quizzes and tests online, you might want to check Socrative or AnswerPad . The links on this post will take you to a blog posting about each website.

I attended the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic in Chicago right before Christmas break and the first session I attended was about measuring (band) student growth. While we don't give our elementary school band students grades like our high school band students, we do currently have quarterly progress reports we send home. Sarah and I have both been frustrated at times with what those forms entail and there were some great ideas for other ways to assess things that I picked up during the session. The link below contains my notes on the session. Curriculum Model Notes

This weekend I finished reading The Core Six - Essential Strategies for Achieving Excellence with the Common Core .  It was an easy read (less than 100 pages) and had very practical and easy to implement suggestion for the core six: 1.   Reading for Meaning 2.  Compare and Contrast 3.  Inductive Learning 4.  Circle of Knowledge 5.  Write to Learn 6.   Vocabulary's CODE. The book helped me develop learning activities to help my students become better readers, writers and discussion participants. I'm giving the book back to James tomorrow.   You can ask him to borrow it.

James posted earlier this year, apparently, about building an online Professional Learning Network (PLN). I have made friends and professional contacts all over the world using Facebook, Twitter, and educational blogs. I am presenting next month in San Antonio with a lady from Maine who I met through Twitter, and we are professional birds of a feather. There are many ways to benefit from building a PLN, and one of those is participating in a Twitter chat. There's a chat (online scheduled discussion) for just about every topic possible. Recently, Rachel Pierson, from Trinity in Waukesha, and I started a chat for WELS teachers. The first one of the new year is tonight, 8-9 p.m. Tonight's topic is timely for our school: Implementing 1:1/BYOT. How can you join? Follow the steps below.  1. Create a Twitter account, if you don't already have one.  2. Go to tweetchat.com and sign in using your Twitter username and password.  3. Enter the hashtag WELSed and press enter. ...

I am going to start using forallrubrics.com to grade my Music Technology projects next semester. I can use it online on my laptop or iPad, and I can also use it offline on my iPad. It will sync the information when I go back online.

This  Stoplight Method Video  from the Teaching Channel gives many suggestions that are useful for feedback from students to guide my next lesson.  I've used methods like this in my classroom without using the poster.  The following questions were included on this website, with my personal answers. What kinds of obstacles might students write on the red light?  My students have included items like other students that were distracting them or places where they did not know how to answer. How could the data gathered from the exit slips be used to inform future lessons?   It shapes the way I introduce or create background the next day in my lessons. How could you adapt the three categories of feedback for your classroom?  I do not really like the "what I learned" because students gravitate toward the title of this lesson.  Instead, I use "where have I seen this pattern in real-life."