Elementary Teachers Learning About New Materials

So many choices!
Elementary teachers gathered at the Lewes School to learn about American Reading Company's Program or K-12.

Mindfulness for Helping Stress in Middle Schoolers

     A recent article on Reuters Health reports....

"Middle-school students in urban areas may benefit from in-school mindfulness programs, a new study suggests.

Students taking a mindfulness-based stress reduction program during the school day ended up with less symptoms of stress and trauma than children attending classes on health topics, researchers found.

"High-quality structured mindfulness programs have the potential to really improve students' lives in ways that I think can be really meaningful over the life course," said lead author Dr. Erica Sibinga of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Children in many U.S. cities are at an increased risk of stresses and traumas due to the effects of community drug use, violence, multigenerational poverty, limited education and economic opportunities, Sibinga and her colleagues write in the journal Pediatrics.

The new study involved 300 students in grades five through eight at two Baltimore public schools. The researchers randomly assigned them to either a 12-week mindfulness-based stress reduction program or health classes to take during the school day.

Nearly all of the participants were black and almost all were eligible for the free school lunch program, which is offered to students with financially need.

The mindfulness program had three components: material about meditation, yoga and the mind-body connection; practice of those techniques; and group discussion.

In general, mindfulness training is geared toward a person "tuning in" - instead of "tuning out" like other meditation practices.

"It allows them to not only know what is happening, but to stop and take three breaths and figure out how they want to respond to what is happening the present moment," Sibinga told Reuters Health.

At the end of the program, compared to those who took health classes for the 12 weeks, the students in the mindfulness program had lower levels of general health problems, depression, recurrent thoughts about negative experiences and other symptoms of stress and trauma.

Sibinga said the differences would be enough for the students to notice in their day-to-day lives.

The researchers acknowledge some limitations to the research, like children missing some classes and possibly being exposed to mindfulness practices outside the sessions.

Sibinga also said it would be difficult to say how the programs would work in other schools with different student populations, but she suspects there would be benefits.

The next step is to look at how to spread the program to other schools, and look at how the program may work, she said.

"It doesn’t get us off the hook of trying to reduce the sources of trauma in our urban life," she said. But the study suggests adding structured mindfulness programs in urban settings would be beneficial, she added."

SOURCE: bit.ly/1k78lj3 Pediatrics, online December 18, 2015.

Literate Cape
Newsletter

Read. Think. Write. That's life at Cape! Read all about it in my newsletter! 

CSET - Writing An Organized Argument Graphic

Oh SNAP! Resource Materials from Diane Albanese

Cape Henlopen Literacy Specialist

Source: Self

Graphic Organizer EXAMPLE with suggestions

Writing An Organized Argument - CSET

CSET	Example
Make a Claim (overall thesis statement, opinion, stance)	Businesses can be more successful when they use good marketing tools such as a market plan and an information about what the customer wants.
Set-Up (the source, where your information comes from)	In the article entitled “Great Ice Cream Companies” the author states that ...
Evidence #1 (data to support the claim)	(continued from above)...his best profits have been a result of offering many different flavors and in avertising those to the right customers.  He knows his demographic and ages of his cutomers and uses clever colors in his ads to get their attention.
Tie In: explain your ideas about #1	Children like bright colors and they remember them when they decide on what ice cream to buy.
Evidence (data to support the claim)	The website stated that “Many customers come into his ice cream stores because they know that they can get service quickly and efficiently.”
Tie In: explain your ideas about #2	People don’t really want to wait to get an ice cream treat so they appreciate fast service.
Evidence (data to support the claim)	The author of the article suggests that if a customer is satisfied, he will return for repeat business.
Tie In: explain your ideas about #3	Because of a good, quick service, many people will have a favorite ice cream store that they return to again and again.
Conclusion	That’s really good for business profits!

PLC Workshop on Text Based Evidence

CHHS – Special for Social Studies on Monday, Dec 14, 2015

AGENDA

1.     Define Text Based Evidence Cartoon Link

2.     Non-fiction Resources linked to my blog 

3.     CSET - Writing: Organizing an Argument

4.     Textual Evidence: Implicit or Explicit? plus a reading strategy. 

5.     Respect to Depth of Knowledge + Bloom's Taxonomy + Oh Snap! DOK Deeper

6.     CSET- Cornell Notes example from Beacon Middle School teachers

7.     Guide to Creating Text-Dependent Questions. Read. Discuss. Collaborate. How to make a lesson better/deeper?

8.     Sample Lesson: “Renaissance Bad Boys”

9.     Teachers bring and share a relevant piece of text/article from their current curriculum. Create deep, evidential questions to use with the text. Learning Template

10.  Exit Evaluation – Feedback to leave with me please!

What Students Remember Most About Teachers

Veteran

teachers know it. And we need to share this with our colleagues! 

What Students Remember Most About Teachers 

A great article from Edutopia that will remind you why you went into teaching! 

Every Student Succeeds Act Signed!

President Obama signs the ESSA, Every Student Succeeds Act, a major change for education in America! 

The Most Read Books by Seniors List

Most Read Books by Seniors by State
Click here to see a larger version.

Scaffolding vs differentiation

Scaffolding is an instructional technique, associated with the zone of proximal development, in which a teacher provides individualized support by incrementally improving a learner’s ability to build on prior knowledge. Scaffolding can be used in a variety of content areas and across age and grade levels.