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What Happened to Ebonics?

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Turmoil in 1980s Oakland Leads to Continued Definitive Conclusions about Language’s Impact on Education in the 2020s by Matthew Bamberg Photo by Kiana Bosman on Unsplash The Ebonics debate has often been misunderstood. It refers to the dialect of AAVE (African American Vernacular English). This type of language is prevalent in the Black community and has also spread into popular culture through lyrics in rap music and similar genres. I be workin’ Yes, I be workin’ on this article. This can be defined as: I’ve been working on this article for a while, although not necessarily at this very moment. I begin here because using AAVE helps readers understand the importance of training teachers to use it in our classrooms. Before getting into the meat and potatoes of the point, AAVE is an important dialect and, therefore, should be treated with the utmost respect, especially when dealing with it as a teacher. Slavery was Brutal The history of AAVE in the United States began in the 17th and 18t...
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The Four Parts of a Critical Response Essay

Critical Response essays stump many students. Consider writing it step by step in four parts.  This type of essay is usually  based upon a reaction you have to a source. The outline might be as follows: I. Introduction and Thesis--Include the title of the work, the author's name and the year of publication in your introduction. Outline the main ideas of the article. Add a thesis that highlights one or more of the topics  in the article that you reacted to. This aspect of the essay should be one paragraph long. II. Summary--Include a summary of the article, along with  the who, what, where, why and how. of it. Consider creating an argument about something mentioned in the essay.  Transition into writing about the article to writing your reaction to a topic discussed in it.  This part of the essay can be one or two paragraphs long. III. Analysis--Clearly state the  issue that that you are reacting to, so that you can identify what you are writing abo...
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Literature Reviews for Grants and/or Proposals

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Literature review structure.  Many students write literature reviews in their university courses. Literature reviews are a view of the literature that aligns with a selected topic you are writing about. For example, if you are writing a grant or study proposal to buy Chromebooks for a class in order to create dialog journals (journals where teacher and EL communicate informally) that assist English Learners (ELs) to both acquire and learn English, you would have to describe how this type of communication benefits ELs acquisition and learning of English. In addition, you would have have to use the literature (sources) you find in a library database to verifying claims for your research study and/or the purchasing of materials for a grant. Professionals such as Grant Prose Inc and are in business online. Their webpage is very useful if you have any interest in converting a study proposal into a grant.
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5 Great Free Resources for Online Learning in the Arts

Google Arts and Culture has virtual field trips. Library of Congress contains films and video of historical events. PBS Learning Media   brings you standards-aligned videos, interactives, lesson plans, and more.   New York Times Learning Multimedia to find out what's going on in pictures and graphs.  Smithsonian Learning Lab includes ways to develop your own interactive learning experiences-or adopt exemplars made by teachers and Smithsonian experts.
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Six Challenges for English Learners (ELs)

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Here are some challenges for English Learners (ELLs) with links for ideas about how to resolve them: 1. Academic language--for some of the best ideas look to Ana Chamot, as she developed CALLA , which is the Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach.  2. Idioms and figurative language--The Amelia Bedelia books are great for teaching idioms and figurative language.  3. Sound/letter correspondence-- Phonics is a great subject for teaching sound/letter correspondence.  4. Sequence of events--Teach the sequence of events using lesson plan for the Very Hungry Caterpillar .  5. Cause and effect--Use a multi-flow graphic organizer/thinking map   for cause and effect.  6. Inferences--Check out good videos about teaching inferences . 
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Common Core for Teachers

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World Cultures are the focus of the National Endowment for the Humanities Lesson Plans

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Angkor Wat Buddhist monument photo by Matthew Bamberg A good set of world history lesson plans is available from the NEH. The plans include multicultural topics that cover Asian history and culture . The Angkor Wat lesson is particularly noteworthy in that these ruins in Cambodia is the largest religious monument in the world.
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5 Photography Lesson Plans with CCSS Standards

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Photo by Matthew Bamberg Common Core? Photography? Are there CCSS standards that incorporate photography into the curriculum? 1. Documenting Learning with Digital Cameras 2. Portraits that Capture Character 3. Bringing Cuba to Life with Photographs 4. 10 Intriguing Photographs to Teach Close Reading and Visual Thinking Skills 5. Teaching Photography's Rule of Thirds
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Units on Mexican and Guatemalan History and Culture that would Align Well With Common Core

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Mayan Ruins at Chichén Itzá in Yucatan, Mexico Courtesy of Chris Newsome Looking for lessons about Mayan Civilizations connected to the CCSS? Harvard puts out a great teacher's guide, Magnificent Maya , and NASA puts out Calendar in the Sky that deals with the Mayan concept of time. Both would align well with the following Common Core standards: Grade 2: Recount stories, including fables and   folktales from diverse cultures, and determine their central message, lesson, or moral. Grade 6-8:  Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including vocabulary specific to domains related to history/social studies. In addition, check out the resources for the Magnificent Maya lessons  and a study of Mayan fables .
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Multicultural Poetry for Phonological Awareness and Reading Fluency

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Multicultural Poetry is also a good way to teach rhyming words. Also, you can consider culture with respect to poetry and read poems by diverse groups of poets. See  https ://poets. org /anthology/popular-poems-teach Teaching students multicultural poetry requires that they "develop an established receptive and productive oral language vocabulary, an established understanding of the concepts of print (e.g., directionality, the understanding that print carries a message), the ability to hear and manipulate sounds in words (phonemic awareness), a basic sight-word vocabulary (i.e., any word the learner can recognize immediately and without decoding;  Ehri , 1995), and a growing understanding of how words work within the larger grammatical structures of language (syntax). Prepared with these skills, students can begin to develop automatic word recognition, or  automaticity " ( Helman , p. 182). Once they have these skills they can learn poetry as p...
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Distance Education Websites

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Use these websites for distance education activities for K-12. Newsela Teachers PayTeachers Spelling City Slide Share Super TeacherWorksheets Flip Grid Allows students to record themselves. Edhelper Readworks for reading comprehension Freckle Math Khan Academy Kahoot Game-based learning  Mystery Science Listenwise --podcasts    
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Learning Maps and Lesson Plans--What are the Differences?

A learning map is similar to a   five step lesson plan in that includes elements of instruction. Elements of instruction include materials and procedures, two of the most important parts of a lesson plan. A learning map contains UDL elements and classroom management strategies. A lesson plan does not. Learning maps also refer to “Learner” as the student and “Target” as the standards and objectives. A learning map contains the following: PLANNING Uses the guiding questions Use what is already known about the Learner, Create Target (standards, including ELD standards, goals, objectives) Unpack Standard Barriers to learning Learner misconceptions about target Whole group needs; focus student needs UDL Classroom Management TEACHING Write Instructional plan—include materials and procedure Create Assessment—formal and informal   I’ve created a lesson plan for close reading   for all grade levels at http://www.commoncoresta...
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Digital Resources that Support Online Learning at Home

It's an unfortunate situation to have children at home all day. They're used to being in school. Here's a link, Resources that Support Distance Learning, that gives you some great online resources to help students whether you are a teacher or parent. There are digital resources to content areas in ELA, math, writing, science, PE, history/social science and others to access at   https://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/he/hn/appendix1.asp#six Dozens of links connect you from to worksheets in   math to to the videos of Khan Academy . Sites are user friendly. For example in order to find a video on Khan Academy, all you do is search for the topic that you want the video on. One caveat to the website is that a few of the links require you to sign up, which is unfortunate because they want a phone number. 
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STEM Wildfire Education Necessity

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  California Wildfires Are Getting Worse. Why Schools Must Teach Fire Survival Now From science to social-emotional learning, a comprehensive approach is needed to safeguard communities from natural and man-made hazards Wildfire in the Inland Empire of Southern California as seen from the desert. Photo by Matthew Bamberg Communities in California and elsewhere have shown remarkable resilience in uniting to cope and heal after a wildfire. Yet wildfires will remain a critical challenge, especially during droughts. The future doesn’t have to mirror the past. To ensure a safer tomorrow, California’s education system must prioritize wildfire preparedness and mitigation as a core part of its curriculum. A New Interdisciplinary Wildfire Curriculum The current model of isolating academic disciplines is inadequate for preparing students to face the uncertain world shaped by climate change. A significant curriculum overhaul is urgently needed to equip students with the skills and knowledge t...
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Social Emotional Skills and Holistic Education

Holistic education focuses on students identity in order for them to become good  community members by teachers instituting appropriate  moral, social, emotional, psychological and academic goals for functioning as a productive member of society.  As a teacher, you have to consider what's going on in students' lives order to teach the students coping skills to deal with challenging situations. Holistic education can really help students who are falling behind. Creating engaging lessons that reach all students is the primary focus of planning for instruction in most schools.  You can combine this inclusion with extensive education in all areas. "All students will learn the skills they need to succeed across all domains, including social, cognitive and academic" (Schwartz as cited in Volk, 2013, para. 5). Students perform better academically when teachers address the social emotional needs of students Socio-emotional skills are for school, work and life. They inc...
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Writing a Personal Essay

Writing a personal essay doesn't have to be hard. One would think that the most important part of a personal essay would be writing a draft. This isn't so. While it is important, there are other parts of the writing process that are just as important for writing a focused "A" paper. One of the first tasks you do before you write the rough draft is to have a topic that is appropriate for a personal essay. As you may recall, a personal essay should be written in first person, usually about an account of an event, a story about a person, a travelogue of a place or  an illustration of an object (in words) that is or was special to you. Well, does that mean you should write about your mom, your childbirth (if you're a woman) or your vacation? Any of these topics are a good choice for a personal essay. Recall that the writing process: 1. Brainstorming--Create your topic. Narrow it down. 2. Outlining--Yes, this is necessary! 3. Drafting--Writing your draft f...
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