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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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Blogging Basics for Educators

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Blogging Basics Presentation for Educators Last year, I gave a presentation about blogging. Integrating blogging into a lesson covers many standards at all grade levels. No matter what the topic is of a blog post, it will cover quite a few standards related to writing. The more the teacher is involved in the blog, the more standards that will be covered. If a teacher provides frequent feedback on the blog, permitting students to rewrite posts, most of the writing process steps are covered (brainstorming, outlining, rough draft, revision and editing. Since blogging is a published product, the last step of the writing process is included in a way like no other, as the post, if it is made public, has the potential to be viewed by thousands of people. This presentation presents a rational for National University faculty and students in education and other fields to incorporate blogging as a communicative learning strategy applied to teaching in a wide variety of courses. Data ...
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Don't Like Common Core? Think Twice about an Alternative--Gulen Charter Schools

This is very strange. Three news stories bridge to the Gulen Movement, a large enterprise whose top staff was arrested in Turkey. http://mashable.com/…/journalists-and-tv-producers-detaine…/ Evidently this movement is alive and well in the U.S. Among its many assets are charter schools. Check this out: http://www.theatlantic.com/…/120-american-charter-s…/375923/ Finally, you might want to know that a charter school near you ( http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/…/lab…/*California ) is a Gulen school--a strict, academic math/science curriculum. Is there a twist? More about Gulen Schools and Common Core
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Library of Congress Search Common Core Lesson Plan Search Engine for English/Language Arts

Many teachers are concerned about finding lesson plans that meet the Common Core standards, not to mention materials and resources that they can use to teach them. The Library of Congress Teachers website offers both. The website contains an simple drop-down search menu that allows teachers to pull up lesson plans with corresponding resources in the Library of Congress' collection. Explore this copious online platform for instant lessons and materials that meet specific Common Core objectives. The search enables teachers to search for a lesson by grade level that links to  both student and teacher resources for the lesson. The teacher's resources include activities and step-by-step lesson plan tabs. The student resources contains links to readings and tasks that contain image galleries and multimedia. A good example of a lesson for fourth grade is " The Civil War though a Child's Eyes ," an enormous learning experience for students to see the Civil War as ...
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Fourth Grade Close Reading Lesson Plan

Title: Close Reading of Informational Text Standards RI4.1 Refer to details and examples in a text when explicitly explaining text and when drawing inferences RI4.2: Determine the main idea from text and explain how it's supported by key details; summarize text RI4.4: Determine the meaning of general academic and domain-specific words or phrases in the text RI4.5: Deseribe the overall structure of information in a text (chronological, compare/contrast, cause/effect, problem/solution) Learning Target Students will determine the theme or main idea of the text by summarizing gist of article as demonstrated by participation in a close reading activity. Date: Materials: Paper, pencils, post-it notes for students, poster paper, markers for teacher, ELMO Engagement Strategies Students will read informational article Students will annotate article Students will pair share with left/right partners Procedure 1. Teacher shares that c...
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Current State of CCSS in California

Below is some information about the current state standards adoptions for all subjects with regard to CCSS. CCSS has not been developed for history/social science in California as of this date. Beginning teachers often confuse Literacy ELA literacy standards for history with California State Content Standards for history/social science.  CCSS for content history/social science have not yet been adopted so teachers and administrators have to refer back to the old California Content Standards for history/social science because those are currently being used. The state of the standards and some useful links are provided below: California State CCSS and Content Area Subject Standards at http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/ First note that not all high school (and elementary school) standards have been adopted in California. Only ELA Literacy content area standards have been fully written and adopted (see http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/finalelaccssstandards.pdf ).   ...
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Sample Teacher Learning Targets with Student-Centered ELA Common Core Standards

There's a formula with which you can change Common Core standards to teacher-centered learning targets: Students will ( concept and skill ) by ( cognitive application from Hess DOK ) as demonstrated by ( type of cooperative group activity ). The following are the teacher learning targets for a  month-long unit (seven units per year) for ELA fourth grade Common Core standards: Student Learning Targets Changed to Teacher Learning Targets using DOK (depth of knowledge) and collaborative learning. RL 5             I can refer to structural elements to explain major differences among poems, and prose. Students will be able to refer to structural elements to explain major differences among poems, and prose by comparing a selection of one with the other demonstrated by jigsaw. RL 7             I can make connections between the written text of...
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Simplifying Standards, Learning Targets and Objectives for Common Core Part I--Creating Student-Centered Learning Targets

Common Core has brought us a change in education nomenclature so that it can often be confusing to parents, teachers and administrators if they aren't familiar with it. Consider for a moment the translation of education terms you know into those of the Common Core in terms of student and teacher. What you used to refer to as performance objectives are now called learning targets, more specifically, teacher learning targets. New to common core is an extension of the old concept of performance standards so that they address students directly.  In order to do so involves a simple task that allows you to convert each standard from a teacher's point of view to a student's. By converting the third person point of view of the standard to the first person point of view for students allows you to directly address them when they are posted in the classroom. For example, the RI4.1 (Reading Informational Text, Grade 4) standard for informational text (and a very similar one fo...
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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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