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Teacher Idea Exchange This is a place for teachers, administrators, and parents to exchange ideas. E-mail your ideas to Carolyn so they can be posted as part of an exchange. Your lesson plans or strategies could also be posted here. We look forward to your ideas and suggestions! Thanks so much for
your time on Friday (11/30/07). I have known very
little about the craft of differentiation as I
never had training in gifted education. Though I
did some form of differentiation when I was a
classroom teacher, it was not as effective as it
could have been if I had known then what I am
learning now. I came back to work this morning and
decided to try my hand at making a tic tac toe. I
created one for the book The Year of the Perfect
Christmas Tree by Gloria Houston ( a NC native) and
shared it with my 2nd grade teachers. While I know
there would room for improvement, they loved it and
have asked for copies of it. It is my hope that
once they see how easy it is for them to use with
some of their students, they might get the bug to
try some out on their own. Because of your
practical approach and usable tools, I feel better
empowered to help my teachers effectively
differentiate. Thanks so much! I excitedly look
forward to March! I am attaching a copy of my
product. Please let me know if you have any
suggestions for making it better. Have a happy
holiday season! Kelley James,
Instructional Facilitator Click
here
to download a formatted copy of the Year
of the Perfect Christmas Tree Tic-Tac-Toe
saved as a PDF file. In order to view and
print it, you will need a program such as
Adobe Acrobat Reader. You can easily
download a free copy at
www.adobe.com: Hi
Carolyn Here it is - my Tic
Tac Toe with the rubrics for high school English
Literature. Thanks for the great workshop!
Jennifer
Livingston Carolyn,
I just wanted to
say thank you again for a wonderful workshop. I
would love to see more and can't wait to implement
what I have learned into my classroom. Here is my
Learning Contract for my unit on Simple Machines.
Jennifer
Schneider Questivities are
Thinking Questions done in conjunction with a
Project Activity. They stimulate creative and
critical thinking and give practice in research
skills. The thinking questions are starter
questions that should be done before students begin
the Project Activity. This set of Questivities™
about Immigrants was developed by Judith
Allensworth, a teacher in Nacogdoches, Texas.
Click
here
to download a formatted copy of the
Imigrant Questivities saved as a PDF file.
In order to view and print it, you will
need a program such as Adobe Acrobat
Reader. You can easily download a free
copy at www.adobe.com: These are two
Tic-Tac-Toes for High School Geometry sent by Penny
Long, Nacogdoches ISD in Texas. Surface
Area and Volume Tic Tac
Toe Teachers often
wonder about guidelines for parental involvement
and assistance with their child's work. We spent
time discussing this during a workshop in June
2007. The result was a letter to
parents composed by Barbara Masten, a middle
school teacher in Nacogdoches, Texas.
Dear
Parent, So that I may
enrich your child's learning experience, I will be
assigning a project for each grading period. This
project will be minimally worked on during class
time but mainly will require outside effort. I am
writing to you concerning the issue of parent
involvement. I want to encourage you to be involved
with your child's education, but also to know what
degree of assistance will be acceptable on
homework/ projects. Acceptable
Assistance: Unacceptable
Assistance: As the specialist,
Ms. Carolyn Coil advises: "Be supportive and
interested in what your child is learning, but do
not do your child's homework for him or her. There
is a delicate balance between too much parental
assistance and not enough." Please be aware
that grades will reflect only the child's
work. Sincerely, I attended your
workshop on learning styles in Jasper recently and
loved it. Came back and did some web searching and
found a neat site. www.thelearningweb.net/personalthink.html
It is a short 15 word choice to determone the
concrete sequential, etc. Thank you for a
wonderful day. Susan Fiscus I am a DeKalb
County teacher who participated in the online
gifted course last year with Amy Hall Kilbride as
the instructor. The course brought me from good to
great, and most of my improvements were because of
your books. Because of what I
learned, we asked to teach a self-contained
classroom with nine special education students, six
gifted, and two regular education students. For the
most part, the special education students are
strong in math, but weak in language arts. The
gifted-identified students are strong in language
arts, but weak in math. We teach in small groups
ALL day. The homework is leveled according to
ability. The instr uction for math is compacted
based on pretests. We provide the students with
many tic-tac-toe activities from your books, which
they love. I cannot list all of the improvements we
have made. It's my tenth year
of teaching, and I have never enjoyed it so much. I
want to extend an open invitation to our classroom.
Please check out our website,
http://home.att.net/~kristendrake/, and join us any
time. Unfortunately, we have testing for the next
three weeks. Beginning October 30, we'd love to
have you. Thank you for being
such a great inspiration. Kristen Drake,
third grade teacher http://gadoe.org/pea_communications.aspx?ViewMode=1&obj=1288 http://www.dekalb.k12.ga.us/newsroom/press/pdf/2006-10-09.2006-10-16.DeKalb_Educ 1. Kindness related
thoughts 2. Laughter
produces beta-endorphins (mood
elevators). Ray A. Harmen Carolyn, During my first
year of teaching, I sent a card to the parent of
each of my students over the course of the year. I
got so much positive feedback and recognition back,
and my students sparkled as well. I didn't so it
last year in my second year, but I'm going to make
some card-stock postcards for next year. It only
takes a few minutes a day if you stay on top of it
even with 150 students in 180 days. The best part
was I had to pick something individual and positive
in every student, and I looked at them all
differently and more positively because I was
constantly looking for something special I could
write in the note. Sarah Fox Ms.
Coil, I want to say
thanks for the work you've done. I'm sending you an
attachment of one of the ILP's I used from your
book Activities and Assessments for the
Differentiated Classroom. I modified the ILP based
on the book from page 90. Thanks, Click
here
to download a formatted copy of the
Building Bridges Guidelines saved as a PDF
file. In order to view and print it, you
will need a program such as Adobe Acrobat
Reader. You can easily download a free
copy at www.adobe.com: Carolyn, Just a note to let
you know how much I enjoyed your workshops at the
conference in Athens. I plan to implement some of
the strategies you demonstrated. I can pat myself
on the back because you confirmed some of my own
theories concerning student choice. I thought of
another activity to add to the Bingo choices on the
plagarism lesson. The students could write a fable
or a folktale which must include a
moral. I plan on doing
these activities prior to teaching the research
component of the Science Fair project which is
required for our school's gifted 8th
graders. Thanks again for
such inspirational and practical ideas. Sincerely, Dear Mrs.
Coil, I cannot tell you
how much I needed yesterday's workshop at
Huntington University. A friend and co-teacher
attended one of your workshops last year and just
raved. Now, I have to tell you there are definitely
times when she just raves without reason - :) -
occupational hazard, you know! But, I have to tell
you, yesterday's workshop was definitely the best I
have ever attended. And, as a former Resource
Teacher, I have attended quite a few. You were
honest, funny, honest, informative, honest, and
practical. I loved it. Unfortunately, we didn't
have school today, so I couldn't immediately put
into practice many of your tips. I literally can't
wait until Monday!!! You are a lifesaver and a
career-saver. Thanks so much! Sincerely, Carolyn, Here is the
learning contract I promised to send you. I
actually thought it was an ILP, but this is the
format I chose for some reason. If you find
it useful, please feel free to use it. I
would also welcome any comments or suggestions you
would like to make. Take care. I
enjoyed seeing you at TAGT and look forward to your
return to Nacogdoches next summer. Danny Nichols,
B.S., M.S. Click
here
to download a formatted copy of Danny's
learning contract handout saved as a PDF
file. In order to view and print it, you
will need a program such as Adobe Acrobat
Reader. You can easily download a free
copy at www.adobe.com: I just wanted to
tell you how wonderful the information you shared
at the Raising Student Achievement Conference I
attended in St. Charles, IL on December 6,
2004. I am a second year
LD teacher -- currently a resource teacher. As
you described the different categories of
Underachievers, I could put many of my students
into each of those categories. I plan to use the
strategies to help me with one student I work with
who does very little work, inside and outside of
school. She has little or no help at home (we have
found that her sisters actually do her homework for
her, instead of helping her). I am going to try
some of those strategies you gave us with her
today! Thank you so much
for a great workshop! Subject: Thanks
from a grateful NZ teacher Dear Carolyn, thank
you so much for the seminar you provided in
Gisborne, New Zealand. I much enjoyed it
and acquired from it such very useful
information and ideas to implement in my classroom,
thanks to you. I have been teaching since 1964 and
love getting new ideas and strategies. Once upon a
time I thought I would get to know all about
teaching if I taught long enough. Silly me. I have
long since realised that the more I learn, the more
there is to learn. But isn't it fun! And they even
pay one! Thank you for your
part in helping me to fill in this huge puzzle
we call Education. Hope you had a
pleasant trip home. Come back soon. Regards, Marcia
Walmsley <m.walmsley@xtra.co.nz> Dear
Carolyn, I recently attended
one of your presentations at the Australian Gifted
Conference in Melbourne. I wish to thank you
and congratulate you on both your fantastic
presentation which was so enspiring and for sharing
your knowledge and wisdom with all
participants. Personally, I felt
that you were highly realistic and clear in your
approach, sharing implementable ideas with
educators to "take or leave". I have already set up
my own version of the "Resident Expert" sheet - I
am a music teacher (with good resources -
computers/synthesizers for composing etc) and this
will be a fantastic resource - especially with my
Accelerated Learners class - as well as the
mainstream classes - I will share your idea with
others. I have purchased
some of your recommended books as a consequence and
will share some of the resources with the 70+ staff
at my College in my role as Middle Years Programs
Manager. If you have any
other little handy sheets or helpful hints you
could send me - especially in regard to Accelerated
Learners - that I could share with my colleagues, I
would be most grateful. Thanks again for
sharing your fantastic knowledge - I am in awe of
your ability. Regards and I hope
it is a lovely day in USA today. Pamela Turnbull
<turnbull.pamela.p@edumail.vic.gov.au> Hi
Carolyn, I am attaching the
"rules" for my Survivor literature circles. My
Coil-inspired assignment was to make each group
responsible for choosing an activity fromt he
choices in each of three different areas. Of
course, the choices varied in learning style, and I
used your grids for the assessment
rubrics! Thanks for all of
the help you have given so many of us! Martha Byrnes Your group will be
reading one of the books in the "What is an
American?" group. You will be working together to
answer these Essential Questions: You will be
meeting once a week to discuss the novel and to
work on the assignments. During this group time,
you will have specific group roles. It is important
that you read the book and do your job. If you do
not keep up with the reading and/or do your job,
the group may decide to "vote you off the island"
much like the teams in Survivor. Voting off
procedure: Before someone can
be voted off, the group must: Before the vote is
taken, the group must have given the member until
the next meeting to show that he/she is up-to-date
with their assignments. In some cases an
individual may decide that he/she is the only one
doing any work. If that is the case, that team
member may "escape" from the team. Escape
procedure: Before he/she can
escape from the team, the member must: If you are voted
off the group or if you escape from the group, you
will be given individual assignments. The remaining
members of the group are still responsible for the
original assignments. Any individual work for an
assignment remains the property of the individual
who produces the work and goes with him/her when
leaving the group. Click
here
to download a formatted copy of Martha's
literature circles handout saved as a PDF
file. In order to view and print it, you
will need a program such as Adobe Acrobat
Reader. You can easily download a free
copy at www.adobe.com:
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