Resource Blog #1

https://www.nc2ml.org/6-8-teachers/3-2/

I found this site from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. It is North
Carolina’s version of Georgia Standards of Excellence. This website does a fantastic
job of organizing material and making resources available for teachers. I explored
the 6th grade math portion of the site and found resources involving worksheets,
standards, and alternative resources with links for teachers. I went on to explore
the 7th and 8th grade sections and they were also very stocked full of helpful
information. I will be using this site for future lessons and units. In addition the
North Carolina website provides both word documents and pdf’s of worksheets,
such that teachers are able to edit existing sheets to accommodate their specific
classes. This site also provides rubrics and possible test questions for end of unit
formative assessments. I studied assessments this summer and these test questions
seem to line up well with the inquiry based learning strategies I have been taught.
Further, I was also pleased to find that the test questions required explanations for
a students thinking versus just an answer or a multiple choice questions. I believe
each of those also has its place in math but basing a test solely off the idea of
explanation allows teachers more leeway in grading, through awarding points for
both creativity and argument structure versus just getting the right answer. Over all
the state of North Carolina seems to really understand math and how the teacher
processes are changing to accommodate more inquiry based instructional methods. 

Word count: 253 

The Keys to Shakespeare

When reading this chapter, I encountered a lot of old thoughts and observations put into
words. I often use the mentioned strategies in my daily readings of newspapers,
magazine articles, and class readings but I never put those ideas into theories with
descriptions. This chapter really helped bring these theories to life for me. Using the
‘keys’ to help students unlock connections is huge in literacy in the English classroom
because often students are reading diverse texts that are not easily comprehended.
For example, you may be teaching a unit on Shakespeare and you come across the
story of “Romeo and Juliet,” we all know this story at least parts of it but it is
relatable to real life? How do we get students even more engaged with the story and
the old English used in the story? Using the ‘keys’ to unlock student’s previous
knowledge about the content may come from history and studying London during
the Scientific Revolution and the 30 years war. Using these “keys” the students
should be able to make connections between Shakespeare and the physical location
he was writing in, this may draw some deeper connections as to the characters in his
writings or the locations he reference.s or maybe even the circumstances that
brought about their families feud. At the very least using this literacy strategy can
help students better remember the story and thus aide the students in
comprehending its more difficult sections. 

Word Count: 242, cross curricular literacy (History, English)

Because you can't go wrong with Taylor Swift

Enjoy :)

"Fox in Socks"

by Dr. Seuss

“Fox in Socks” by Dr. Seuss is a great book about tongue ties. It is great for kids to
think about words that sound similar but are not exactly the same. This book also
contains a lot of words with repeated sounds within the word. With books like these,
it is difficult to read them quickly because you often stumble upon the repeated

sounds and words.