Educational Methods Commons^™

Learning To Look, Looking To Learn, Karen Rothschild, Marvin Cohen, Babette Babette Moeller, Barbara Dubitsky, Nesta Marshall, Matt Mcleod

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

In order to plan and implement lessons that will be effective for a wide variety of learners, teachers must assess what students know and how they know it. They must also know students’ academic strengths, challenges, and preferences. Careful observation of what students do and say as they work provides a rich source of data about both their knowledge and ways of learning. We highlight three strategies we use to help teachers refine their understanding of individual students:

(a) building teachers’ skills in observing without making judgements; (b) teaching teachers to use a shared, neurodevelopmental framework through which to view …

Over The Hills And Far Away: Inviting And Holding Traumatic Stories In School, Lesley Koplow, Noelle Dean, Margaret Blachly

Occasional Paper Series

Thousands of young immigrant children enter school each year, bringing their immigration stories with them. They enrich the communities that receive them, bringing hope and new perspectives, new languages, and experiences of other worlds to share with peers. Sometimes their stories include experiences of loss and trauma in their lives prior to entering school. Studies estimate that more than 51% of immigrant families have experienced at least one traumatic event or loss, and at least 15% of immigrant parents and children present with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Aragona, Pucci, Mazzetti, Maisano, & Geraci, 2013). These traumatic histories can include difficult …

Experiential Knowledge And Project-Based Learning In Bilingual Classrooms, Adriana Alvarez

Occasional Paper Series

Culturally and linguistically diverse children deserve sophisticated and dynamic biliterate learning opportunities that integrate the children’s life experiences and keen intellects. Dynamic learning in early childhood classrooms, including progressivist pedagogical approaches like project-based learning, has been shown to facilitate academic achievement as well as high-level learning capabilities including critical thinking, agency, problem solving, and negotiation (Adair, 2014; Bell, 2010; Hyson, 2008; Katz & Chard, 2000). Too often, culturally and linguistically diverse children are offered learning opportunities that fall short of helping students achieve their potential or of validating their life experiences (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Nieto & Bode, 2008; …

Editor's Note, Jonathan Silin

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Sharing Our Stories: A Personal Narrative Literacy Curriculum For Grades 3-5, Casey Adler

Graduate Student Independent Studies

This thesis began out of my curiosity about the ways to set up a classroom to best support growing readers and writers. As my exploration into literacy continued, I decided to create a personal narrative unit with several foundational literacy skills, strategies, and practices for students to develop. With variety, authenticity, and modeling as the key pillars in planning, alignment to skills and standards will be embedded in genuine literacy experiences. The choice to engage in a genre study of personal narrative was due to its developmental appropriateness, potential for community building, and opportunity to share a range of stories. …

District-Wide Instructional Initiative Framework, Jessica Charles, Tracy Fray Oliver, Doug Knecht, Emily Sharrock

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Describes the Bank Street Education Center's District-wide Instructional Initiative Framework, a tool that guides the Center's partnership work with school districts who are engaged in a process of instructional improvement. The Framework was developed out of research on district improvement, organizational development, school leadership, and professional learning, as well as the Center's own experience implementing large-scale district reform in the largest school district in the nation: New York City.

Facilitating A Block Program In Kindergarten And First Grade: A Manual For Kindergarten And First Grade Teachers, Hannah Rau

Graduate Student Independent Studies

Many preschool classroom have unit blocks. Unfortunately, not as many early primary classrooms incorporate blocks into their programs. This paper discusses the power of using unit blocks in a Kindergarten and first grade. The first three sections of the thesis focus on the importance of a unit block curriculum in early primary classrooms by discussing the developmentally-appropriate ways blocks invite problem solving and mathematical and scientific thinking. The final section is a teacher’s manual designed as a guidebook to support teachers who are starting a block program in their Kindergarten and first grade classroom. In this manual, critical components of …

Writing History: A Teacher’S Guide To The History Of Language Technology And Museum Practice, Sonya Ochshorn

Graduate Student Independent Studies

The following document contains a guide for classroom teachers to use when bringing a class of 6th graders to a museum with ancient writing techniques, illuminated manuscripts, and books printed with movable type in their collection. The guide shows teachers how to guide students through the journey of tackling the essential question, “How have technological evolutions in language affected society?” This guide also helps teachers understand the difference in teaching in a museum setting and why this kind of learning is important for student development.

Boundary Crossing: An Examination Of The Cooperative Efforts Between A School And Museum, Katie Goldman

Graduate Student Independent Studies

This study examines a school-museum partnership between, a public school in Lower Manhattan, and a historical society located in New York City. Utilizing the theoretical framework of Activity Theory and the concept of Boundary Crossing, this research examines the school-museum partnership between P.S. 1994 and the historical society. The partnership between these two institutions has existed for the past six years, which situates it as an example of a long-term, successful collaboration between two organizations. In pursuit of understanding the establishment and implementation of this school-museum partnership, data was collected, examined and analyzed. This case study seeks to identify specific …

And Then They Talked Back And Took Over: One Teacher’S Journey Towards Creating A Meaningful Read Aloud Practice, Alix Greenberger

Graduate Student Independent Studies

Read alouds are an important component of a balanced literacy curriculum, namely because of the opportunities they present for students to practice comprehension strategies such as making text to self connections, as well as finessing their speaking and listening skills while other students are voicing those connections. Despite this, read alouds were not occurring within my classroom. For this site based inquiry research, I delved into how I, as the teacher, could establish an effective read aloud practice within a busy classroom. I explored the teacher moves during read alouds, and monitored the students’ responses to gage how they were …

Indigo Was Our Class Pet: An Exploration Of Death In Children’S Literature, Nella Williams

Graduate Student Independent Studies

Death is a complicated and emotionally weighty subject. Therefore, discussing it can be taboo in early childhood classrooms. Although this is meant to protect children, the lack of discussion limits their mental and emotional processing of bereavement and ultimately undermines their understanding of death. After teaching in a Pre-K classroom with a terminally ill reptile, the author was inspired to write a children’s book about the death of a class pet. The text reviews typical developmental milestones for five-year-olds, the target age of the book. Fives are at an age where their frameworks for understanding the world are shifting; therefore, …

Integrating A Farm Study Into A Mixed Age Classroom, Rachel Kanegis

Graduate Student Independent Studies

This paper, Integrating A Farm Study Into A Mixed Age Classroom, explores the impact and benefits of integrating a farm study into a classroom. It reports on the course and the results of how students responded to the farm study over one full school year. In addition, it shows how the integrated farm study could be incorporated into the core academic topics such as reading, writing, math, social studies, and science. In fact, this paper proves how students become more motivated and engaged to learn in the core academic topics through their focus on the farm study. The class that …

“Are Staff Bias’ Affecting The Way Pediatric Patients Develop And Cope Within The Hospital Setting?”, Mary Lauren Upchurch

Graduate Student Independent Studies

Gender stereotypes are pervasive in our culture – ingrained by long-standing biases (both conscious and unconscious) (Higgins, 2018). The way boys and girls begin to understand and mitigate their world are often related to the gender stereotyping that society has constructed. However, stereotypical expectations not only reflect existing differences, but also impact the way boys and girls interpret themselves and are treated by others. This paper will focus on the way gender stereotyping of hospitalized pediatric patients may impact coping, treatment, and overall care. The author has chosen to examine language especially as it relates to gender specific analogies, incentives …

Process & Research Of Dyslexia? A Book On The Demystification Of Dyslexia For Students With Dyslexia, Anna Slavin

Graduate Student Independent Studies

This paper focuses on the ways in which the demystification of dyslexia for diagnosed or pre- diagnosed students alters their ability to self-advocate. It examines effective ways of demystification and, specifically, how literature can be used to directly teach children how to talk about their difference. This review of research highlights positive and negative effects of providing students with learning disability labels. It also notes that the majority of studies on the subject show that providing students with a label for their learning variations positively impacts self-esteem and academic engagement. However, it is noted that a dearth of children’s literature …

From Page To Place: Wordless Picture Books And Field Trips For A 21st Century Curriculum, Margaret Stein

Graduate Student Independent Studies

With the purpose of education being to produce successful world citizens, the educational system must grow with the changing economic and social climate. Operating in a creative and knowledge-based economy, students educated in the 21st Century must be in an environment that fosters creativity, critical thinking, and recognition of complex patterns in order to thrive in the new economic structures. Proposing a curricular sequence using wordless picture books and field trips to develop and strengthen these skills, this paper focuses on the growth of literacy in all forms as the strongest foundation for creating curious and life-long learners. Utilizing the …

The Meal Gap: A Food Activist Curriculum, Kameshia L. Shepherd

Graduate Student Independent Studies

The Meal Gap: A Food Activist Curriculum is a series of fifty-four lessons for fourth grade students that introduces them to the topic of food insecurity. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations initiated the World Food Summit in 1996 to discuss and call attention to the “widespread undernutrition and growing concern about the capacity of agriculture to meet future food needs” (Food and Agriculture Organization, n.d.). The June 2006 Policy Brief of the FAO reaffirmed the 1996 definition of food security, which states that “Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and …

Lucy Takes The Stage: A Story For Children With Anxiety, Rachel Beckman

Graduate Student Independent Studies

Childhood anxiety is explored through the lens of child development as well as children’s literature. The book written for this integrated masters project was created to help engage children around age 5, recognizing that it could be for ages 5-7, in thinking about anxiety. Anxiety disorders in children can take many different forms, but the major distinction between a disorder and normal worries is that it causes stress that disrupts normal functioning. Additionally, read-alouds are a common and beneficial way to introduce children to literature in schools. Young children can learn to read, take another’s perspective, as well as gain …

A Case For The Inclusion Of Graphic Novels In The Classroom, Brittany Rosenberg

Graduate Student Independent Studies

This paper will explore the use of graphic novels in the context of the classroom, ultimately arguing that graphic novels not only deserve a place in elementary through high school classrooms, but are an effective and successful learning tool. The paper is divided into four central arguments utilizing a review of relevant literature to support each section’s argument. It will begin with an examination of the motivation for the paper’s creation, detailing the circumstance unto which the author of this paper decided to write it. The paper will then move into the four central parts. Part one will examine research …

Pizza Bagel Sundays, Kate D'Auria

Graduate Student Independent Studies

Kate D’Auria worked on an independent study where she created her own children’s book. The book is called Pizza Bagel Sundays and was illustrated by Yan Gabriella Peropat. Pizza Bagel Sundays is a memoir about her childhood and how she grew up in a single parent household. Though single parenting is one of the focuses of the book, it does have other themes such as family, love and how we spend time together. Research was done to see what other types of children’s literature is out there and see where the book fit in. Look at the literature that was …

Childhood Anxiety, Julia Post

Graduate Student Independent Studies

The following paper closely examines anxiety in school-aged children, especially those predisposed through environmental and biological factors. While there are many typical worries and fears in children, atypical signs that point to an anxiety disorder include severity and high frequency of worry and avoidance behavior. Anxiety disorders affect roughly a third of children ages six through eleven, and early intervention and cognitive strategies are extremely effective in giving children coping skills for their separation, social, or generalized anxiety. Some of the treatment plans examined in this paper include Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and Narrative Therapy and …

Learning To Teach: Observing And Reflecting, Nancy Nager

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

This video series, “Learning to Teach,” provides a platform for professional development in early childhood education. It introduces viewers to compelling early childhood classroom footage accompanied by facilitated discussions about observations and teaching practices. You will get a hands-on look at how beginning teachers learn to closely observe children and engage in reflective conversations about children, materials, the classroom environment and themselves.

Promoting Shared Decision Making Through Descriptive Inquiry, Rachel Seher, Cecelia Traugh, Alan Cheng

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

This article describes the process through which faculty members at City-As-School, a progressive public high school in New York City, recently began to use descriptive inquiry to more fully actualize one of the school’s core values: a commitment to “democracy as a way of life” (Dewey 1939, 2).

Descriptive Inquiry At Bank Street: Building Intellectual Community While Responding To Accreditation, Jessica Charles

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Over the 2016-17 academic year, Bank Street Graduate School faculty and staff participated in a school-wide Descriptive Inquiry process to examine their programs and pedagogy. As part of the process, faculty met regularly to share their practices and to strengthen their well-established programs in teacher and leader preparation, museum education, and child life. Dean Cecelia Traugh initiated this process, drawing on her extensive experience implementing Descriptive Inquiry in higher education settings, in order to help faculty reflect on their practice, improve program quality, and build organizational coherence.

Towards The Creation Of The Civil Rights Museum Of New York City, Taylor Koczot

Graduate Student Independent Studies

In this study the author explores the many reasons why a museum devoted to the Civil Rights Movement should open in New York City. This work examines and delves into the very early stages and ideas that go into the creation of the museum, which include finding a need and purpose as well as envisioning what the institution has the potential to do and become. Koczot begins with a discussion of her own interests in the subject, including her experiences in the South and as an educator in New York City. The author moves on to discuss the city’s connection …

The Role Of The Principal In School Reform, Michael Fullan

Occasional Paper Series

Fullan examines the principal's role in school improvement and reform. He describes where principals are and what they do and don't do in relation to change. He then talks about the complexity of leadership and offers guidelines for how principals might lead change more effectively.

Introduction: A Principaled Approach, Patricia A. Wasley, Judith Rizzo

Occasional Paper Series

This introduction highlights the collaboration between Bank Street College and the New York City Board of Education who developed an approach to preparing principals that has proved highly effective. Wasley and Rizzo briefly describe the program's history and its evolution, and concludes by analyzing why it has worked so well and what they would do to further strengthen the approach.

The Restaurant Study, Jessica Charles

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Bank Street faculty and staff regularly work in partnership with public schools to support teachers and leaders sustain and strengthen their progressive educational practice. At Midtown West, a public elementary school founded in 1992 as a collaboration between parents in New York City’s District 2 and Bank Street faculty, Peggy McNamara has worked as a coach and thought partner with teachers across every grade.

Over the course of developing and teaching one signature Midtown West curriculum unit called The Restaurant, we followed Peggy and the teachers as they made teaching decisions to engage and educate students through a study of …

About Prepared To Teach, Bank Street College Of Education

All Faculty and Staff Papers and Presentations

Learn more about Prepared To Teach and our work around sustainable funding for teacher preparation.

Small Schools And The Issue Of Race, Linda C. Powell

Occasional Paper Series

Bank Street College of Education, in conjunction with the Consortium on Chicago School Research did a study of small schools in Chicago. This paper examines one element of the findings in depth - the interaction of race and school size. Powell argues that small schools are by their very nature an anti-racist intervention.

Historical Perspectives On Large Schools In America, Robert L. Hampel

Occasional Paper Series

Hampel evaluates the large school versus small school debate from a historical perspective. Until the 1970's, the small school was seen as the problem, not the answer. This essay will look at five beliefs, each firmly held for a long time by most educators.