Teacher Education and Professional Development Commons^™

Session D-2: Reconstructing The West, Jean Kadel

Professional Learning Day

Why is the West left out of the Reconsruction unit? There are good reasons to include it. During the Civil War, the West was organized for statehood. The "Indian Question" became the "Indian Problem." Beginning with the First Ft. Laramie Treaty of 1851 and accelerating after Red Cloud's War in 1868, the "unceded" area of the northern plains previously set aside for traditional tribal life was replaced by new policies of well-meaning but forcible capitulation and assimilation. To facilitate the process, the West was organized into military districts or "departments". Although the US Army did not govern these directly, it …

Session D-1: Speed!, Elizabeth Martinez

Professional Learning Day

Varrrrooooooommmmmm!! This hour long session will be over before you know it as we explore the concept of average speed to investigate the use of inquiry to engage student interest and involve them in scientific practices. Attendees participate in an activity that offers a glimpse into the award-winning IMSA FUSION program, and develop ideas to apply the strategies in their own classrooms. Valid driver’s license required. (Just kidding!)

Session D-4: Teaching Quantum Mechanics, Peter Dong

Professional Learning Day

Quantum mechanics is a part of modern life, playing a major role in chemistry, computing, nanotechnology, cryptography, and even biology. Many students are fascinated by the principles of quantum mechanics - and wave-particle duality is now in the Next Generation Science Standards. This course will present a basic introduction to quantum mechanics, accessible to middle or high school students, that will give students a taste of how strange and wonderful the universe really is (while also meeting the new standard). Teachers will be given slides and materials so they can teach the lesson themselves.

Session F-2: Statistics And Probability For Middle-School Math Teachers: Addressing The Common Core, Karen Togliatti

Professional Learning Day

This presentation will focus on the Statistics and Probability Domain of the Common Core Mathematics Content Standards for grades 6 – 8. Discussion of the language of the standards and how this language translates into learning activities for students will be explored. Session participants will be coached on three inquiry-based lessons utilizing interdisciplinary topics for data collection. Additional take-home lessons will be provided as well at each grade level. Connections to the Math Practice Standards, ELA Standards for Science and Technical Subjects, and Next Generation Science Practice Standards will also be investigated.

Session F-3: Using Problem-Based Learning To Integrate Instruction In The Common Core In Math, Science, And Ela, Kathy Schmidt

Professional Learning Day

Problem-based learning (PBL) engages students in deep understanding through relevant, authentic problems. As students progress through the PBL process, they develop 21st Century knowledge, skills and dispositions in self-directed learning, critical thinking, problem-solving, innovative thinking, and collaboration while also meeting the 8 Mathematical Practices and 7 ELA College and Career Readiness descriptions from the Common Core Standards and the 8 Science and Engineering Practices from the NRC Framework for K-12 Science Education. In this presentation, we will introduce participants to PBL and discuss how the PBL process integrates Common Core Standards and the Science and Engineering Practices in classroom instruction.

Session F-4: Modeling An Earthquake In Your Classroom, Brian Grublesky

Professional Learning Day

Teachers will model earthquakes using both technology and hands-on inquiry activities. Teachers will have a chance to engineer an “earthquake proof” building and use the engineering process to test and redesign their buildings before being tested on a shake table. We will also discuss how these activities connect not only to the Next Generation Science Standards, but the Common Core State Standards as well.

Keynote Address: New Frontiers In History Education, Ann Durkin

Professional Learning Day

Dr. Keating will bring Chicago history to life as she discusses her latest book “Rising up from Indian Country: The Battle of Fort Dearborn and the Birth of Chicago,” which was released last August to coincide with the bicentennial of the Battle of Fort Dearborn. She recounts the Battle of Fort Dearborn while situating it within the context of several wider histories that span the decades between the 1795 Treaty of Greenville, in which Native Americans gave up a square mile at the mouth of the Chicago River, and the 1833 Treaty of Chicago.

Session C-2: The Middle East In Transition: Questions For U.S. Policy, Steven Buenning

Professional Learning Day

Students explore alternatives for U.S. policy in the region through a newly-revised teaching unit (August 2013) developed by the Choices Program at Brown University. Students acquire knowledge and skills while engaging in a role-play involving four policy options.

Session C-3: From Ink Well To Digital: Innovative Technology In The Classroom, Eugene Tesdahl

Professional Learning Day

What do the National Archives of Canada, the Library of Congress, and the Illinois Council on History Education have in common? That’s right. They all offer rich primary documents just an I-pad tap away. Locating on-line primary documents is only the beginning. In “From ink Well to Digital,” Dr. Tesdahl will not only show attendees where to find useful digital resources online but will offer participants innovative activities to get their students using them.

Session B-3: So What More Is There For My Talented Stem Students?, Britta Mckenna

Professional Learning Day

Take a tour through IMSA STEM offerings for your talented students. Learn about the IMSA Kids Institute school year FunShops and summer camps, IMSA FUSION after-school program (grades 4-8), IMSA online offerings and new RISE course, Mentor Matching Engine, CoolHub STEM collaboration platform, and IMSA TALENT STEM entrepreneurship program for middle and high school students.

Session B-2: Build Student Engagement, Mental Math, And Reasoning With "Math Talks", Sendhil Revuluri

Professional Learning Day

"Math talks" are quick routines that you can implement in your classroom within days. They can raise engagement, build efficient, accurate, and flexible mental math strategies, and help students construct arguments and critique reasoning. We will engage in math talks, analyzing how they can be enacted in the classroom and designed for specific goals or respond to specific misconceptions. Participants will learn about math talks that support understanding of number, algebra, and other domains.

Session B-1: Geometry In Art & Architecture, Julie Dowling

Professional Learning Day

Math is all around us! Discover how to implement geometry lessons using art and architecture that the students see around them every day.

Session B-5: Planetary Science And The Ngss, Eric Hawker

Professional Learning Day

The goal of this session is to use what we understand about other planets and moons in our Solar System in order to get a better understanding of the Earth.

Session B-1: "The Bloody Massacre" -- Whodunnit?, Spiro Bolos, Anne Twadell

Professional Learning Day

Although this activity/project was conceived (originally) for a Special Education section of US History, it can be adapted to any level of students, including honors. Using materials from a primary source reader, I will present a pair of activities which evaluate both textual and visual literacy by having students interpret a single historical event: the Boston “Massacre”. Students are assigned roles based on eyewitness court testimony from the trial of Captain Thomas Preston. After student oral presentations, the same students contribute to and help create a single shared visual presentation, utilizing quotes from the oral presentation.

Session A-3: Personalized Learning With Ementoring, Carl Heine, Jacki Naughton

Professional Learning Day

Discover effective ways to bring together high school students and mentors for personalized distance learning and research in STEM with teacher supervision. This session explores how schools, higher education and businesses use the Mentor Matching Engine, a free resource developed by IMSA, the Illinois Science and Technology Coalition and Northwestern University. Finding mentors for your students has never been easier.

Session A-4: Project-Based Methods For Teaching Ngss Engineering Standards In Your Physics Or Engineering Course, Mark Carlson, Peter Clancy

Professional Learning Day

The NGSS Engineering standards require that students work in groups to analyze, break-down, and model real-world problems in order to fully understand the challenges that these problems pose. In this session, we present a few ideas for short-term engineering/technology-based problems that can be completed in the classroom within about 2 weeks. The projects are linked to concepts of physics such as forces, momentum and torque.

Session C-2: Getting Students To Ask Their Own Questions, Susan Bisinger

Professional Learning Day

The skill of asking their own questions can lead to greater student engagement and ownership of the learning process. Students formulate questions that will guide them to engage in scientific and mathematical practices as they classify, modify, evaluate, and prioritize what they want to learn. The Question Formulation Technique (QFT) guides you through strategies for incorporating student questioning into your lessons, leading students to think more critically and independently. Participants are encouraged to attend the session with an upcoming project, unit or activity in mind. You'll leave with a plan of action!

Session A-2: Cycloids!, Ruth Dover

Professional Learning Day

This session includes a hands-on exploration to see graphs of different types of cycloids. Participants will use trigonometry to create the parametric equations for the graphs. This topic lends itself nicely to projects for pre-calculus students. Software will be shown to help see more examples and patterns.

Session A-2: Totalitarianism: The Reality Versus The Myth, Lee Eysturlid

Professional Learning Day

This session will give attendees an understanding of the nature of dictatorship and propaganda and how to teach it. Emphasis will be placed on creating immediate ways that this topic can be brought alive to the student and made visually and intellectually clear. PPT materials will make alignment with the CCSS easy.

Keynote Address: It's 10 Am - Do You Know Where Your Students Are?, Sendhil Revuluri

Professional Learning Day

When we attend to our students' learning–not just our teaching–we can become significantly more effective in helping them learn. This is a simple idea but not an easy one, and it may take some work to figure out how to do it. Let's explore some ways to illuminate students' current thinking (accurate or not), promote meaningful student discourse (helping them do more of the work), and collaborate with colleagues (thinking together). Benefit from "lessons learned" and discover some worthwhile resources that can help you make the shift and may even help to manage new standards and upcoming assessments.

Call For Submissions

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

No abstract provided.

Of Thresholds And Springboards: Teaching Them, Teaching Each Other, Erin Williams, Frank Farmer

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

In the fall of 2010, the authors were given the task of co-teaching the practicum for new graduate teaching assistants at the University of Kansas. One of the authors was, at the time, a doctoral student in rhetoric and composition. The other author was a senior faculty member in the same field. While such pairings are not uncommon, they are rarely addressed in the vast literature on the writing practicum.

In this article—written as a dialogue focusing on the themes of locations and tensions—the authors conclude that such teaching arrangements as theirs offered valuable insights into student resistance, and encouraged …

Writers Who Care: Advocacy Blogging As Teachers - Professors - Parents, Leah A. Zuidema, Sarah Hochstetler, Mark Letcher, Kristen Hawley Turner

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Because we believe strongly that writers develop through authentic writing instruction - and because we see policies that drive practices away from these goals - we have decided to speak up and to speak out through advocacy blogging. Teachers, Profs, Parents: Writers Who Care (writerswhocare.wordpress.com) was born from our frustration with current mandates that limit teachers and students to reductive writing. We know what good writing instruction looks like, and we want to share that knowledge with an audience beyond academia. In doing so, we hope to redefine what it means to be an academic writer and to encourage others …

Writing And Learning Online: Graduate Students’ Perceptions Of Their Development As Writers And Teachers Of Writing, Kelly N. Tracy, Roya Q. Scales, Nancy Luke

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This study examined the effect of an online graduate course in elementary and middle grades writing pedagogy on pre- and in-service teachers’ perceptions of themselves as writers and as teachers of writing. Eight graduate students enrolled in a summer online writing pedagogy course at a mid-sized regional university in the rural mountains of the southeastern United States participated in the study. Researchers collected qualitative data including reflections and blogs at the beginning and end of the 4.5-week course. Findings fell into four major themes in the data: (1)Past experience shapes perceptions of writing; (2)Perceptions shape writing instruction; (3)Perceptions are malleable; …

Where Writing Happens: Elevating Student Writing And Developing Voice Through Digital Storytelling, Jane M. Saunders

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

No abstract provided.

A Late Adopter's Chance To Take An Esl Program Multimodal, Erin K. Laverick

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article outlines an ESL program's journey in revising its curriculum to include multimodal compositions as a means to help non-native speakers of English improve their language proficiency by offering them greater means to communicate with wide audiences. The article also discusses means to provide faculty with the proper rhetorical and technology training, so they could use multimodalities in their own teaching.

Writing For The Audience That Fires The Imagination: Implications For Teaching Writing, Denise K. Ives, Cara Crandall

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Great authors embody their audiences through the language of their texts. Good readers learn to recognize and respond to the cues such writers embed in their texts about the kind of audience they are expected to be. They also learn from other authors how to fictionalize in their minds audiences like those they have experience being. In this article through an analysis of two texts, we showcase how two middle school writers through their texts, embody their audiences and cue readers to the roles they are expected to play. We then trace the rhetorical moves made by the writers to …

“This Erstwhile Unreadable Text”: Deep Time, Multidisciplinarity And First-Year Writing Faculty Mentoring And Support, Denise K. Comer

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

Despite the otherwise rich multidisciplinary terrain of writing studies, the strategies most often used with first-year writing teacher teaching mentoring and support tend to remain discordantly anchored to a comparatively narrow version of writing pedagogy. I argue in this article that the geologic concept of deep time offers a way of infusing a multidisciplinary dimension into first-year writing faculty teaching mentoring and support that will enrich the ways faculty and students think, write, and talk about first-year writing. This article discusses deep-time pedagogy, providing specific strategies for infusing multidisciplinary dimensions into first-year writing faculty teaching mentoring and support. Such a …

Re-Thinking Personal Narrative In The Pedagogy Of Writing Teacher Preparation, Mary M. Juzwik, Anne Whitney, April Baker Bell, Amanda Smith

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

How can teacher educators mobilize contemporary understandings of personal narrative -- as socially and dialogically shaped in the context of culture and as instrumental to sociocultural processes of self-authoring -- in the teaching of narrative writing and, more specifically, in the work of teaching teachers to teach narrative writing? Rarely do teachers teach strategies that might result in good narratives. Rarely do narrative texts written in school (or any other kinds of texts written in school, for that matter) actually go anywhere beyond the teacher, thus failing to offer students experience in negotiating meanings with readers, working out the versions …

First-Year Composition And The Common Core: Educating Teachers Of Writing Across The High School-College Continuum, Justin A. Young

Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education

This article will discuss the implications of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) on the education of writing instructors at the college level. The article suggests that, with the adoption of the CCSS, the most effective models of the training of writing teachers in higher education will now include collaboration with educators at the K-12 level. A model for this kind of collaborative work is described, based on an effort the author is currently leading as the Director of English Composition at my institution. A brief overview of the CCSS, and the shifts in the teaching and learning of English …