Best PracticeToday’s Standards for teaching & learning in America’s

Schoolsby

Steven Zelmelman, Harvey Daniels, & Arthur Hyde

****Plus the 2 Minute WikiPresented by Elizabeth Gillespie

Maryvale Elementary School

May 2009

Best Practices in Math:Connecting Math to Everyday Life: Chocolate Algebra

If you have $10 to spend on $2 Hershey Bars and $1 Tootsie Rolls, how many ways can you spend your money without receiving change?

• Take a moment to solve this problem.• Share your solutions.• Explain why this can be considered algebra.• What other math concepts can be explored and taught with this

problem?

Best Practices in Reading/Writing: Cinderella Stories

Read and share a variety of Cinderella stories including:• One of the traditional versions of Cinderella• Cinder-Elly• Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters• Princess Furball• The Korean Cinderella• DinorellaRead these poems:• In Search of Cinderella (Shel Silverstein)• Glass Slipper (Judith Viorst)

Creating Cinderella Stories Through Integrating Reading & Writing

• Develop fluency, vocabulary, and writing skills through reading the many versions of Cinderella.

• Have a duel of poetry reading between the girls and the boys using the poems. Silverstein’s poem ends with, “I’ve started hating feet.” while Viorst’s poem ends “He’s not nearly as attractive as he seemed the other night. So I think I’ll just pretend that this glass slipper feels too tight”.

• Compare and contrast the different “Cinderella” stories.• Brainstorm different types of shoes.• Brainstorm different forms of transportation.• Use “Think-quick!” an activity to generate descriptive adjectives (write a

noun on the board with a blank line before it and then ask, “Think quick! What kind of cake?”

• Have students work on opening paragraphs for their own “Cinderella Stories” .

• Read and discuss these paragraphs with partners before continuing the writing process.

Best Practices in Social Studies:History Comes Home: Family Stories Across the

Curriculum

This is an activity that can be adjusted to any grade level. At Maryvale special events like Grandparent’s Day, show how important family is. As teachers, we know how important it is to recognize all of the different type of family groups that we have at Maryvale.

Quick Ideas for Building Family Stories across the Curriculum

• This project gives us many ways to integrate reading and writing with social studies.

• Use both fiction and non fiction to introduce this this project.

• Students can engage in many language rich activities such as interviewing family and community members.

• Students can create a variety of graphic organizers including KWL charts, timelines, and charts.

• Students can compile data on their family or community to help them write a biographical essay.

• As a class, students can generate a rubric for what the essay should include.

• Then they can share the essay within their class and publish it on a class website or bulletin board.

Things to think about….• “Another phenomenon under great debate is the endlessly

expanding focus on standardized testing and preparation for it. It’s a vicious cycle, because more time on effective reading strategies, rather than test practice, especially helps those kids who do poorly on the tests-the very tests meant to ensure that the teachers are doing their job. The result?

• “We’ve certainly not become a nation of avid readers, as any newspaper circulation manager will tell you, nor are we fluent writers or eager mathematicians. Kids in well-off schools still learn to read tolerably well, partly because children generally will learn what society and families expect of them, barring major disruptions in their lives.

• “The toll exacted on urban children has been far more visible. The kids who need the most effective support suffer the most when they don’t get it.”

• p. 303-304 (Best Practices)

Build Life Long Learners

• Find and use best practices to engage and instruct our children!

• Challenge ourselves and our students each and every day!

• Model what you expect!

• Remember: the children of today are the leaders of tomorrow!

Integrating Technology

As we move forward in a time of great uncertainty, we need to find inexpensive ways to integrate and utilize technology.

Make your own WIKI to safely bypass the school system freeze.

Once you have your WIKI up and running, it is easy for students to access assignments and websites that YOU want them to use.

Use podcasting, photostories, and other interactive media to motivate your students to read and write.

www.growingreaders.wikispaces.com

The TWO minute guide to setting up a wiki.

• Go to www.wikispaces.com• Sign up and create your login & password.• At the next page, go to the top and click on “Create a new wiki”.• Click on “Protected”, only members you select can edit.• You may need to be creative to make a name for your wiki.• Click K-12 Educational.• Click “create”.• When your name is accepted, a new page pops up called “Getting started with your

wiki”.• You will also get an email with similar information and links.• You can easily edit your wiki by clicking edit.• When you add to your wiki, you need to remember to click save.• This is an excellent way to set up a class bookmarks and assignments by subject or

by weeks.• When your students come to the lab….have a card with the wiki address and they

can immediately go to what you want them to do.• You can find these directions on www.growingreaders.wikispaces.com.