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Expert Corner: Differentiating with Student Exploration Sheets Educator of the Month: Elise Gordon Lesson Material Updates: Polling Prepare for End-of-Year Testing with Gizmos ABC’s and 123’s of Federal Funding Gizmos and Reflex are CODiE Finalists
Expert Corner:
Laura Chervenak has been with ExploreLearning since 2010 as the VP of Professional Development. She has taught high school science, and is the founder and former director of GOAL Digital Academy. Laura is National Board Certified in Science/Adolescence and Young Adulthood, with a B.A. in Zoology and an M.S. in Anthropology. When conducting whole group lessons with students, you can use Gizmo Student Exploration Sheets to guide the lesson path and your questioning with students. But you may wonder if you should print out those sheets for your students, or if you should do something else? As always, you will want to look to your lesson objectives to make that decision. If you are using the whole group Gizmo lesson to engage your students and get them to begin thinking about a concept, it may not be necessary for them to have a document to write on. On the other hand, if you are using the Gizmo later in your lesson to build understanding, the support of a document to guide them might be very beneficial. Keep in mind that you don’t need to use the entire Student Exploration Sheet “as-is.” You can pick just one activity and modify the Word document to meet your needs. You can also create entirely new documents by using the snapshot feature in each Gizmo to embed pictures, graphs, and data into your documents. A quick question around a picture can be a great formative assessment to be used before, during or after a lesson in your sequence. For other ideas for student documents that can support whole-class instruction, read the rest of the article on our blog. We would love to hear how you differentiate your instruction through Lesson Material customization. Email us at GizmosPD@explorelearning.com. And if you've created interesting lessons around a Gizmo, please help out your colleagues by sharing your lesson materials on the Gizmo.
Educator of the Month: Elise Gordon Elise Gordon is the Math Resource Teacher at a Title I school in Palm Beach County School District in Florida. She has her Master’s degree in Elementary Education from Palm Beach Atlantic University and has been teaching for the past ten years. Prior to teaching, she was a physical therapist for 20 years, and has her BS from the University of Connecticut in Physical Therapy. Elise Gordon runs her school’s math lab where students in grades 2-5 visit once a week for an extra hour of math focusing on building, drawing and writing about mathematics. Many of her lessons incorporate Gizmos. Elise feels that the rich visual support and varied levels of activities provide students with “just the right challenge.” Her school uses Gizmos as part of a Title I initiative to help support the needs of economically disadvantaged students. Elise shares, “Many of our students have parents or guardians who work two jobs, and they have limited involvement with the school. Also, students often don’t have access to computers outside of school.” In her role, she is able to help providing these students with the extra support they need to help close the achievement gap. For more on how Elise incorporates Gizmos in her computer lab using whole class instruction and collaborative groups, read the extended article on our blog.
Lesson Material Updates: Polling In February, we shared that several of the Lesson Materials for our statistics Gizmos were updated. We are back at it and have added three more. Incorporate these and other statistics Gizmos into an integrated lesson, combining social studies and mathematics to teach students about polling and how using samples of a population can help predict elections.
Prepare for End-of-Year Testing with Gizmos Looking for ways to help students prepare for upcoming state tests and end-of-course exams? Try creating a personalized review with Gizmos. Research suggests that a computer-based individualized study schedule can help students retain significantly more material to prepare for a test given at the end of a semester and a month later. Find more great tips on our blog.
ABC’s and 123’s of Federal Funding Recent transitions towards digital content have put schools and districts in a crunch to find funding to support the change. In addition, complicated funding guidelines can be challenging for schools when deciding how and when they can spend these funds. If you participate in budget planning, learn how federal funding sources can supplement your programs budget for content and professional development.
Gizmos and Reflex are CODiE Finalists Reflex and Gizmos are finalists for the Software & Information Industry Association CODiE Award! During the past 28 years, the prestigious SIIA CODiE Awards have recognized software and information companies for achieving excellence, and ExploreLearning has been represented among CODiE finalists for 9 straight years. Gizmos is a finalist for Best Mathematics Instructional Solution and Reflex is a finalist for Best Learning Game.
Call for Nominations We were honored to receive Reader’s Choice Awards from eSchoolnews and District Administration in 2013. If you love Reflex and Gizmos, please consider nominating us for an award in 2014!
Stay in Touch If you want to comment on any of the information in this newsletter, be sociable and post your insights on the Facebook pages for Gizmos and Reflex. And as always, if you have a question or comment about Gizmos or Reflex, don't hesitate to contact our Customer Support team using the support form for either Gizmos or Reflex. We would love to hear from you. For information on bringing Gizmos and Reflex to schools in your area, contact your ExploreLearning Account Representative:
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