FYI
Table of ContentsStart off the school year right with powerful resources for teaching English language arts. Visit NCTE's special back to school collection that features ideas for all grade levels and even a booklist. ORC has a wide variety of peer-reviewed lessons aligned to Ohio Standards. Here are a few sites to explore for starters.
For kindergarten teachers, the Starting Kindergarten: Ideas for Teachers mini-collection includes a variety of helpful beginning-of-the-year resources.
If you teach primary-level students, consider getting families engaged in their children's learning from the beginning of the school year by using Launching Family Message Journals. You can also help younger students see themselves as readers through environmental print. Check out From Stop Signs to the Golden Arches: Environmental Print. Do you teach the intermediate grades? Here's a great resource for getting students excited about words as they generate their own vocabulary lists and keep a journal. Try My World of Words: Building Vocabulary Lists.
To build classroom community, get to know your students and help them learn about each other with these autobiography projects. For students in grades 6, 7, and 8, see Alphabiography Project: Totally You. For grades 9-10, try It's My Life Multimodal Autobiography Project. For quick interest inventories, check out Who Are You? and Reading Survey. For icebreakers and more ideas for learning all about your new students, see "How Do Teachers Manage a Differentiated Classroom?" (Chapter 4 in Differentiated Instruction in the English Classroom).
Are you looking for an engaging way to deal with novel study for your high school students? Try using Novel News: Broadcast Coverage of Character, Conflict, Resolution, and Setting.
Are your juniors or seniors going to read The Grapes of Wrath or Macbeth this year? The Grapes of Wrath: Scrapbooks and Artifacts: Ethnographic Field Studies in Fiction takes advantage of the American Memory collections for conducting research and gathering artifacts. As a culminating activity, students create a museum exhibition that shows a meaningful juxtaposition of artifacts, oral histories, and text that supports their identified themes. Many online resources and teacher support materials are available at the website. Also see Creating Dramatic Dialogues from The Grapes of Wrath.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth: Fear and the Motives of Evil gives students the online tools to follow and analyze the shifts that occur in Macbeth’s mind throughout the play. Also see Interpreting Shakespeare's Macbeth.
Help your adolescent learners learn to navigate all their new textbooks with these great content resources from Jim Burke. Textbook Evaluation presents an outline approach for introducing textbooks to students.
Access: Textbook Feature Analysis offers a two-page activity that guides students through the unique features of their own textbook. Find more ideas in AdLIT’s Questions from the Classroom feature: How can I help students become familiar with their textbook at the beginning of the year?
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Looking for new and exciting teaching ideas to begin the school year? Try some of these ORC user’s favorites. This diverse list comprises the 25 most frequently viewed science resources over the past 3 years. It is a fun list that includes all grade levels and scientific disciplines. The resources have been loosely grouped by the type of question that might be answered as a result of putting the resource into action.
What is it?
Although the resources that made the user’s favorites are life and earth science resources, classification is fundamental to all scientific disciplines.
How does it work?
Answering the question requires making observations, either actual or virtual, collecting data, and drawing conclusions. Again, while this question applies to everything from the lunar cycle to biomes, the resources that made the user’s favorites are life and earth science.
What happens when . . .?
This has to be one of the all time favorite science questions! What happens when I change the concentration of the solution my Elodea leaves are in? What happens when I change the height of the first hill on my roller coaster? Questions of this nature require students to manipulate variables, observe the outcomes, collect data, and draw conclusions. This time the resources among the favorites include life, earth, and physical science.
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Teachers and students will both enjoy the challenge of the Stella problems, known as Stella's Stunners! Some classic, some new, all different, and all with solutions provided, the Stella problems can spice up mathematics classes or can as easily provide the substance for problem-solving contests or math club programs.
“Vocabulary,” a new 3–5 bookshelf, features five books you can use to teach about homophones, word parts, and vocabulary in general. You will find before-, during-, and after-reading suggestions, highlights and insights about each book, connections to Ohio’s standards, and related trade books and ORC resources.
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Science and literacy instruction in the elementary grades is the focus of a new series of web seminars for the 2010–2011 school year. The series is free, and no registration is required.
Seminars are held from 3:30-4:30 ET on one Thursday a month during the school year. Teachers are invited to log on at http://tinyurl.com/lcparticipant, learn from the knowledgeable seminar presenters, and share their ideas with other teachers from across the country. Here is the schedule so you can plan early to join in:
·August 26, 2010: Informational Text and Multigenre Text Sets.
Why it’s important to use informational text in the primary and elementary grades and how the creation and use of multigenre text sets can enhance instruction. Presenter: Jessica Fries-Gaither
·September 9, 2010: Inquiry, Literacy, and the Learning Cycle.
An exploration of the many faces of inquiry-based instruction and ways that a learning-cycle framework can help integrate inquiry and reading, writing, and discussion. Presenters: Jessica Fries-Gaither and Terry Shiverdecker
·October 14, 2010: Beaks and Biomes: Integrating Science and Literacy.
A look at a life science unit that uses scientific inquiry, literacy instruction, and a multigenre text set to examine adaptations, migration, and ecosystems. A unit framework can be directly incorporated into participants’ classrooms. Presenters: Jessica Fries-Gaither and Terry Shiverdecker
·November 11, 2010: Research Projects, Revisited.
Strategies for making students’ reports fresh and meaningful. Presenter: Jessica Fries-Gaither
·December 9, 2010: Citizen Science and Inquiry.
How teachers and students can get involved with bird-related citizen-science projects and authentic outdoor inquiry. Presenter: Jennifer Fee
·January 13, 2011: Reader's Theater and Informational Text.
Using reader's theater to improve comprehension of informational text and help students learn science concepts. Presenters: Jessica Fries-Gaither and Nicole Luthy
·February 10, 2011: Reading Comprehension 2.0.
Using digital resources and free web 2.0 tools to improve reading comprehension, vocabulary development, and other related literacy skills. Presenter: Jessica Fries-Gaither
·March 10, 2011: Visual Literacy and Nonlinguistic Representations.
Helping students create and interpret diagrams, maps, and charts. Presenters: Jessica Fries-Gaither and Terry Shiverdecker
·April 14, 2011: Vocabulary Development.
Best practices and creative approaches in vocabulary development, with an emphasis on science vocabulary. Presenter: TBA
About the Presenters:
Jessica Fries-Gaither is an education resource specialist in the College of Education and Human Ecology, Ohio State University. She serves as project director for the NSF-funded Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears.
Terry Shiverdecker is a science content specialist with ORC.
Nicole Luthy is the Assistant Director of ORC.
Jennifer Fee is a leader of the Bird Sleuth Project at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
The series is sponsored by Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, an NSF-funded project that provides professional development and instructional resources to elementary teachers. Information about all the presentations and the recordings of all past seminars are available at http://wiki.nsdl.org/index.php/BeyondPenguins/Seminars.
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Be among the first to see the new Columbus Museum of Art Center for Creativity by attending Creativity in Your Life on Thursday, October 14, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the museum. Participate in discussions and workshops to develop your own creativity and be inspired by creative leaders revealing the essential role of creativity. Speakers include:
· Keynote speaker Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union
· Liz Lessner, CEO of the Betty’s Family of Restaurants
· Pete Scantland, President of Orange Barrel Media
· Artie Isaac, Cofounder of Young Isaac and SpeakerSite
The cost is $45 and includes lunch and admission to all programming. Registration begins September 1 and ends October 6. To register, call 614.629.5947.
On Friday, October 15, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., the Columbus College of Art & Design and Columbus Museum of Art will present a Creative Educator Professional Development Workshop at the museum. This interactive workshop will engage teachers in the vital role of creativity in 21st-century learning and provide opportunities to explore strategies that will help you become a creative-skills advocate at your school.
· Keynote Speaker—George Szekely
The cost is $30 and includes registration, materials, and lunch. Online registration begins September 1; go to www.ccad.edu/ce.
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Everyone is welcome to join the conversation at the first Columbus Science Pub, to be held at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, September 7, at Hampton's on King.
The speaker will be Tara C. Smith, assistant professor of epidemiology in the College of Public Health at the University of Iowa, deputy director of the University of Iowa Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, and founder of Iowa Citizens for Science. The title of her talk is "Science Denial and the Internet."
The Columbus Science Pubs will be held one Tuesday of every month. Learn more on the Columbus Science Pub Facebook page.
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U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced that nine states, along with the District of Columbia, will be awarded Race to the Top funds. Ohio will receive $400 million.
The Ohio education reform initiatives that will be addressed include:
- Developing and implementing common standards and high-quality assessments
- Using data to improve instruction
- Improving the effectiveness of teacher and principal preparation programs and providing effective support to teachers and principals
- Turning around the lowest-achieving schools
[Adapted from “Ohio’s Race to the Top Strategy,” Round 2 Finalist Presentation to USDoE Review Panel]
According to Governor Strickland’s website, “A total of 538 public school districts and community schools signed memoranda of understanding to participate in Ohio's Race to the Top efforts. For comments by the governor and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Deborah Delisle, see “Ohio Wins $400 Million in Race to the Top Funding.”
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It is exciting to stand in your backyard and watch the space station streak across the sky! Bank on that excitement to captivate students at all grade levels and across scientific disciplines. To make things easy, NASA has published a time schedule of sightings, coinciding with the first weeks of school (from August 26 to September 8), for many cities in Ohio. One sighting for Columbus is as early as 7 in the evening. If you use the NASA Skywatch applet, you can enter your zip code and discover when the space station and other human-made satellites will be visible from your backyard throughout the year.
You can incorporate a space station sighting into your instruction in a multitude of ways. Share the dates and times the space station will be visible and then:
- Have a short conversation about how exciting seeing the space station can be. Be sure to take this opportunity to let students know that science provides lots of exciting opportunities.
- Use a space station sighting as a springboard for students to generate questions that would lead to standards-based units of study. Initially the students’ questions will be about how the space station was built, how crew members survive on the space station, etc. With some guidance, they will start asking questions about how the space station stays in orbit rather than falling back to earth or where the energy comes from to operate the space station.
- Discuss how the space station illustrates the reciprocal relationship between science and technology. What did we have to understand about how the natural world works before we could build and use a space station? What new scientific findings are now possible due to space station technologies?
- Use this opportunity to talk about the collaborative nature of science, how science is funded, what talents and skills are necessary to participate in science careers, who does science, and other nature of science topics.
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ThinkTank 2010: Integrated Learning through the Arts
Thursday, September 23–Thursday, December 2, 2010, from 4:30 to 6:48 p.m.
This master’s level graduate course is offered through a partnership between the Wexner Center and OSU College of Education's School of Teaching and Learning. Contact the College of Education to learn how to register.
Teacher Open House
Free admission but RSVP requested
Thursday, September 30, 2010, from 5 to 8 p.m., Performance Space
After a talk by the very well known and respected educator, author, and researcher Terry Barrett, professor emeritus of art education at Ohio State, you'll enjoy free refreshments and tours of the Mark Bradford exhibition.
COTA Day Workshop: Graphic Novels and Comics in the Classroom
Friday, October 15, from 9 a.m. to noon, Mershon Stage
Learn about the variety of novel and cartoon genres that you can connect to your classes. Work with artist Julian Lee to experiment at making your own comic piece and leave equipped to lead your students in creating work of their own. One lucky participant will win 30 copies of a graphic novel for his or her school.
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Please stay tuned for more Model Curriculum teacher team meetings that will be scheduled between Sept. 18 and Oct. 1. This summer, more than 1,000 teachers have been participating in similar meetings that will conclude this week. Positive feedback from teachers who have attended a meeting indicates they are finding it helpful to learn about the new content standards as well as strategies and resources that will support instruction both now and when the new academic content standards are fully implemented in 2014.
The fall meetings are being planned for teachers who were unable to attend a summer meeting and for summer participants who would like to attend a session in another content area or grade band. The three-hour fall meetings will be held on weekday evenings and Saturdays. Each of Ohio's 16 regions will have up to 12 meetings organized by three levels (elementary, middle, and high school) in each of the four content areas (mathematics, English language arts, science, and social studies). You may attend more than one session if your schedule allows. Lead content experts will facilitate the meetings. Each participant will receive a certificate for 3 contact hours of professional development for submission to his or her local professional development committee.
The Model Curriculum meetings offer teachers opportunities for sharing strategies and resources with their peers. This information from Ohio educators is enriching the work that is before us, so please encourage your colleagues to attend an upcoming meeting. The standards revision and model curriculum work will significantly influence teaching and learning in our state. Watch the main model curriculum Web page for a meeting schedule and instructions for registering through STARS. This information also will be announced soon through ODE newsletters such as Ides of ODE and EdConnection.
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On Saturday, October 2, 2010, 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., the Literacy Connection will host Christian Long, educator, school planner, and passionate advocate for innovative learning communities, in a program designed for K-6 educators. Participants are invited to explore the potential of designing strategic spaces for elementary learners with an eye on digital literacy.
The program will be held at Glacier Ridge Elementary in Dublin, and the cost is $50. Mail the registration form with your payment of $50 to Peggy Oxley, 298 Brevoort Road, Columbus, OH 43214. There will be no refunds. If you have any questions, call Peggy at 614-882-2710 (school) or 614-267-6413 (home).
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The 4th Annual Special Education Leadership Conference will be held at the Greater Columbus Convention Center on Monday and Tuesday, September 20 and 21, 2010. At the conference, be sure to visit Nancy Brannon at the REC booth. The cost to register is $100. More information about the conference and registration is available online.
The Ohio Language Arts Supervisor Network has set the meeting dates for the 2010–2011 school year. The dates are Sept. 30, Dec. 9, Feb. 17, and May 19.
All meetings will be held at the Ohio Resource Center from 10 a.m. until 1 p.m. For directions to ORC, go to the website at http://ohiorc.org/about/contact.
If you have supervisory or similar responsibilities in the area of English language arts and would like to receive meeting notices and other information, please contact Carol Dodson at cdodson@ohiorc.org.
Additional information is available on the ORC Community Blog at http://ohiorc.org/community/blogs/ela_super/.
Focusing on a specific event or topic, ORC·ON e-pubs are brief and to the point. In this ORC·ON, we spotlight excellent science resources and ideas you can use in your classroom to investigate the science of oil spills. Just click here and then select the grade level version you want to see.
In the newest Let’s Learn project, preschool children investigate birds and their habitats near their northwestern Ohio early learning center. Over the nearly six-month period, the children engaged in building nests and birdhouses. They explored bird books, "wrote" or copied printed words (such as bird and nest) for their drawings, kept their studio journals, and expressed themselves through dramatic play and song. Come see the Bird Nest Project and share their ornithological adventures.
Inclusive Children’s Stories are featured in the newest REC Bookshelf. In these books, children with disabilities can see themselves in the illustrations and storylines as “one of the gang.” If you are preparing to have an inclusive classroom of young children next year, the Inclusive Children’s Stories bookshelf will help you choose books to add to your classroom library.
The message of our latest ORC-On is straightforward—do everything you can to encourage students to read during the summer! Divided into four grade levels, the e-pub offers numerous tips and resources that summer school teachers and families can use to promote reading.
WOSU, in collaboration with ORC, has recently published "Ice Cores: Unlocking Past Climates." This resource provides a key to understanding what we know and how we know about the earth’s climate with a set of five video learning modules and companion curricular resources. The lessons begin by clarifying the difference between weather and climate; they then proceed to give us a closer look at glaciers and the records they hold of climatic events over extraordinarily long periods of time and show how scientists collect and study glacial ice cores to trace climate history. Students are drawn into hands-on, minds-on investigations in each learning module. This resource is presently available at http://wosu.org/ice-cores/.
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How many times over the years have students said to you (or you've said to yourself), "I want to read another book just like the one I just finished. What should I read?" Well, we just discovered the site The Book Seer from Brenda Power's "The Big Fresh Newsletter" that answers that question. All you need to do is plug in the book title and author, and at least one return list of books—sometimes more—pops up. [Please be aware that the first (and sometimes only) list is recommended by the British Amazon site, and in no way are we trying to promote any business.]
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Nineteen outstanding educators participated in the 3-day ORC Ambassador training program on June 15-17, but for the first time, we are able to provide training for both ORC and Thinkfinity. All 19 new ambassadors are fully prepared to provide professional development in the use of ORC and Thinkfinity resources.
ORC now has 85 ambassadors who can provide training for both organizations and another 87 ambassadors who have not yet taken their Thinkfinity training.
To request an ambassador or to apply for the training, go to the ORC Ambassador page at http://www.ohiorc.org/ambassador.
ORC Contact: Carol Dodson
Academic content standards are available at the the following links:
ORC continues to keep educators updated on the latest developments in Ohio's academic standards revision process through our specially developed website, Revising Ohio Standards.
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Ohio Council of Teachers of Mathematics Conference (OCTM)
October 14-15, 2010 Knight Center, Akron
Ohio Council of the International Reading Association
October 22-23, 2010 Kent State University, Kent
eTech Ohio 2011 Ohio Educational Technology
Jan. 31-Feb.2, 2011 Greater Columbus Convention Center, Columbus
Science Education Council of Ohio Conference (SECO)
February 10-12 Knight Center, Akron
Ohio Council of Teachers of English Language Arts (OCTELA)
March 4-5, 2011 Doubletree Hotel, Worthington
Ohio Early Care and Education Conference
April 28-30, May 1, 2011 Greater Columbus Convention Center, Columbus
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Facebook
Become a fan now at Facebook/ORC to receive instant notifications of ORC’s latest events, share information, and make professional connections.
ORC Contact: John Croyle
Twitter
Follow ORC on Twitter to keep up with ORC specialists and news. We created a Twitter page for each content area -- mathematics, science, and English language arts -- and a page for Early Childhood. Become a follower of the pages you're interested in or a follower of all the ORC pages. Use the following links to go to the Twitter pages:
ORC Mathematics Twitter Page
ORC Science Twitter Page
ORC English Language Arts Twitter Page
Early Childhood Twitter Page
YouTube
The Ohio Resource Center has its own ORC YouTube Channel featuring ORC produced professional development videos. The videos provide classroom teachers, curriculum specialists, and other education leaders with engaging and stimulating conversation about supporting student success in the classroom, as well as with the OGT and OAT; improving instructional practice; and modeling professional discussion.
Mobile Website
ORC now offers on-the-go access with our new mobile website. You’ll find the most current information and staff-selected resources along with a link to our regular site. Save this URL (http://m.ohiorc.org) to your favorites and start enjoying the convenience of our mobile website today.
ORC Contact: John Croyle
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The Ohio Resource Center is proud to announce its collaboration with E-Tech Ohio and Apple, Inc. by providing access to the ORC-produced learning and professional development webcast and podcast collection through iTunes U.
iTunes U, an area of the iTunes Store that provides free education content, makes it easy for preK–12 classroom teachers and higher education faculty to access amazing educational material for free, at anytime and anywhere. ORC’s first installment on iTunes U includes:
- Science Instructional Strategies, providing science educators with resources and information to help prepare students for science assessment and to help students become scientifically literate citizens
- Reading and Writing Informational Text, supporting leaders in English language arts education with instructional strategies for student classroom success
- New-Teacher Survival Guide, recommending approaches that will help teachers set up and maintain a science classroom by focusing on topics pertinent to both new and experienced science teachers
To locate ORC webcasts, go to Ohio on iTunes U. Under subject areas, select professional development for a listing of titles. New iTunes users can download an iTunes app at the website.
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After completing their training, ORC ambassadors are eager to share their knowledge of ORC in a variety of ways, including videos. Here are three of their creations:
Becky Petrokubi narrated a video overview of the ORC website and projects. The video can be used to provide a brief overview of ORC for colleagues and administrators. It's also useful as a tour for the individual viewer. Located in the document library under "Multimedia Presentations," the video is easy to access and view.
Meagen Howe developed a short video for introducing ORC to teachers or for learning more about ORC. Watch ORC in Plain English three-minute video that shows what ORC can do for you.
Melinda Gregor created an ORC trailer to promote interest in the website. Melinda used the free video-maker Animoto.
If you are interested in becoming an ORC Ambassador or finding an ORC Ambassador for a presentation, go to the ambassador page to learn more.
ORC Contact: Carol Dodson
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Have you joined ORC? Click here for a simple registration form. By registering, you can choose to receive our weekly newsletter ORC Highlights by email. Registered users also receive an ORC account which enables them to create their own collections of ORC resources. Visit our document library for directions for creating an ORC collection.
The ORC MATHEMATICS Review Board will meet:
- October 2, 2010
- November 19, 2010
For additional Math Review Board meeting details, contact Mike Mikusa (mmikusa@kent.edu) or Gale Martin (gmartin@ohiorc.org).
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The ORC SCIENCE Review Board will meet:
For additional Science Review Board meeting details, contact Ralph Martin (martin@ohio.edu) or Gale Martin (gmartin@ohiorc.org).
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The ORC READING Review Board will meet:
For additional Reading Review Board meeting details, contact Evangeline Newton (enewton@uakron.edu) or Gale Martin (gmartin@ohiorc.org).
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