Archives: December, 2009

We’ve just published a series of seven high school chemistry lesson plans, collectively titled “Why Does Chemistry Matter in My Life?” The lessons were written by high school chemistry teacher Lisa Hibler as part of the Kenan Fellows Program.

The program awards fellowships to stellar public school teachers in the areas of science, technology, math, and engineering (STEM). For two years, the selected Kenan Fellows partner works with scientists and university faculty to create innovative curricula for North Carolina teachers to use in their classrooms. In partnership with the Kenan Fellows program, LEARN NC will publish a number of these excellent lesson plans.

The first of these, “Why Does Chemistry Matter in My Life,” addresses questions about the relevance of chemistry in everyday life using labs, calculations, writing exercises, and a variety of other activities. Lessons in this series include:

• How Do Chemists Measure?
• What Element Would You Be?
• Reaction Stoichiometry: How Can We Make Chalk?
• What is Heat? — Heat vs. Temperature
• Units of Heat: How Much Energy is That Anyway?
• How Much Heat Can a Phase Change Produce?
• Alternative Energy: Where is the Chemistry?

We’re hard at work publishing more Kenan Fellows lessons, so keep checking back for more great STEM content!

We’ve published part nine of our digital textbook for North Carolina history, covering the period of the Great Depression and World War II. U.S. history teachers take note — this module contains a great many resources that are not just specific to North Carolina! We’ve also been able to include a tremendous range of sources in this module, including oral histories and other personal accounts (in print, audio, and video), documentary film, newsreels, speeches, music, contemporary magazine articles, letters, maps, photographs, and even a military training manual, all with commentary and reading/discussion questions to make them ready for your classroom.

December 2009 director’s message:

As the year end approaches and the New Year looms, it seems a good time to reflect on our accomplishments. It’s been an amazing year here at LEARN NC!

This month we’ll complete our digital textbook for grade-8 social studies, with nine modules published and the final two under review.  North Carolina: A Digital History is the first digital textbook developed specifically to align with North Carolina standards and made freely available on the open Web.  Like the previously published chapters, the recently posted Early 20^th Century module features primary sources in a variety of formats, including letters dating from the 1920s in which citizens lobby the state government to build and maintain a system of roads, and oral histories capturing the experiences of men and women who were part of the early textile industries in North Carolina.  We’ve piloted this material in classrooms across the state, and teachers have responded positively.  In the words of Steven Fall, who teaches in Whiteville, NC, North Carolina: A Digital History “. . . is very specific . . . If we are studying the regulator movement and there is a whole section on the regulator movement. It’s not like someone put in a paragraph on the regulator movement because they had to.”

True to our commitment to free and open content, we continue to provide standards-aligned lesson plans featuring innovative instructional strategies.  In partnership with the UNC Chapel Hill School of Social Work, for example, we completed the publication of CareerStart lessons for grade 6, grade 7, and grade 8, career-infused middle school lessons for English language arts, science, social studies and math.  We’ve also continued developing and delivering online critical-language courses in Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, and, soon, Japanese, all offered through North Carolina Virtual Public School.  These courses are accompanied by LEARN NC’s open-source, multimedia-rich textbooks  and allow students to connect with conversation coaches via free Web conferencing tools .

Our newest sharable professional development course is Modern Math Teaching, a three-week course developed and taught by Dan Meyer for teachers in grades 7-12.  This course, which was recently piloted in Currituck County, focuses on transforming everyday digital media into teaching artifacts, creating classrooms with a culture of curiosity, where nothing is off limits to analysis.  In Modern Math Teaching, everything is a potential learning experience, from prices at the grocery store to mile markers on our state’s highways.  School systems may download and teach this course, or register as participants with LEARN NC.

The date “2010″ sounds so sci-fi to me, yet when you look at the work we’re doing, futuristic images really seem to fit! Whether you are presently considering the classroom applications for Google Wave or Tweeting your appreciation for the latest contributions from your virtual Personal Learning Network, you are engaged in a learning environment that teachers 10 years ago could not imagine.   If your New Year’s resolution is to keep up with what’s going on, keep that promise to yourself by connecting with LEARN NC and Instructify every day!

Sincerely,

Melissa Thibault
Executive Director

mthibault at learnnc.org

I’ve been eager to learn more about the new North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards currently being piloted around our state. Upon first glance, I realized that these standards along with the evaluation rubric they support, represent a significant change in how teachers will be evaluated. More importantly, they represent the knowledge, skills, and dispositions truly needed by the teaching profession if we hope to prepare 21^st century learners.

In case you didn’t know, the standards were developed in alignment with the North Carolina State Board of Education’s mission and goals, informed by other evaluation instruments, including the Teachers’ Working Conditions Survey, the School Executive and Superintendent Standards, a variety of evaluation instruments, Program Approval for Schools of Education, professional development, and 21^st century skills and knowledge standards. They represent the intersection of the standards for teacher preparation, professional development, and student achievement. (See the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards Commission’s vision statement).

We recently aligned LEARN NC’s professional development course collection with the new standards to provide professional development and other education resources to North Carolina teachers during the transition to these new standards.  You can now access the standards and aligned professional development courses from the main menu of the LEARN NC website.  A link in the navigation bar leads you to the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards and Aligned Resources.

Why new standards?

Teaching and learning are fluid processes. Both must reflect the dynamic nature of information and changes in the needs of learners. The new standards reflect new thinking about the role of teachers in the teaching/learning process.

Like the superseded Teacher Performance Appraisal Instrument (TPAI), the new standards have been incorporated into an evaluation rubric and organized into standard “elements” or criteria that clarify the intent of the standards. The rating scale for this rubric identifies teacher progress along the following continuum: developing, proficient, accomplished, and distinguished.

How can LEARN NC help?

This alignment process involved a thorough review of all 51 LEARN NC professional development courses. Some were found to support more than one standard. For example, all include activities that promote teacher reflection (Standard V: Teachers reflect on their practice); 96% include strategies and background information that align with Standard IV: Teachers facilitate learning for their students; and more than half address Standard III: Teachers know the content they teach. The collection also includes 17 courses that align with Standard II: Teachers establish a respectful environment for a diverse population of students, and nine that support Standard I: Teachers demonstrate leadership.

Our staff continues to identify opportunities for new course offerings that will further address teachers’ needs relative to the new standards.

The alignment of professional development courses to these standards is only a start.  We are in the process of aligning our best practices articles to these standards, and will be finished by summer 2010.

Course collection review data summary

The following table identifies the percentage of LEARN NC courses aligned to the standards at the standard level:

Course indicator alignment

Key topics and concepts that constitute the North Carolina Professional Teaching Standards were identified as indicators for describing the width and breadth of the course collection. A course was included in the number count when it demonstrably addressed one or more topics through the development of knowledge, skills, or dispositions. Of the 33 key topics and concepts identified, the following indicators represent those most often addressed by the 51 teacher professional development courses in this collection:

Subject area and topic area alignment

The current collection of courses supports the work of teachers in certain subject areas, providing an opportunity for content-specific professional development in the four major subject area disciplines. The collection also addresses important topics in education that span grade levels and subject areas. The following subject and topics reflect areas of concentration in the current course catalog:

We’re excited to introduce this new resource to support you as you become acquainted with these standards.  We hope that you will find it useful and will share your thoughts for other ways we can support you during the transition to a new way of thinking about your work.  We look forward to your comments here!

Bobby Hobgood
bhobgood@learnnc.org Read the rest of this entry »

Er, our digital textbook has, anyway. We’ve just published North Carolina in the Early Twentieth Century, with 87 pages of primary sources and background readings for students. Major topics include World War I, women’s suffrage, Jim Crow, changes in technology and transportation, the “Roaring Twenties,” and an in-depth look at the Loray Mills strike in Gastonia, 1929. Audio and video is included. And as always, primary sources are accompanied by historical commentary and guiding questions for students, so they’re ready to use in your classroom.

We’ve just published an article about John Hall, a language arts and social studies teacher at ArtSpace Charter School in Buncombe county and the 2009-10 AT&T Charter School’s Teacher of the Year. The article “Staging history: Charter School Teacher of the Year John Hall brings lessons to life” is the third in a series spotlighting teachers who employ inventive instructional techniques.

This piece explores Mr. Hall’s use of curriculum integration, a classroom strategy that emphasizes activity-based learning projects, combines disparate curriculum elements in the service of broad educational goals, and illuminates relationships between and among complex intellectual concepts.

He favors this innovative approach, he explains, because, “I believe students gain a more comprehensive understanding of a subject when it’s presented in context and when they contribute something of themselves to their own learning.”

Our goal for the series is to allow outstanding teachers to present, in their own words, successful instructional practices for the benefit of not only other teachers but also policy-makers, school administrators, and education researchers.

The North Carolina Museum of History is offering five online courses in 2010, geared especially for educators. Continuing education credits (up to forty contact hours), including reading and technology CEUs can be earned. Participants must have internet access and may access the workshops anytime during the program dates. The cost per workshop is $40, $35 for Associates. Each program is limited to thirty participants, so register early!

For more information, check out their webpage or e-mail tricia.l.blakistone@ncdcr.gov

Workshops

Civil Rights in North Carolina
Explore the history of civil rights in the state from 1830 to the present. An interactive time line, a Web quest, and tips on teaching with primary sources enhance the in-depth text and historic images.
Dates: January 1 to February 15, 2010

North Carolina Geography
Explore the Tar Heel state’s geography throughout its history. Background material and interactive activities will provide you with resources to integrate North Carolina geography into your curriculum.
Dates: February 15 to April 1, 2010

Antebellum North Carolina NEW!
What was life like for North Carolinians before the Civil War? Explore this question through in-depth articles, artifacts, and visual aids designed to enhance your knowledge of the political, social, and economic developments in antebellum North Carolina.
Dates: April 1 to May 15, 2010

Stories from the Civil War
From the battlefield to the home front, this program will provide you with the resources to incorporate the history of the Civil War in North Carolina into your curriculum. Probe Civil War resources and develop applications for the classroom.
Dates: May 15 to July 1, 2010

Women in North Carolina History
Discover how women have influenced North Carolina’s history. Learn how to integrate women’s history into your curriculum using stories, primary documents, the Internet, and other resources.
Dates: July 1 to August 15, 2010

The A+ Fit Schools initiative will award one-year grants of $7,500 to fitness-minded schools in North Carolina. This initiative from the NC Health & Wellness Trust Fund can benefit schools by increasing physical activity and healthy eating and consequently improve academic performance and staff productivity.

Grant-winning schools will demonstrate need, proven capacity, and opportunity for positive change in addressing physical activity and/or healthy eating in North Carolina schools.

A+ Fit Schools designation

In addition to grants, schools can earn the A+ Fit Schools designation. All North Carolina public schools, K-12, are eligible to apply for the designation.  Schools chosen for the A+ Fit School designation will receive:

• A banner for the entrance to their school
• A $1,000 discretionary stipend for the individual school
• Use of the A+ Fit School designation logo for all communications

Apply

There is no fee to apply for the A+ Fit School designation or grant.  Download the forms from www.aplusfitschoolsnc.org and submit by 5:00 p.m. on February 24th, 2010.