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Before I Fall Official Trailer | In Theaters March 3rd

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What if you had only one day to change absolutely everything? Before I Fall in theaters March 3rd! Get tickets now! http://www.beforeifalltix.com/ Follow @BeforeIFallFilm for all film updates! What if you had only one day to change absolutely everything? Samantha Kingston has it all: the perfect friends, the perfect guy, and a seemingly perfect future.

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The benefits and importance of Socratic seminars are widely recognized, but little has been written on how to make them happen successfully in the classroom. By offering real-world examples and straightforward answers to frequent questions, Matt Copeland has created a coaching guide for both the teacher new to Socratic seminars and the experienced teacher seeking to optimize the benefits of this powerful strategy. Socratic Circles also shows teachers who are familiar with literature circles the many ways in which these two practices complement and extend each other.

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The benefits and importance of Socratic seminars are widely recognized, but little has been written on how to make them happen successfully in the classroom. By offering real-world examples and straightforward answers to frequent questions, Matt Copeland has created a coaching guide for both the teacher new to Socratic seminars and the experienced teacher seeking to optimize the benefits of this powerful strategy.

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Barbara Moss, PhD, is Professor of Literacy Education in the School of Teacher Education at San Diego State University. She has taught English and language arts in elementary, middle, and high school settings and has worked as a reading coach. Dr. Moss's research focuses on the teaching of informational texts at the elementary and secondary levels. She regularly presents at local, state, national, and international conferences and has published numerous journal articles, columns, book chapters, and books. Dr. Moss has served as the Young Adult Literature column editor for Voices in the Middle, a publication of the National Council of Teachers of English.

Virginia Loh-Hagan, EdD, is a full-time Lecturer in the School of Teacher Education at San Diego State University, where she is in charge of two teaching credential programs. She is also a curriculum designer, educational consultant, and former K-8 teacher. The author of several academic publications and more than 70 children's books, Dr. Loh-Hagan serves on several children's book award committees and is cover editor and columnist for The California Reader, a peer-reviewed journal of the California Reading Association. She is a frequent presenter at state and national conferences.

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40 Strategies for Guiding Readers through Informational Texts

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Gaining the skills to critically read a wide variety of informational texts is more important than ever for today's K-12 students. This carefully crafted book offers 40 standards-based instructional activities that teachers can immediately put to use in the classroom.

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In many classrooms today, students are asked to take in knowledge and information and answer assessment questions on it later. This is normal practice. Yet, how often - early on - do we ask students to formulate their own questions to target the how and why of subjects in the classroom? While teaching how to ask questions appears to be an obvious learning technique, it's one that could use more attention.

Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions, which was published this September by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana, articulates a Question Formulation Technique (QFT) to promote a classroom full of dialogue and a lifetime of learning. The book shifts the makeup of the classroom to flip the questions to the students to help them better explore their world.

Make Just One Change makes two key arguments:

"All students should learn how to formulate their own questions," and

"All teachers can easily teach this skill as a part of their regular practice" (1).

Rothstein and Santana take us through stories of educators who realized after running an exercise with their students on the principles of question formulation that they had not developed the skill earlier on. In one story, a group of ninth graders struggled to formulate questions and "found it taxing" (3). This points to the need for more educators to implement a formal method of teaching how to ask questions.

Learning to ask questions is vital to learning and success across every field of life, be it education, business, health care, personal life or more. Leaders of educational institutions say that in order to go out into the world, students need to know how to ask effective questions.

"The primary skills should be analytical skills of interpretation and inquiry. In other words, to know how to frame a question," said Leon Bostein, the president of Bard College (12).

One of the first principles of the book is that there are no "wrong questions." Yet, the QFT has six core components in its step-by-step process to teach "divergent thinking, convergent thinking, and metacognition" (15). These components include:

Question focus

Process

Closed- and open-ended questions

Priority selection

Next step plan, and

Reflection (4).

The book walks educators through the instructions that they should give students while covering the art and science of asking questions. The authors warn that while the concept appears simple, it's actually a process that does not come naturally to students. They state that it's an acquired skill that fundamentally changes the classroom.

Make Just One Change is a book that formulates a key idea to the success of lifelong learning in education and careers. An increased understanding of how to ask questions helps students to fill in the gaps of their knowledge, explore countless angles and become more versed in a wide variety of subjects. In fact, the book proves this.

In several case studies, the authors point out that the QFT improves students comprehension, confidence and independence in learning (137). What's more, the method improves learning engagement and thought processes (138). The book also suggests that the QFT is effective in working with at-risk students (143).

If there's one skill that you want to instill in students' minds for the success of their futures, it's learning how to learn. Asking effective questions is the first place to start.

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Review: Make Just One Change - Getting Smart by Getting Smart Staff - lifelong learning

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In many classrooms today, students are asked to take in knowledge and information and answer assessment questions on it later. This is normal practice. Yet, how often - early on - do we ask students to formulate their own questions to target the how and why of subjects in the classroom?

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March is TEEN TECH MONTH @ PGHS/KAMS Library

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March is TEEN TECH MONTH @ PGHS/KAMS Library

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Remember using a rotary phone, an Apple Macintosh Plus computer, an Alphasmart or even a manual typewriter? We've come a long way in how we use technology.  This month we are showcasing our “Museum of Technology” as a visual display of how far we have come in the technology tools we use for everyday life and for school.  This is a great reminder about how important technology literacy is for students to be successful in school and prepare for college & beyond.

Stop by and visit our "Museum of Technology" at PGHS/KAMS Library lobby.  Thank you to all teachers and staff who brought in items to display in our visual museum.

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The Book is Always Better.... Celebrating Books Made into Movies

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The Book is Always Better.... Celebrating Books Made into Movies

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Is the book better than the movie? Stop by the library to check-out our REaD box display which highlights current books made into movies. Two current books made into movies are YA fiction Before I Fall  by Lauren Oliver coming out in theaters March 3rd and upper elementary/middle school read Wonder by R.J. Palacio in theaters April 7th. (The latter title a MUST read!)

In collaboration with this month’s book-movie theme, the library will be displaying Tunnel Books created by students in Ms. McTizic’s Art classes.  Her students recreated book covers for several books that have been turned into movies. March's Library Challenge requires students to match a few of the Tunnel Book covers & book clues with the correct book title.  Correct responses will earn students an entry in our raffle for free movie tickets & posters!  Encourage your students to stop by and try the Library Challenge during the month of March.

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If You Can Only Read 1 Book This Year...a MUST Read Book for Teachers

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If You Can Only Read 1 Book This Year...a MUST Read Book for Teachers

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Make Just One Change, written by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana, makes the case for the importance of teaching students how to ask their own questions. It also provides a clear step-by-step process for teaching sophisticated thinking skills to all learners. Its simplicity belies the significance of its approach for teaching students to actually think for themselves. No small accomplishment!
Teaching kids to ask the right type of questions is also an important part of the research process.  When you have students formulate the questions THEY want to answer you put the student in the driver seat for their own learning.  Rothstein and Santana present the "Question Formulation Technique, that teaches you how to teach students to produce and ask better questions as part of their learning process.

Book Review:

“This is the first time I have written any source of one of my teaching methods to THANK them for providing me with such a powerful book to unlock the learning process…I have been teaching since 1977. I have studied ‘techniques’ and pedagogy. In all that time, I have never found anything that was so profoundly influential in changing how students learn.”  – Junior College Professor

Read about this amazing book at:  http://rightquestion.org/make-just-one-change/
(1-copy available at the PGHS/KAMS Library to checkout.)

Click below to watch the 5 minute video discussing "Designing an Effective Question Focus" discussed in the book.

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To effectively implement the Question Formulation Technique (as described in the book "Make Just One Change: Teach Students to Ask Their Own Questions"), a teacher needs to learn how to design the Question Focus. This video provides some initial thinking related to designing an effective Question Focus.

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Have you Tried InstaGrok? Great PRE-search tool for Keyword Searching

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Have you Tried InstaGrok? Great PRE-search tool for Keyword Searching

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Check out this free website (and video below) to help students and you search KEYWORDS. Instead of Google, try using instaGrok to PRE-search your topic; it provides results in an interactive concept map.  InstaGrok  is an innovative educational search engine that gives you visual results based on the topic you're searching. Great for visual learners and helps direct students to key terms, weblinks, images, videos, plus allows students to write notes about their research topic.

InstaGrok's founder Kirill Kireyev, explains the goal of instaGrok..."it's not about finding 'the' answer to a search query; rather it’s about, 'seeing the topic' and learning more about what you’re researching – concepts, definitions, and connections...Learning is an exploratory process...students move through the Web should encourage that exploration. It shouldn’t just be about clicking on the “first blue link.” (qtd. in Watters)  Take at look at this cool search tool at  http://www.instagrok.com/

Click below to watch the 3 minute video intro to InstaGrok.

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Watt Starter Kit Solar Panel Installation Guide

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instaGrok is an interactive tool for researching & learning about any topic. It also helps students master research and information literacy skills. http://www.instagrok.com