Pencils and Scantrons are a thing of the past! No more rote memorization and long hours spent cramming for the test! Common Core assessments are computer-based adaptive tests that require students to use critical thinking skills to answer a variety of questions from the simple (read: traditional) to the complex (read: these are intense!). One…
In November 2010, the U.S. Department of Education released its National Education Technology Plan.  It is called Transforming American Education: Learning Powered by Technology.  It outlines five goals and 24 recommendations for states, districts, the federal government, and other stakeholders. According to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, “the plan’s development was led by the…
Vocabulary development is a critical aspect of teaching, especially in classes or schools with high populations of English Learners. Differentiating between the types of vocabulary can help teachers decide how much effort to put into teaching particular vocabulary words, as well as which strategies will be most effective when teaching the words. In today’s post,…
In spring 2014, the New York State Education Department released a newly developed Blueprint for English Language Learner Success. It is a groundbreaking statement that sets high expectations for English Language Learners and recommends a new Seal of Biliteracy on students’ diplomas. In this way, the state recognizes the economic and cultural value of being…
DI vs. di vs. EDI Direct Instruction (DI) Direct Instruction was developed by Dr. Siegfried “Zig” Engelmann during the 1960s. It is a scripted program where teachers are given cues to follow throughout a lesson. Student interaction is largely choral responses following a teacher signal. direct instruction (di) Dr. Barak Rosenshine used the term direct…
Each state that has adopted Common Core State Standards will select an assessment consortium to assess how children are progressing in school. The two options most widely chosen at this point are: Smarter Balanced and PARCC. Each assessment consortium has provided practice test questions and today we will review one of these questions and discuss…
Headed to Costco on a Saturday afternoon, you pull your car up to a gas pump, slide your credit card through the reader, select the appropriate grade of fuel and begin pumping. Then you head into the big box store, gather the items on your list, and line them up on a conveyor belt for…
Learning Objectives Guides are digital books that help teachers shift from just reading state standards to quickly creating lesson plans that focus on the required skills and content. Guides are available for Common Core, Next Generation Science, Literacy, and more for K-12 teachers. View All Guides Frequently at DataWORKS, we are asked what it takes…
A Primer on How Students (and All Humans) Learn One of the struggles of teaching is presenting often complex material to students in a manner that they can comprehend. Through a basic understanding of how students (and all humans) learn, we, as teachers, can introduce content to our students in a way that will…
The Next Generation Science Standards Welcome to our weekly Ask DataWORKS blog where we focus on questions from our readers. We recently started this blog, so we don’t have many questions from you yet! What we do have is a list of questions that we receive regularly as we provide training and materials…