1B - Best Practices Resources

Greetings internet friends. The purpose of this web page is have a list of best practices resources which will be available for future reference. My name is Mike Taylor. I am a government teacher at a public charter school in Northern California. My educational philosophy is similar to my life philosophy: focus on what you can control, do your best to not worry about what is outside your control. With that in mind, what can we control? As educators we can control our teaching practices. As we continue to study and become more efficient through applying best teaching practices we will have better control of the class and each students level of academic success.

Best teaching practices are the practices that lead to the best teaching experience. The learning process is visible to both the teacher and the student. The teacher is a self-aware of their performance as a teacher, and the student is self-aware of how well they are learning. There is lots of discussion about the task, and there is peer involvement in the task. The learning intentions are clear. The success criteria is obvious. This all combines to create a visible learning experience.

To start this list of resources I have included 5 curricular resources here:

1 - Finding Dulcinea

http://www.findingdulcinea.com/guides/Education/High-School-Government.html

This website features an extensive list of activities I can incorporate into my class. I plan to use these articles in class while students lead themselves in short, small group self-guided study sessions in class. I like to present information first in a short lecture, then have students review the same information presented in a different way is small group self-guided study sessions. Then the groups present what they learned to the class. I plan to use some of the articles from this website in this fashion.

2 - My government Pinterest board

https://pin.it/o2wb3byypaxt6x

I archive info-graphics to use in my class here. Info-graphics are a great visualization tool that simplifies complicated concepts. I like to introduce a topic in a short lecture, lead students through activities that review the concept, and also give them graphic organizers and info-graphics so that they can review the same content several different ways in order to understand the material and also apply it to long term memory.

3 - My government Youtube playlist

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIhbY-_McG2w82KxhwCcjkD8eNk72-JtD

I will continue to save short videos to use in class to introduce and/or review course content in new and interesting ways. Combining these videos with the info-graphics and the articles that they will read will allow me to present the same information in several different ways and help my students to understand and remember the course content.

4. Progressive History Teacher Blog

http://progressivehistoryteacher.blogspot.com/p/sdaie-strategies.html

I found a fellow teacher's blog where she lists best teaching practices activities that I could incorporate into my teaching myself. I plan to borrow several of her activities, starting with using a character matrix when my students study different modern political leaders.

5. Civics Educator

http://civiceducator.org/how-to-teach-government-in-a-fun-way/

Civics Educator has a great list of interactive activities I can use in class. These activities focus on group work and self-led activities so that students will learn course content in fun, interesting ways. Coupling these activities with the activities listed above I will be able to use several best teaching practices in my class.