Experiential education is a philosophy of education that describes the process that occurs between a teacher and student that infuses direct experience with the learning environment and content. The term is not interchangeable with experiential learning; however experiential learning is a sub-field and operates under the methodologies of experiential education. The Association for Experiential Education regards experiential education as "a philosophy that informs many methodologies in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people's capacity to contribute to their communities". Experiential education is the term for the philosophy and educational progressivism is the movement which it informed.
Donald Morison Murray was an American journalist and English professor. He wrote for many journals, authored several books on the art of writing and teaching, and served as writing coach for several national newspapers. After writing multiple editorials about changes in American military policy for the Boston Herald, he won the 1954 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing. For 20 years, he wrote the Boston Globe's "Over 60" column, eventually renamed "Now And Then". He taught at the University of New Hampshire for 26 years.
Project-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered pedagogy that involves a dynamic classroom approach in which it is believed that students acquire a deeper knowledge through active exploration of real-world challenges and problems. Students learn about a subject by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to a complex question, challenge, or problem. It is a style of active learning and inquiry-based learning. PBL contrasts with paper-based, rote memorization, or teacher-led instruction that presents established facts or portrays a smooth path to knowledge by instead posing questions, problems or scenarios.
A lesson plan is a teacher's detailed description of the course of instruction or "learning trajectory" for a lesson. A daily lesson plan is developed by a teacher to guide class learning. Details will vary depending on the preference of the teacher, subject being covered, and the needs of the students. There may be requirements mandated by the school system regarding the plan. A lesson plan is the teacher's guide for running a particular lesson, and it includes the goal, how the goal will be reached and a way of measuring how well the goal was reached.
Guided reading is 'small-group reading instruction designed to provide differentiated teaching that supports students in developing reading proficiency'. The small group model allows students to be taught in a way that is intended to be more focused on their specific needs, accelerating their progress.
Personalized learning, individualized instruction, personal learning environment and direct instruction all refer to efforts to tailor education to meet the different needs of students.
A literature circle is equivalent for young people of an adult book club, but with greater structure, expectation and rigor. The aim is to encourage thoughtful discussion and a love of reading in young people. The intent of literature circles is "to allow students to practice and develop the skills and strategies of good readers".
The UCLA Language Materials Project (LMP) maintained a web resource about teaching materials for some 150 languages that are less commonly taught in the United States. The project, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, was created in 1992. It is part of the UCLA Center for World Languages. Funding was terminated in 2014 and the Language Materials Project website deactivated.
Shared reading is an instructional approach in which the teacher explicitly models the strategies and skills of proficient readers.
George Hillocks Jr. was an emeritus professor in the Department of Education, with a joint appointment in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago. He received in 2011 the James R. Squire Award of the National Council of Teachers of English for having "a transforming influence and [making] a lasting intellectual contribution to the profession." He also received many other major awards. His teaching career included the preparation of English teachers in the Master of Arts in Teaching program, and the mentoring of Ph.D. students in the doctoral program, at the University of Chicago. After retiring from the University he continued to present seminars and workshops for writing teachers across the US. His primary research interests centered on the teaching of writing, literature, and language in middle and high school English classes, and on large-scale writing assessment. When not teaching and writing, he was an accomplished bagpipe player, performing frequently for Chicago audiences and in international competitions.
Cognitively Guided Instruction is "a professional development program based on an integrated program of research on (a) the development of students' mathematical thinking; (b) instruction that influences that development; (c) teachers' knowledge and beliefs that influence their instructional practice; and (d) the way that teachers' knowledge, beliefs, and practices are influenced by their understanding of students' mathematical thinking". CGI is an approach to teaching mathematics rather than a curriculum program. At the core of this approach is the practice of listening to children's mathematical thinking and using it as a basis for instruction. Research based frameworks of children's thinking in the domains of addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, base-ten concepts, multidigit operations, algebra, geometry and fractions provide guidance to teachers about listening to their students. Case studies of teachers using CGI have shown the most accomplished teachers use a variety of practices to extend children's mathematical thinking. It's a tenet of CGI that there is no one way to implement the approach and that teachers' professional judgment is central to making decisions about how to use information about children's thinking.
Balanced literacy is a theory of teaching reading and writing that arose in the 1990s and has a variety of interpretations. For some, balanced literacy strikes a balance between whole language and phonics and puts an end to the so called reading wars. Others say balanced literacy in practice usually means the whole language approach to reading.
Larry R. Johannessen (1947–2009) was an American educator, academic, and author.
Multigenre research paper is an alternative to the traditional five paragraph essay commonly used in secondary education. It emphasizes the use of multiple genres to represent a given or chosen research topic. A genre is a specific type of art including literature, speech, drawings, music, etc. With this type of project, students are expected to research their given topic and then present the information they gathered using a variety of genres, with an emphasis on writing and composition. The genres created to represent the topic can be put together through the creation of a theme and bracketed by an introduction and conclusion. This creates a unified research paper that avoids the structure of a traditional five paragraph essay.
Teaching writing in the United States has progressed through several approaches during the history of education in the United States. In schools, writing serves not only to record and convey thoughts, but to refine and synthesize thinking. As school effectiveness researcher Doug Reeves observes, "[t]he association between writing and performance in other academic disciplines [is] striking, and gets to the heart of the curriculum choices teachers must make."
Differentiated instruction and assessment, also known as differentiated learning or, in education, simply, differentiation, is a framework or philosophy for effective teaching that involves providing all students within their diverse classroom community of learners a range of different avenues for understanding new information in terms of: acquiring content; processing, constructing, or making sense of ideas; and developing teaching materials and assessment measures so that all students within a classroom can learn effectively, regardless of differences in their ability. Students vary in culture, socioeconomic status, language, gender, motivation, ability/disability, learning styles, personal interests and more, and teachers must be aware of these varieties as they plan in accordance with the curricula. By considering varied learning needs, teachers can develop personalized instruction so that all children in the classroom can learn effectively. Differentiated classrooms have also been described as ones that respond to student variety in readiness levels, interests, and learning profiles. It is a classroom that includes and allows all students to be successful. To do this, a teacher sets different expectations for task completion for students, specifically based upon their individual needs.
A flipped classroom is an instructional strategy and a type of blended learning, which aims to increase student engagement and learning by having students complete readings at their home and work on live problem-solving during class time.
An elementary school is a primary school which is the main point of delivery of primary education in the United States, for children between the ages of 5–11 and coming between pre-kindergarten and secondary education.
Teachers College Reading and Writing Project was founded and is directed by Lucy Calkins, The Robinson Professor of Children's Literature at Teachers College, Columbia University. Its mission is to help young people become avid and skilled readers, writers, and inquirers through research, curriculum development, and in-school professional development. TCRWP develops methods and tools for the teaching of reading and writing through research, curriculum development published through Heinemann, and professional development with teachers and school leaders. TCRWP supports the Reading Workshop and Writers Workshop approaches through its Units of Study curriculum. The project involves thousands of schools and teachers in New York and around the country in an ongoing, multi-faceted in-service community of practitioners engaged in the application and continual refinement of approaches to helping children become effective writers and readers.
Sondra Perl is a Professor Emerita of English at Lehman College and director of the Ph.D. in Composition and Rhetoric at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the founder and former director of the New York City Writing Project. She writes about the composing process as well as pedagogical approaches to implementing composition theories into writing practices in the classroom.
