8. India Connection
High School world literature teacher Carol Amberg of Gouverneur
and BOCES staff developer of Franklin-Essex BOCES, Judy Deyo spent a week
at our constructivist conference working with three teachers from India
designing an e-mail exchange in which students from each country
will teach students in the other country what they need to learn for their
standardized test. The purpose goes beyond the obvious cultural
awareness - the purpose is to demonstrate that teachers can use performance
tasks to prepare students for Regents and other standardized
tests. After the first week of classes (September, 2000) project coordinator
Don Mesibov received this e-mail from Ms. Amberg:
"I have been in e-mail contact with Neerja (teacher in India). Her students and mine responded very positively to the prospect of an international exchange. We're looking forward to it, too. Anybody who says learner - centered strategies don't work in senior high schools obviously hasn't tried them! After only 3 days of school, my seniors have written in journals, have an awareness the 8 intelligences, have worked with partners, read each other's work, used graphic organizers, and written two pieces which will be candidates for their eventual portfolios."
9. Parent Involvement
Our Parent Advisory Committee will expand and will develop a
workshop for classroom teachers and parents built around the
booklet they have written on the role of parents in project
based learning. Their efforts in the past two years convinced project planners
that a greater effort was needed to encourage schools to include parents
on their PGP and pilot teams. The result is that several parents
were at the summer conference training for PGP teachers and pilots, as
members of their schoolčs team, and other parents are being solicited.
10. Students with Disabilities.
The Special Education Advisory Committee, consisting of six special
education teachers from project districts, will continue
to expand its efforts to educate Project teachers on strategies for
addressing the needs of students with disabilities. Its booklet of strategies
(a work in progress) is on our Web Page and the committee will design a
workshop that trains classroom and special education teachers to use the
strategies in the booklet. Syracuse University's Department of Education
will increase its role in support of this aspect of the project through
e-mail communications, supplying of resources and conducting workshops,
and consulting with project teachers.
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