Upcoming Workshop at SERC!

Check out this upcoming workshop at SERC on November 13, 2013 from 9 am to 3 pm: 

Tapping the Talent of Your Cyber Kids:  Using Technology to Differentiate Instruction, by Maria Carrillo-Huerta and Matthew Dugan.  

Audience:  Grades 6-12:  General and Special Education Teachers, and ESL, and Bilingual Educators.

For more information see page 68 on the PD booklet at the SERC website at www.ctserc.org.

Fee for this workshop is $90.00 per person, SPECIAL OFFER:  Registration fee is just $65 if payment is received by October 2nd to register follow this link:  http://14-06-050-eorg.eventbrite.com/

Two Free Webinars For This Week

Standing On Common Ground: Building Cultural and Academic Literacy   

This event takes place on Thursday, Sept. 26, 2013, 2 to 3 p.m. ET.

Content provided by:     

Being literate in the information age increases our understanding of cultural and linguistic differences. Developing our students' academic literacy skills and building their cultural knowledge are critical keys to these understandings. Pearson's iLit is a comprehensive literacy solution designed to produce two or more years of reading growth in a single year. Based on a proven instructional model that has produced results for students in districts across the country for more than a decade, iLit has been carefully crafted to meet the rigors of the Common Core State Standards and to prepare students for success. In this webinar, Sharroky Hollie, executive director for the Center for Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning, will discuss strategies for engaging students in developing the types of literacy needed for future success, and how iLit provides an effective way of implementing these strategies.

Presenter:

Sharroky Hollie, executive director, Center for Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning; and assistant professor for teacher education, California State University

Moderator:

John Guild, senior product and marketing manager, Pearson iLit

Education Week is serving only as the host for this presentation. The content was created by the sponsor. The opinions expressed in this webinar are those of the sponsor and do not reflect the opinion of or constitute an endorsement by Editorial Projects in Education or any of its publications.

Registration is required to attend this event. Please register now.

Using Video Games to Assess Students' Noncognitive Skills

This event takes place on Friday, Sept. 27, 2013, 2 to 3 p.m. ET.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison believe new video games like Crystals of Kaydor and Tenacity can measure student learning in real time while literally rewiring kids' brains to help them pay better attention and improve their behavior. It's digital media meets big data meets state-of-the art brain research. But can a role-playing video game about aliens change the way U.S. schools think about testing students and boost the noncognitive skills that are critical to success later in life? Join our discussion led by a pair of prominent academic scholars as they discuss the implications of games designed to develop and assess grit, tenacity, and persistence.

Presenters:

Angela Duckworth, associate professor of psychology, University of Pennsylvania

James Gee, presidential chair and professor of literacy studies, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University

Moderator:

Benjamin Herold, staff writer, Education Week

Registration is required to attend this event. Please register now.

Full Harvest Moon Tonight!!!!

Okay, tonight's full moon carries the title of "Harvest Moon" for those of us in the Northern

Thu., Sept. 19, 7:13 a.m. EDT. The Full Moon of Sept. is the Full Moon closest to the equinox on Sept. 22, so is called the Harvest Moon. It rises around sunset and sets around sunrise, the only night in the month when the moon is in the sky all night long. The rest of the month, the moon spends at least some time in the daytime sky. Credit: Starry Night Software

Hemisphere.  The full moon tonight is the nearest to the September equinox which makes it the Harvest Moon by the usual definition and while the Harvest Moon is associated with autumn, this moon is also the last full moon of summer!  In fact, it is the fourth full moon of summer ---- a little bit of an oddity as there are usually only three full moons per season.  For more information, check out the articles/sites below:

Harvest full moon rises this week:  How to see it, by Joe Rao, SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist

Harvest moon 2013:  What you need to know, by Michele Berger, The  Weather Channel

Harvest moon 2013:  Ten reasons we're still in love with the moon, by Bailey Johnson, Wunderground.com



Everything you need to know:  Harvest moon 2013, by Deborah Byrd, Tonight|Astronomy Essentials|Space, EarthSky

National Hispanic Heritage Month Resources

September 15th through October 15th is National Hispanic Heritage Month ----- in addition to the resources available at the SERC Library, we want to tell you about some resources available on the web, make sure to check out the entire blog post to the end!

When searching the SERC Library catalog use the keywords:  Hispanic, Spanish, Latino, English Language Learners, ELL, and ESL.  We have only included a very small selection of resource from our collections ---

16 extraordinary Hispanic Americans, IM 973.049 LOB

Abuela, YP F DOR

Invisible no more:  Understanding the disenfranchisement of Latino men and boys, 305.38868073 NOG

The new voices - Nuevas voces:  Guide to cultural and linguistic diversity in early childhood, IE 305.231089 CAS

Reaching out to Latino families of English language learners, 371.82968073 CAM









More on the web:

From the  National Hispanic Heritage Month site -- this is a Web portal that is a collaborative project of the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.  There are exhibits and collections, images, audio/video, a section for teachers and information on the images on the site.

From iCONN -- EBSCO and ProQuest have graciously agreed to furnish free access for a limited time to some of their licensed resources relevant to National Hispanic Heritage Month to iCONN users.  The resources are on an iCONN web page that you can access from their landing pages or classic menus, you can follow this link and click on the Hispanic Heritage Month link at the bottom of the More iCONN Content...section.

From Teaching for Change --- they have launched a campaign during Latino/Hispanic Heritage Month to support and encourage teaching about Central America.  They are offering a collection of lessons, readings, biographies, book lists, and an introductory slide show on major Central American writers and activists for free use by classroom teachers.

Constitution Day - September 17th

As stated on the National Constitution Center site - which you should check out for information on Constitution Day, "On September 17, 1987, the U.S. Constitution was signed by thirty-nine brave men who changed the course of history.  Now Constitution Day is a time for us to continue their legacy and develop habits of citizenship in a new generation of Americans."

Check our these resources suggested by Kristin and Cathy:

In the SERC Library, The Children's March, Teacher's Guide by Jeff Sapp and DVD, IM 960.73 TEA.









The Barber of Birmingham:  Foot Solider of the Civil Rights Movement, POV|PBS. 











Congress Honors Victims of Infamous Alabama Church Bombing - by Debbie Elliott, NPR blog. 

A Whole Bunch of FREE Webinars!

Okay --- here goes ---- FREE webinars from School Improvement Network and EdTech Teacher

From School Improvement Network: 


Providing for The Whole Child Series: School-based Health Services - Tuesday, September 17th 3:00 PM ET - They will explore CPN's initiative to integrate wellness clinics into their schools, on the grounds that providing accessible quality health care improves student performance in school.
Providing for The Whole Child Series: Community Engagement - Tuesday, September 24th 3:00 PM ET - They will discuss how the Community Engagement Council represents the community voice and works as a mediator between CPN and community residents to identify needed programs, partners, and resources to implement change successfully.

 From EdTech Teacher Webinars for October's Connected Educator Month: 

October 1st, 7:00 pm EST:  Connecting & Collaboration in Elementary Classrooms hosted by Samantha Morra
October 8th, 7:00 pm EST:  Creating a Connected Classroom hosted by Greg Kulowiec
October 15th, 7:00 pm EST:  Digital Citizenship in the Connected Classroom, hosted by Holly Clark
October 22nd, 7:00 pm EST:  The 1:1 Connected Classroom hosted by Carl Hooker
October 29th, 7:00 pm EST:  Connected Administrators hosted by Tom Daccord

New SERC Library LibGuide - Single-Sex Education!

Check out the latest SERC Library LibGuide - Single-Sex Education!  

What you will find in this guide

 
Single-sex education, also known as single-gender education, is the practice of conducting education where male and female students attend separate classes or in separate buildings or schools. The practice was common before the nineteenth century, particularly in secondary education and higher education. Single-sex education in many cultures is advocated on the basis of tradition as well as religion, and is practiced in many parts of the world. Recently, there has been a surge of interest and establishment of single-sex schools due to educational research.^[1]

More educators are embracing the idea that the educational and social challenges confronting males, in particular Black and Latino males, can be solved, or at least ameliorated, through single-sex education (Noguera, 2012). Once relegated to the realm of private and parochial, single-sex education is rapidly gaining popularity in public schools. The United States had only two single-sex public schools in the 1990s, according to the New York Times (Ward, 2012). In the 2011-2012 school year, more than 500 public schools in the United States offered single-sex educational opportunities (National Association for Single Sex Public Education, 2011). [2]

Within this guide you will find resources from the SERC Library collections, as well as available articles.  For this guide we have chosen to include only those resources most directly related to the subject matter and only the most current resources. 

 1. Riordan. C. (2009). The Effects of Single Sex Schools: Alced. Argentina 

  2. Johnson. J. (2013). Single Sex Education: The Connecticut Context, Technical Report, SERC