Kevin Murray

As a special educator, I have co-taught high school math, science and humanities in Maine high schools for a decade. I’ve used, revised and replaced many tools to see that students with emotional and learning disabilities are given bridges over their disabilities.  Slow processing speeds, difficulty with reading comprehension, working memory, the cornucopia of executive dysfunctions among other skill and ability deficits shouldn’t be academic dead ends; schools must take responsibility to build achievement brides so all students can demonstrate their learning and proceed to college if they so desire. The answer is not special education tracked classes. (Make sure 95% of your classes are college preparatory )Yet to end tracking and make heterogeneous grouping work significant institutional capacity, teacher collaboration and patience are needed  Universal Design for Learning (UDL) within Expeditionary Learning (EL) and driven by standards based assessment are among the broad brush reforms that can address a school’s teaching disability.

More specifically, peer tutors offer great leverage; I currently oversee 12th grade students supporting 9th grade students (with and without disabilities) in a college preparatory math class. Adult volunteers also make great contributions at Casco Bay High School. Yet my latest rocket of desire is to widen this network of instructional support to include potential content tutors around the world by using free video conferencing such as Skype. If you are comfortable relearning high school math (algebra, geometry, probability, etc.), email me ( murrak at portlandschools.org; you won’t regret it). If you want to know more about how you could use Skype tutors in your 4-16 classrooms, (younger kids might struggle with video conferencing)  here are what I think of as first steps.

Prerequisites to Using Skype for Academic Tutoring

1. A pedagogical culture the embraces UDL ideas of multiple means and pathways for learning;

2. Use of older students (12th grade w/i a high school) to tutor in younger students’ classes or;

3. Adult volunteers in classrooms;

4. Computers with video cameras and means to share curricular materials with distance tutors (e.g.: someone who is going to work with your students needs to have full access to your materials on a blog, google docs  or other digital spaces)

5. Additional classroom space (library, etc.)

6. Structures for re-teaching such as learning center staffed after school or scheduled teacher make up blocks a week after school  (beyond random see me outside class)

7. Find content experts/ enthusiasts around the world with the ability/intrest  to commit to 1-2 hours per week of: a) reviewing materials at their leisure and b) teaching students through video conferencing such as Skype during a set time in or outside of class.

8. Coordination of schedules to assure there is an adult in the room with students and one-to-one student tutors (e.g.: you don’t want a Skype session to end with problem behavior where the only witness is hundreds or thousands of miles away on the other end of the video conference call!)

9. Guts to determine you have time and you are committed to see that all students will be given equal and ample opportunities to learn, patience to anticipate implementation dips and setbacks  (I have only steps 1-8 mastered!)

10. Let the Skype learning begin! (If you do this let me know what I have missed; I hope to get past step 9.

Check out this tree diagrams_slide_show to learn about probability trees.

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The EF_self_Assessment should be opened, typed in and emailed to  murrak at portlandschools.org

This pass/fail (3 or 1) assignment is due in my inbox  by the beginning of class Thursday October 22nd. Be executive people, get it done!

Use this to complete the spinner handout

Today you will use PLATO software. 

The account login is CBHS and your login and password are your student ID.

9th grade read below, others begin with the first assignment you see on PLATO

Prime and Composite Numbers
You need to know one vocabulary word before you begin: factor

Factors are any of the numbers that can be multiplied together to make another number”.

It is easier to understand by example:
The factors of 12 are 1,2,3,4,6 and 12
because 2 × 6 = 12, or 4 × 3 = 12, or 1 × 12 = 12.

Here are some more advanced uses of sketchpad: triangle, box, parallel lines,

If you finish here is an exceeds assignment: daisy designs

Welcome to school Maria!

For hidden history work, check out this blog: humanities 10

Here is a good article

As you read there are comprehension strategies that excellent readers use.

Use this dictionary.html to complete this quiz.

Target: I  can use the formula to find the sum (total) of the interior angles of a polygon.

Lets start with this LPoly1.htm

Triangle Angle Sum theory: sum (added up) of interior angles of a triangle will add up to 180 degrees. triangle angle video

2. Measure the interior angles for every vertex (a corner where two segments come together)

angle video

This sketchpad action-project-rubric is a place to start.