Category: Teaching Practice

Primary focus on good instructional practices

Teaching Stunts Offer Choice, Challenge, Play

Recounting her visit from a grandfatherly apparition grabbed the attention of Stephanie Farley’s students and launched a study of storytelling. Putting “stunt teaching” into action – sometimes with colleagues – builds engagement and opens the door to choice, challenge and play.

4 Reasons for Optimism About Public Education

Williamson and Blackburn highlight four good reasons to be optimistic about the future of America’s public schools. Community approval is the highest in nearly 50 years; teachers are better prepared for the future, and the resilience of public educators remains remarkable.

15 Ways to Teach and Learn with Sticky Notes

“In my classroom, sticky notes earn top honors for Best Multipurpose Teaching Tool,” writes literacy teacher Kelly Owens. She displays 15 ways to use the tacky squares to chunk large tasks into manageable clusters and empower students to contemplate, coordinate, and connect.

Adding Simulations to Your Lesson Plans

Simulations involve tactile or kinesthetic participation and offer a way for students to be actively engaged in lessons and experience another dimension of learning. Barbara Blackburn and two colleagues share online and in-class SS, ELA, and STEM ideas.

3 Ways We Can Offer Students More Choice

Having the ability to choose our own focus makes people, on average, five times more committed to the outcome. The classroom implications are clear, says teaching consultant Barbara Blackburn. “If students are more invested in their work, they are more likely to learn.”

Students Will Thrive in a Culture of Effort and Joy

NBCT and new principal Rita Platt shares the five beliefs that make up her teaching philosophy and serve as the framework of her new book Working Hard, Working Happy. Learn what she “knows to be true about teaching and learning” and why you might want a credo of your own.

7 Time-Saving Ways to Balance Teaching Tasks

Is it ever possible to do everything needed to be a consistently effective teacher? Look over Barbara Blackburn’s strategies to develop circumstances where you can thrive: avoid perfectionism, try incremental change, peruse helpful time management resources, and more.

Well-Designed ‘Do Nows’ Set the Pace for Learning

Ask teachers for some Do Now synonyms and they’ll come up with terms like Warm-up, Quick Review, and First Steps. Teaching coach Sarah Tantillo’s favorite is Brain Defibrillator. When done right and used routinely, she says, Do Nows establish a norm of urgency in your class.

Put Some Bang at the Beginning of Lessons

How we start lessons makes a huge difference in learning during the remainder of our class instruction time. Teaching consultant and author Barbara Blackburn shares strategies to employ three keys to beginning lessons with a bang: focus, activation, and excitement.