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When schools give students the chance to tinker, create, test ideas, and solve interesting problems, classrooms become places of curiosity and innovation, writes author and STEM curriculum expert Anne Jolly. Makerspaces can help bring that kind of energy into STEM learning.
When math tutors create space to connect, speak and reflect, students not only gain confidence in their math skills, they strengthen their empathy and resilience and leave their sessions feeling capable, supported, and truly seen as learners, says tutoring expert Halley Bowman.
With authentic scenarios, well-sequenced tasks, and teacher supports, Real World Math is a classroom-ready resource. Whether your goal is to deepen engagement, build understanding, or spark curiosity, the book brings math to life in a way students and teachers will appreciate.
Dina Strasser’s 7th graders like the idea of “Warm Demanders” once they’re introduced to the concept. Their lunch-time conversation has Dina musing about the research and the impact of friendly teachers who require participation in diverse and not-so-diverse classrooms.
Understanding how sentences work is a reading skill, not just a writing skill, researchers tell us. When students understand how sentences are built, they read better. So, argues Patty McGee, grammar instruction is in fact reading instruction, and we should treat it that way.
Rather than treating writing as a sequence of isolated assignments, in “Goal Setting in the Writing Classroom” Valerie Bolling shares a structure for a continuous, student-driven process shaped by clear goals, routines, and informed choices, writes reviewer Melinda Stewart.
A Professional Learning Network offers a practical, sustainable way to grow as a teacher. Dr. Curtis Chandler shares a summer game plan to build your own PLN by starting small, staying consistent, and developing interactions that strengthen your practice and your well-being.
Teaching math through inquiry can be excellent. It’s a goal to aspire to. But for many struggling students, jumping straight into pure inquiry without any explicit instruction first can be paralyzing. Juliana Tapper’s Math Wars model helps teachers find the happy (gray) medium.
Artful AI in Writing Instruction models productive and reflective approaches to using AI where student voices are centered and human thinking trumps artificial intelligence. The book is a roadmap for teachers with examples, lessons, and moments of reflection, writes Michele Haiken.
Productive struggle is part of classroom instruction, building a structured task into the flow of learning so that students can apply what they know in new and novel ways, writes consultant and author Barbara Blackburn, who explores myths, student dispositions and more.
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