Category: Articles

Build a Classroom That’s Resilience-Friendly

All students can learn how to pick up the pieces after they face adversity, disappointment, loss, or trauma and go on. They need our guidance to find healthy ways to move forward. Debbie Silver offers six strategies educators can use to create classrooms that foster resiliency.

5 Questions to Help Kids Become Critical Readers

Marilyn Pryle’s five crucial questions help students become critical readers in the Age of Disinformation as they learn to look more deeply into any text, in any form, and see the influences around it, the voices and sponsors, the craft and rhetoric, the intent and message.

How Teacher Notebooks Can Help Students Learn

When we have students watch us write in our teacher notebooks about what we’re reading, we not only share our expectations for their notebook-keeping, we give them a mental model for writing critically and analytically about what they read, says literacy leader Laura Robb.

How to Differentiate the Teaching, Not the Task

Mona Iehl once labeled her math students high, medium or low and gave them different problems. Now she thinks about differentiation as the amount of support she offers so that every student gradually reaches grade level expectations working the same problems. Here’s how.

You Can Make Meetings More Productive

Meetings can waste time and resources. Education consultants Ronald Williamson and Barbara R. Blackburn’s strategies can help you avoid pitfalls and lead effective meetings with norm setting, planning, agenda setting, and options for decision making. Productivity tools included!

Books to Help Students Explore Body Image

As students experience physical and emotional changes as part of adolescent development, body image can become a complex and sensitive topic. Reading books that explore body image can help. Kasey Short shares some favorite titles and questions for reflection and discussion.

Complex Tasks Every Student Can Accomplish

Collaborating on complex tasks builds relationships, a positive classroom culture for learning and a sense of accomplishment for each student. When the team wins, everyone is a winner! Deep learning expert Karin Hess shares tools to create authentic, time-sensitive projects.

Consistency: the Invisible Backbone of Teaching

Students need to know what to expect when they enter our classrooms, writes teacher Kelly Owens. Consistency on the front end paves the way for more student autonomy and engagement throughout the lesson. Three tips can help teachers achieve “the loyalty to learning we want!”

Number Sense Builds a Strong Math Foundation

There’s an immense difference between rote memorization and giving students tools that allow them to work flexibly and thoughtfully with numbers, writes Kathie Palmieri. When kids learn number sense and can use multiple strategies, they have choice in how they solve problems.

A UDL Strategy to Help Students Communicate

The negative tone and unkind remarks adolescents use with one another make it tough to develop a classroom sense of community. They won’t learn to communicate appropriately without explicit instruction, write Samantha Layne and Susanne Croasdaile. Learn how UDL strategies help.