In “Activate: Deeper Learning Through Movement, Talk, and Flexible Classrooms” Katherine Mills Hernandez shows how we can be strategic and novel in our use of movement to support student learning. Elisa Waingort says the book is an important contribution to teacher PD.
Reflective and restorative practices are not new, writes middle school administrator Sara Johnson, but the pandemic has created an even greater need to view discipline as a tool to guide and support the social-emotional learning of tweens and teens. Here’s how Sara does it.
What if a STEM project became a product kids make for actual use? Anne Jolly shows how industry’s Product Design Process (PDP) expands upon the familiar engineering design popular in STEM classes, giving students new skills as they move from prototypes to the marketplace.
Alex Valencic began his career sending work home with his students without much thought. Over the years he came to question the need for homework at all – until parents rebelled. Then he invented the Homework Menu. And embraced the D.E.L.I.B.E.R.A.T.E ideas of Erik Youngman.
Are students becoming more prejudiced and racist, or have students always been this way? In his rural, predominantly white Midwestern town middle school ELA educator Jeremy Hyler felt an urgency to advocate for antiracist teaching practices in his school and community.
Principal and NBCT Rita Platt shares advice for a paradigm shift away from obsessive coverage of content and toward deep and differentiated learning for students who have lived through the months of pandemic schooling. Three questions help us understand what’s essential.
High interest text sets tied to essential questions and in varied formats help emergent bilinguals stick with a particular topic as they learn how to read strategically. Elizabeth Hagan and her colleagues brought Malala Yousafzai to students’ attention with a range of sources.
Students choose books with different purposes in mind and learning how to make good choices is an important life skill. But what about making the choice to abandon a book? Lynne Dorfman has teaching tips to share with readers when a book just doesn’t spark their interest.
To encourage her seventh graders’ reading, Katie Durkin finds herself constantly searching for new ways to keep books in the hands of students. She shares four sustainable practices she uses throughout the school year to plant the seeds of reading with her students.
Checks for Learning / Class Apps
by Curtis Chandler · Published 03/28/2021 · Last modified 10/19/2022
There will always be learning goals that call for written responses. But if we aren’t careful, we can end up turning our checks for understanding into tests of writing. Curtis Chandler shares tools and strategies he uses to make sure every student shows what they know.
