Learning through Conversation / The Unstoppable ML Teacher
by Valentina Gonzalez · Published 12/31/2017 · Last modified 11/28/2019
Frequent academic conversation supports learning for all students, and especially ELLs. PD specialist Valentina Gonzalez offers strategies to help teachers avoid ineffective practices and remove barriers to meaningful student-to-student and student-to-teacher dialogue.
High School Preparation / The Flexible Classroom
by Amber Chandler · Published 12/26/2017 · Last modified 12/03/2019
Amber Chandler envisions her middle schoolers as cupcakes in the making as she considers the need for teachers to support each other from elementary through graduation. Read about ways she’s strengthened her unit on The Giver to emphasize high school writing skills.
Today’s students have to learn to shift their writing styles to meet different real-life purposes, says ELA teacher-author Jeremy Hyler. Teachers should understand the different contexts (school, work, and personal) and help students learn to “code switch” as needed.
This story by Ruth Ayres, from her new book Enticing Hard-to-Reach Writers, is a holiday gift to novice educators everywhere and to any teachers still wondering whether their students can ever learn to love writing so much they stop turning in incomplete assignments.
So often we miss opportunities to deepen our students’ thinking about mathematics that would require just a few moments of our teacher time. Take a minute to look at these 10 simple strategies from Jerry Burkhart that transform formulaic math problems into explorations.
How do your students react when you ask them to work together in groups? Cheers or groans? Teacherpreneur and author Patrice Palmer shares strategies to plan ahead and avoid group project pitfalls and to help students see the benefits of working with each other.
Class Apps / Student Questioning
by Curtis Chandler · Published 12/10/2017 · Last modified 12/03/2019
Curtis Chandler has been guilty of ping-pong teaching that “merely bounces information back and forth between my students and myself.” Kids learn more from a volleyball approach where they work together “to set up the shot” through inquiry activities. App tips included.
The second edition of Rosalind Wiseman’s Owning Up validates the thoughts and feelings of adolescents in a non-judgmental way, invites students to understand why some are motivated to use social cruelty, and gives them tools to respond, writes teacher Amy Estersohn.
The only student test data that really matters, says education consultant Debbie Silver, is timely, diagnostic information telling educators what their students know and can or cannot do. With that data, they can plan instruction and fine-tune teaching practice.
Each day in Sarah Cooper’s 8th grade U.S. history class, they begin with a 5-minute discussion of current events. The sheer number of mass attacks in the United States this semester has pummeled Sarah and her students. She ponders how she and other teachers can continue to respond.
