Google Earth. You heard of it way back in 2006 when it first launched. Odds are that you probably even found your house on it and maybe even played the flight simulator that is built in. What you haven’t realized is that Google Earth is one of the single most powerful teaching tools for social […]
Read more "Why Google Earth is so awesome for teachers."I had a quick thought this afternoon. Have you ever noticed that some teachers are afraid to leave their class alone even when they, the teacher, are getting annoyed and upset? I just realized that new parents do the same thing with screaming infants. They try anything to soothe and quiet the baby. Pleading, rocking, […]
Read more "A class is sometimes like a crying infant"It is so hard to get out of our classrooms these days. With the amount of grading, planning, meeting, and TEACHING that teachers accomplish on a daily basis it is no wonder that once you enter your classroom at 6:30am, you might only leave it to go to the bathroom around noon. These expectations seem […]
Read more "Why you need to visit another classroom"A few years ago the school I was teaching at started using Google Docs for productivity. It was a district wide change and every teacher AND every student was signed up with a Google Docs account to use. I was thrilled but the reactions of my colleagues were mixed. Some teachers were saying it was […]
Read more "Digital Classrooms: Pros and Cons"There is so much talk about giving students a voice in the classroom these days but very little tangible evidence of what it looks like. What are specific examples of student voice in class? How is it accomplished and made to be part of the routine of a high functioning classroom? It takes a teacher […]
Read more "Student Voice in class. What does that look like?"You know that moment in class when the lesson veers (rarely by design) into some esoteric, off-topic, or inconsequential idea that lasts for more than a half hour. My students used to love these days because they would think that nothing important ever happened and it was usually good for a lot of laughs, some weird […]
Read more "Off topic tangents are a good thing for class"Students in the modern age have it so much harder than we did when we were young. I hear all the time from adults that they had it soooo tough when they were kids in school. I’m calling bullshit on that. I can’t remember EVER doing more than two hours of homework in a night […]
Read more "How can students balance school and life"If you are new to teaching, you’ve probably had dozens of veteran teachers tell you that having your daily agenda posted in a highly visible place is essential to having regular success in your class. They’re right, you know. An agenda board is not just for your students to have a reference point for the […]
Read more "Agendas in the classroom. Use them."Most teachers have encountered a class that starts off a bit rambunctious and needs some extra convincing to get down to business. I have seen a whole host of different techniques over the years that have all worked to varying degrees of success. Usually it depends on the teacher in question but often the tactic employed has just […]
Read more "How to get a classrooms’ attention."I’m a big proponent of standards based learning. Having benchmarks for students to reach for is something that instills intrinsic motivation and helps them set goals that are often higher than the ones teachers or parents set. What gets lost in all of this is that each student learns in a slightly different way but teachers are […]
Read more "Why grading should be about effort."