When the proverbial $#*t hits the fan. Let’s face it. Lesson planning takes time, effort, attention to detail, and long hours of thinking about all the ways it could blow up in your face. That being said, even the most fastidious, dedicated and detailed oriented educator can not, and will not, think of everything. An […]
Read more "The Busted Lesson"Well, this question I was not expecting in the #mschat from last week. To be honest I can’t seem to find any difference between coming to work and being professional as a banker or a teacher. As @mrgranito said perfectly: “Uh…suck it up! We’re the professionals here!” I’m speaking from a perspective of someone who […]
Read more "How do teachers maintain HIGH professionalism and energy during the winter?"I love technology.It allows me to catch up with things I just didn’t have time for in the moment. For example, I’ll be playing a benefit concert this Saturday afternoon/evening and won’t be able to watch the Patriots playoff game. Not to worry! I’ll be able to record it and watch it on Sunday with […]
Read more "How do you keep students motivated on a cold winter day?"Wow, here we are. Reflection number four of seven for this topic of celebrations in learning. I’ll was traveling for the past few days so unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend last week’s #mschat and thankfully it was postponed for holiday celebrations… fancy that! As with the week before, by this point in the chat […]
Read more "What do we do with students who don’t earn a celebration?"We are up to the fifth question of last week’s #mschat and this one deals with motivation. The question of motivating students is another one that is near and dear to my heart and I was pretty excited when I found out it was going to be part of the #mschat. Now that I am […]
Read more "How are students motivated if behavior is not part of the grade?"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"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."My last post was a about a simple hack to get kids who are normally on the more quiet end of the conversation spectrum to participate more in class. I discovered that it was not that they didn’t have anything to say, it was that they didn’t feel comfortable expressing opinions out loud. By creating […]
Read more "Facilitate the classroom: Part Deux"In my class, I had two protocols in place to encourage students to participate more. Today I’m only going to talk about the first one. I’ll save the second for a followup post. For years I struggled with how to get students who were less sure of themselves and a little on the quiet side […]
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peter spiegel 