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Dogfooding: How Often Do You Do Your Own Assignments?
Here’s a word you may not have heard before: dogfooding. It’s a term that’s been used for years among software developers, and it refers to the act of using your own product as a consumer in order...
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Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning
Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, and Mark A. McDaniel 336 pages, Belknap Press, April 2014 Buy Now [The links in this post are Amazon...
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How to Turn Rubric Scores into Grades
I have written several posts about the different types of rubrics—especially my favorite, the single-point rubric—and over time, many teachers have asked me about the most effective way to convert...
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5 Common Teaching Practices I’m Kicking to the Curb
Are any of these ineffective teaching methods still part of your practice? Time to reconsider. So many of us teach the way we were taught. We may not even realize we’re doing it. And that means...
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What’s so great about Google Drive? And why should my students be using it?
I have fallen in love with Google Drive. But it was not love at first sight. Our relationship was slow to get started. First, Google Drive was like the guy you know for a while as a friend. You...
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The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies
Listen to this article as a podcast episode: When I worked with student teachers on developing effective lesson plans, one thing I always asked them to revise was the phrase “We will discuss.”...
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4 Things I’ve Learned About Teaching from CrossFit
Listen to this article as a podcast: This past summer, my husband asked me to go to a CrossFit gym with him. He was looking for something different, something that would motivate him to exercise...
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Back to Basics: A Review of Mike Schmoker’s “Focus”
Focus: Elevating the Essentials to Radically Improve Student Learning by Mike Schmoker 237 pages, Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, January 2011 Buy Now The links in this...
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Self-Paced Learning: How One Teacher Does It
With few exceptions, I would bet that most teachers feel they could be doing a better job of differentiating instruction. It’s not that we don’t want to do it—we know our students learn at different...
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Dogfooding: How Often Do You Do Your Own Assignments?
Here’s a word you may not have heard before: dogfooding. It’s a term that’s been used for years among software developers, and it refers to the act of using your own product as a consumer in order...
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In Praise of Think-Pair-Share
Think-pair-share has gotten a bad rap. In July of 2013, just as I was starting this blog, I read a snarky piece where the author slammed administrators’ use of the strategy in faculty meetings. The...
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A Non-Freaked Out Guide to Teaching the Common Core
Like having a totally chill, smart buddy at your side, Dave Stuart’s book will help you see that implementing the Common Core doesn’t have to be a big deal. A Non-Freaked Out Guide to Teaching the...
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If You Teach At-Risk Kids, You Need This Book (Hint: It’s not Ruby Payne)
Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students by Zaretta Hammond, 192 pages, Corwin, November 2014 Buy...
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7 Easy Ways to Support Student Writing in Any Content Area
More teachers are being asked to support student literacy in all content areas. For those trained in English language arts, this isn’t a big deal. But if you have spent your career learning best...
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Know Your Terms: Constructivism
constructivism (noun) A theory of learning based on the idea that humans construct their own knowledge through direct experience, as opposed to being taught concepts in the abstract. A...
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3 Tips to Make Any Lesson More Culturally Responsive (and it’s not what you...
Last month, I reviewed Zaretta Hammond’s fantastic book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. Now I’m proud to have Zaretta here as a guest writer to share some specific strategies with us....
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4 Things You Don’t Know About the Jigsaw Method
This cooperative learning strategy has been around for decades, but how well do you really know it? Say “Jigsaw” in some teaching circles and no one will bat an eyelash. It’s one of those...
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Can-Do Descriptors: A Free Tool for ESL Differentiation
Every year, in classrooms all over the country, the population of English language learners continues to grow. Depending on where you live and how far along your school’s ESL program is, you may...
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A Step-by-Step Plan for Teaching Argumentative Writing
Listen to this post as a podcast: For seven years, I was a writing teacher. Yes, I was certified to teach the full spectrum of English language arts—literature, grammar and usage, speech, drama,...
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Student-Made E-Books: A Beautiful Way to Demonstrate Learning
Listen to this post as a podcast: You’ve reached the end of a unit or year, and you want students to demonstrate their learning in a way that requires them to synthesize information, apply it in...
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