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(This posting includes a handout which you are welcome to use with your students.)* One day, I ran into an exasperated-looking colleague in the copy room at our school. She had just come from her ESL class in which she wanted to check some homework whole class. To do this, she asked, “What is the … Read more
How Inquiry Teaching Can Help Us Through Divided Times by Drew Perkins, Director of TeachThought PD Educators and education, in general, political are getting swept into the morass of culture wars and polemic battles playing out in our media and processes and the downstream effects aren’t only disspiriting, they’re dangerous. Dangerous to and for the … Read more
Over the last four weeks I’ve highlighted different ways to use TinyTap to create educational games for your students. This week I’m going to take a slightly different approach and share ideas for using TinyTap’s soundboard option to make interactive lessons and games. A soundboard in TinyTap lets you add an image to a slide … Read more
WOW. This is certainly a clever book that packs a punch. “My message is that we’ll be watching you. This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope. How dare you. You … Read more
Hi, friends! Happy New Year! I think we can all agree that we are ready for 2021! 2020 is a year we will NEVER forget! Today’s post features some fun and simple ideas for New Year’s that you can do in your classroom or with your children at home. Upon returning from winter break, I … Read more
I thought that new – and veteran – readers might find it interesting if I began sharing my best posts from over the years. You can see the entire collection here. This post originally appeared in 2018: As regular readers know, I’m a big fan of creating the conditions where students can teach their classmates … Read more
Whether you’re hoping to snag some inexpensive classroom rewards, find fun and easy inspiration, have a laugh or vent frustrations, download free resources, or add some supplies lessons to your wish list, you can count on your fellow teachers to have the best tips. To make things easier, we’ve gathered up all the articles and … Read more
The fractions unit in one of the most critical math focuses in 3rd grade. Students should come to third grade with a basic understanding of fractions of a shape based on 2nd grade geometry standards. But, in 3rd grade, students are introduced to fractions and quickly move into other key fraction standards: fractions on a … Read more
It’s spring! We’ve had beautiful weather and a lot of rain here in Ohio so far this spring. We usually end up skipping spring and going from snow & negative wind chills to 90 degrees. This spring has been great! Today I am sharing a few of my favorite activities for Easter & spring, in … Read more
You’ve probably seen some of these activities demonstrated at ESL teaching conferences or on some internet sites or on YouTube videos with titles like: “The 10 Best Speaking Activities.” The activities are usually promoted as a way to get students to talk. However, professional teachers don’t assign activities just to get students talking. They try … Read more