Teachers are always short of resources. New teachers, in particular, need a helping hand and the tools to make their jobs less stressful. Education resources specialist April Angel urges them to take advantage of quality resource sites to plan lessons and fill specific needs.
If you have been wondering how you can move on when Jamboard sunsets in December, Kathleen Palmieri has found a super next-generation tool developed through a collaboration of Google – FigJam by Figma – that offers easy transition and improved tools. See her overview and tips.
100-Word Stories: A Short Form for Expansive Writing by Kim Culbertson and Grant Faulkner is a wonderful resource for teaching with micro texts and for helping students in levels 5-12 develop both writing and reading mastery, writes middle school ELA teacher Erin Corrigan-Smith.
The missteps of middle schoolers may be “developmentally appropriate” but we still need to guide students to do better, writes school leader Jody Passanisi. “Students this age often rise to the expectations that are set for them. That is developmentally appropriate, too.”
Watching a movie in class doesn’t have to be passive, says Jason DeHart. Teachers can engage students in a critical process of “reading” film and also responding as readers by creating video products. It’s time to broaden literacy education to meet students where they are.
Educator and author Regie Routman considers heart-centered principles that can help us go a long way to ensure that what we do and are asking our students and loved ones to do will result in personal and professional growth, gratitude, generosity, and even sparks of greatness.
After reading Co-Intelligence, Sarah Cooper is newly optimistic about the possibilities of AI in education – and trying to live more like a cyborg. Follow along as she inspects the author’s rules for co-intelligence, ways to personalize AI for educators, and how and if we might co-exist in the future.
National Poetry Month is here! If you’re once again rushing to pull together some poetry lessons – or perhaps feeling a bit guilty because you’ve put poetry aside in favor of more high-stakes ELA topics – take a look at these easy-to-use resources.
During this reading activity, partners think out loud, supported by active listening, to deepen their individual and shared understandings. Rather than reading without focus, this strategy teaches students to attend to their reading by stopping to “say something” at intervals.
Recognizing the gap between formal curriculum standards and the emotional and organizational hurdles of writing, Matt Renwick shares some of his ideas for student-centered strategies that acknowledge these challenges and equip students with tools they need to overcome them.
