When Dina Strasser feels at a loss or stymied in something she is trying to do for her students, she often turns to her list of options to gets things done – developed during her 20 years working with school districts and their occasionally labyrinthine bureaucracies.
In Making Math Stick, David Costello offers advice to help teachers make the shift from “teach, test, move on” to “teach, connect, apply.” His detailed learning and instructional strategies will help you deepen student knowledge and improve retention, writes Lisa Hudson.
During reading instruction, implementing the “guided practice” part of Gradual Release of Responsibility can be tricky. Sunday Cummins and Julie Webb offer ways to select appropriately challenging texts and then provide guidance during conferences with students.
Being a STEM teacher in 2022 will likely be a new experience every day, even for veterans, writes curriculum designer Anne Jolly. To help out, she suggests ways STEM teachers can care for themselves and ways to sustain kids’ STEM skills, sharing many resources that can help.
This year Katie Durkin and her fellow ELA teachers will add a Question of the Day – built from state assessment stems – to their whole-class novel unit. As 7th graders discuss best answers they’ll learn to think collaboratively AND prep for mandated tests. See how it works!
Teacher and coach Stephanie Farley discovered through trial and refinement that a good rubric is “a tool to provide feedback to kids about their progress toward mastery of a learning target.” See her five backward planning steps and the resulting three-part writing rubric.
A Teacher’s Guide to Mentor Texts offers a winning combination – a structured lesson approach, a range of suggested mentor texts, and an overall message adaptable to specific students. Teachers at multiple levels of experience will find it invaluable, writes Sara Pennington.
Active listening is a key skill for school leaders, especially when faced with the need to mediate complex or volatile issues. Consultants Ron Williamson and Barbara Blackburn describe 5 barriers to effective listening and 10 tips to help every leader become more successful.
A former English teacher, Megan Kelly is eager to discover how she can incorporate the learning power of storytelling into history units. As a first step she created a transmedia storytelling experience that had summer camp students exploring where ‘history’ comes from.
Close Reading the Media / New Vocabulary
by Frank Baker · Published 01/09/2022 · Last modified 01/10/2022
Metaverse? Prebunking? Zombie claims? The rapid evolution of digital technology and methods of persuasion has unleashed a flood of words and phrases that need to be in students’ vocabularies. Media literacy expert Frank Baker offers examples from across current culture.
