Using homemade surveys can help you become a better teacher and leader. They can boost our understanding of student, parent and staff perspectives on issues that impact teaching and learning. Principal and NBCT Rita Platt shares ways she uses them – with tips and resources.
As kids around the world face natural disasters and a pandemic, teachers can help them develop a sense of agency as they develop specific STEM skills by exploring a local or global engineering challenge. Anne Jolly has ideas and resources, including a viable Covid mask.
This fall Katie Durkin’s middle schoolers developed a voluntary reading plan using a design thinking process. After modeling her own reading goals, she had students generate and pursue ‘prototype’ goals that helped them expand choice and voice in their reading practices.
There are too many demands on instructional time in the Covid era to waste very much of it teaching at the lowest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. ELA/ENL teacher Dina Strasser recommends taking a fine-tooth comb to those sometimes necessary TPT plans and removing the fluff.
“Supporting the Wounded Educator” is an insightful and helpful book much needed right now, says teacher educator Linda Biondi. It guides teachers to focus on what they can do to lessen trauma for themselves and their community through wellness and self-care initiatives.
Current Events / Future of History
by Sarah Cooper · Published 11/04/2020 · Last modified 01/05/2021
Here’s how Sarah Cooper taught her 8th grade social studies class today, as the nation went about determining a presidential winner. Unlike the day after the 2016 election, “I’m feeling not so much shock as the need to shore up my teaching and once again dig into difficult topics.”
Articles / Questioning / remote learning
by MiddleWeb · Published 11/02/2020 · Last modified 11/29/2020
Effective questioning during remote learning doesn’t require new strategies. Consultant Barbara Blackburn suggests building questions with higher order thinking models; including questioning stems; adding cubing for student choice; and having students source their answers.
It took the pandemic to convince Lauren Brown to finally check out Edpuzzle as a teaching tool. She’s quickly become a fan. Whether you are teaching live, online or in a hybrid model, Edpuzzle can be a helpful way to engage students in video content that you select or create.
If you are looking for a book that provides a realistic yet hopeful view of what it means to be an educator and a researcher by way of viewing yourself as a Scholar-Practitioner, then this book fits the bill, writes teacher educator/researcher Megan Reister.
For those with positive stories, social-emotional learning helps reinforce the skills they need to succeed. For those with stories of trauma, SEL can help balance negative experiences with positive ones. Author-educator Marilee Sprenger shows how brain research can help.
