Imagine yourself on a plane, about to start a new chapter of your life as an international teacher in another country and culture. With 30 years teaching abroad in North and South America, Elisa Waingort knows both the joys and challenges. Ready for take off?
STEM expert Anne Jolly shares the 9-step process she uses to write a quality lesson that includes some or all of the elements found in the Engineering Design Process (EDP). Included: free downloads of six STEM lesson-writing tools she developed for her new book.
If there is one thing that will influence voters more than anything else during Campaign 2016, it is the image. More than ever, what the voters see, not what they hear, has become paramount in getting elected. Frank Baker shares ad techniques students need to know.
Beyond the Textbook / Future of History
by Sarah Cooper · Published 06/27/2016 · Last modified 11/22/2019
In Sarah Cooper’s never-ending effort to reach beyond textbook basics, she sometimes asks students to read a selection from a scholarly journal article or popular history book. Carefully sharing a JSTOR piece on Sherman’s March helped students grasp “total war.”
Paid ads and social media give lots of exposure to Presidential candidates. They also get free visibility from magazines, though they don’t always like what they see. Frank Baker offers a magazine-cover activity to help students build media literacy skills.
Evernote is a 21st century day planner. In Part 4 of his productivity series for school leaders, organization consultant and former principal Frank Buck singles out Evernote as a must-have for collecting school and home information in an easily accessible way.
Research Projects / Working Draft
by Kevin Hodgson · Published 03/06/2016 · Last modified 12/03/2019
Text sets can help kids enrich their studies in any content area. MS teacher Kevin Hodgson tells how teachers are using Library of Congress primary resources to create engaging text sets that help students contextualize the present by exploring the past.
Book Reviews / Student Driven Learning
by MiddleWeb · Published 02/25/2016 · Last modified 11/29/2019
Every time Elisa Waingort opens Leaders of Their Own Learning, she finds another simple but brilliant suggestion to improve her teaching and the learning of her students. She recommends repeated reading of this fully resourced guide to student-driven learning and assessment.
As the 2016 Presidential Campaign heats up, media literacy expert Frank W. Baker brings the political races to the classroom with standards-based activities to help students understand the persuasive power of plentiful and often misleading political ads.
Research Projects / Working Draft
by Kevin Hodgson · Published 02/09/2016 · Last modified 12/12/2019
Kevin Hodgson’s sixth graders are fresh off a research-based essay writing project. He describes the process they followed to choose their topics, use Google Research, manage citations, avoid plagiarism, include media, and pursue an optional extension project.
