The authors of C.R.A.F.T. Conversations for Teacher Growth offer sustainable practices school leaders can implement immediately to build positive relationships with teachers and help them cultivate expertise. The reflective questions are particularly helpful, writes Tanya Roy.
Students Taking Action Together goes deep into five techniques to cultivate civic engagement and a healthy democracy. The strategies – Norms, Yes-No-Maybe, Respectful Debate, Audience Communication, and PLAN – work across content areas, writes Katie Durkin. Highly recommended.
Jennifer Bogard and Lisa Donovan share ways to humanize social studies and bolster student engagement with history by pairing Library of Congress primary sources and arts-integration strategies. Try their lesson plans for altered text, soundscapes, and sketching to observe.
As she works on a grant proposal to fund an update of her classroom furniture, Kathleen Palmieri shares what she’s learned from researching how students benefit from flexible learning environments, including boosts in creativity, engagement, collaboration, focus and achievement.
Classrooms that teach a broad range of close reading skills are not only rich with texts but host a wide range of types of texts, from traditional to digital to hyperlinked to hybrid, writes ELA teacher Jason DeHart. Critical student thinking needs to occur in all these spaces.
This January, don’t hastily jump on the bandwagon with the latest decorating fad. Design a place where students want to learn and grow. Your classroom environment may be one of the most powerful tools in your teaching toolbox, writes teacher and former marketer Kelly Owens.
Sean Ruday and Katie Caprino show that by centering students in assessment, literacy instruction can be tailored to meet their needs and asssure their learning is more authentic and relevant. Theresa Wood says the book is a blueprint to “put the verb back into ‘teacher’.”
Markham Woods Middle School in Lake Mary, FL was searching for a careers-oriented STEM program that would appeal to the “multitude of talents” among its students and help improve the climate of a divided school. Biomechatronics has achieved both objectives, says AP Eric Basilo.
Using an innovative idea from her district’s teacher-sharing day, Katie Durkin and her 7th grade ELA and Social Studies teams implemented a “motifs and lenses” strategy to strengthen students’ close reading of fiction and academic texts. She details their successful steps.
In Shifting the Balance (3-5), Cunningham, Burkins and Yates address common misunderstandings that weaken reading instruction in the intermediate grades. Fifth grade teacher Kathie Palmieri found herself impressed by and deeply immersed in the recommended shifts.
