Brain and learning expert Marilee Sprenger highlights the 25 most high-frequency words for learners in the English language to focus upon. “I call these words ‘essential’ because knowing and using them can boost academic success and lifelong learning.” Are they on your vocab list?
Students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE) benefit when teachers consider how SLIFEs have learned previously – most often informally in their family culture. Tan Huynh shares ways educators can blend a formal literacy focus with the relational learning they’re used to.
In classes like social studies and science, students are expected to do complex nonfiction reading. How can we ensure they’ll process and retain the content for future use? History/ELA teacher Megan Kelly shares fun activities to help kids think more deeply about information text.
In “Teachers as Architects of Learning” Gavin Grift and Clare Major offer a blueprint for developing and implementing evidence-based practices that improve learning for students. Education consultant Helene Alalouf highly recommends this well-constructed guide.
Teachers across the curriculum will welcome this post by nonfiction expert Marlene Correia and Melissa Stewart, author of 180+ nonfiction books for kids. Learn why the five categories of children’s nonfiction they identify not only excite and engage but are what many students say they want to read most.
Curtis Chandler looks into implicit bias, the unconscious stereotypes that drive each of us, including educators, to behave and make decisions in certain ways. He shares a Teacher Tracker Tool that can help uncover patterns and make sure we treat all students fairly.
Dina Strasser’s mute button moment hooks us into a reflection on student interruptions and their cultural roots. Consider this: How do we balance middle level kids’ natural tendency to run over each other verbally with their eager desire to engage in what we’re teaching?
To help middle graders learn and practice social and emotional skills, teacher and Director of Studies Kasey Short offers ways to incorporate SEL across the content areas, from considering the motivations of historical figures to creating reality-based math word problems.
In Leading Literate Lives Stephanie Affinito strikes the perfect balance between encouraging reflective pedagogy and sharing fresh teaching ideas for reading and writing so teachers can pass the love they have for literacy on to students, writes ELA teacher Rebecca Crockett.
Does email steal your time? Your problem isn’t so much about having too many. It’s that they’re in the wrong places. Use these tips from educator and digital organization expert Frank Buck to unmask your email time bandits and make your inbox tidy and surprisingly sparse.
