How can we make sure our classrooms are places that welcome risk-taking in the name of learning, and expect and celebrate inevitable mistakes? Author and innovation leader Colleen Cruz shares five things teachers can do to create a culture where students risk, fail and rise.
For Megan Kelly’s Ancient Civilizations unit, Grade 7 gamers played her “Ancient” adaptation of Apples to Apples (see her tips), Galactic Mappers and Inhabitation. Along the way they created continents and civilizations, and learned systems thinking and plenty of content.
Noting that Thinking Like a Generalist is “exactly the type of book a busy teacher needs,” educator Michael DiClemente says the book explains how to help students become truth seekers, developing questions and getting answers they need using concrete and practical skills.
Instead of continuing our 130 years of running every public school student through the system in the same way at the same time, Alex Valencic believes we need to shift our efforts to acknowledging individuality, independence, and innovation through mastery learning.
Close Reading the Media / Internet Literacy
by Frank Baker · Published 01/26/2021 · Last modified 02/13/2021
New studies continue to reveal that many students cannot evaluate internet information for truthfulness, writes media literacy expert Frank W Baker. “It has become a crisis in American education,” he says, as disinformation becomes industrialized and “truth decay” spreads.
Jason DeHart knows the unique characteristics of visual literature can grab kids’ attention. He shares ideas from his research and middle school teaching experience about using comics and graphic novels in the classroom – and includes lots of winning titles for grades 4-8.
The Unstoppable ML Teacher / Translanguaging
by Tan Huynh · Published 01/24/2021 · Last modified 08/16/2021
English learners achieve more when we let them use all of their languages to understand and retain what they’re taught in subject-area classes. Teacher Tan Huynh shares Dr. Gini Rojas’s insights about the power of translanguaging and how mono-linguistic teachers put it to use.
Differentiating Instruction with Menus: Literature (3-5) provides a variety of excellent activities to involve students in thoughtful and purposeful engagement with and response to texts. Some teachers may wish to substitute more diverse texts, writes Sarah Pennington.
For five years Marilyn Pryle has begun every class with 10 minutes of choice reading, inside a Book Club model. Would in work in a hybrid classroom? Yes! Her experience this year “reinforces the truths I already know.” Students want to read. Escaping into a story feels good.
Many media literacy initiatives start with skills – teaching kids to fact-check and dig for information. Instead, Angela Kohnen and Wendy Saul urge us to guide students as they assume the identity of Generalist – “sifters” who are curious, skeptical, accurate and persistent.
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