Imagine teaching a short lesson to introduce students to the concept of a preposition: Prior to the lesson, on the whiteboard, write the same sentence four times: The book is _____ the desk. Stand by a desk and hold up a book, asking students to identify the desk and the book. “These are two things, or […]
Whether in the classroom or teachers’ professional development, the instructional goal should be transformational learning rather than transactional learning. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary: Transaction: “an occurrence in which [something] is passed from one person . . . to another” Transformation: “a complete or major change in someone’s . . . appearance, form, etc.” Much […]
One of the most important characteristics for success is the ability to delay gratification: to persist in a task or goal in spite of tempting distractions. How do we build this valuable executive function skill in our students? For starters, here is an “If, Then” planning sheet to use with students; but read on . . . […]
https://www.myersbriggs.org/my-mbti-personality-type/mbti-basics/home.htm As you move to a more student-centered learning environment, the role of teacher as facilitator becomes critically important. If you honor the reality that not all students are ready to learn the same content at the same time in the same way, you have to vacate the front of the room and get elbow-deep […]
If we do not teach three-dimensional reading and writing in schools, we are cheating our students out of learning critical twenty-first-century skills. Throughout much of history, written language has been two-dimensional: across and down a page. Fundamentally, that has been due to the physical nature of putting thoughts onto cave walls, clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, and […]