To track or not to track? Is that a question? Have I already lost you? Tracking has been a dirty word for decades. Mostly for good reason. But. Leveled classes might have a place. We all know that “tracking” happens when we offer advanced courses and co-taught sections. The limitations of scheduling mean groups of […]
Instruction & Curriculum
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
10 Years Later: 10 Takeaways on the iPhone and Education
Ten years ago this month, Steve Jobs walked out onto the world’s stage and said “this is a day I’ve been looking forward to in 2.5 years” because of this “revolutionary product that absolutely changes everything.” I’m talking about the iPhone. And boy, did it change everything. Today, nearly 7 in 10 adults has a smart […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Podcasts in the Classroom: My Students
Author’s Note: This article is part 1 of using podcasts in the classroom and looks at my classes’ personal experiences with them. Part 2 of the article will focus on the benefits, uses, and tools of podcasts in the classroom. _________________________________________________________ In Spring 2016, my co-taught World Literature class sat furiously writing. On each desk […]
Posted inParents
Being a Teacher (but first, just being “Dad”)
About four years ago my wife called me at school and told me that our oldest daughter had gotten off the school bus crying. Walking up our 100 feet of driveway between the road and our door, she had her report card in one hand and was clearly trying to gather herself before getting to […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Report Finds Students Cannot Google and Reason at the Same Time
If you Google the explorer John Cabot, you could get a web page from the website All About Explorers that states: “In 1484, the explorerJohn Cabot moved back to England with his wife and eleven sons. He developed his own website and became quite famous for his charts and maps depicting a new route to the Far […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
An Alternative to Book Reports: Assessing Independent Reading
I am a huge advocate for student choice when it comes to reading, but one thing that people repeatedly ask me is: How do you assess and grade students’ independent reading if they are all reading different books? I’ve written before about how I don’t use Reading Logs, but rather Response Notebooks. I use response […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
[Podcast] What’s Best for Children: An Interview with Susan Ochshorn
During this episode, Franchesca Warren talks with Susan Ochshorn who for nearly two decades, Â has worked in a broad range of settings at the local, state, and national levels to bridge research, policy, and practice, to integrate ECE into the larger education reform conversation, and to catalyze social change. We started with a basic question- […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Book Review: ‘Play Like A Pirate’
I recently met teacher and author Quinn Rollins at the National Council for the Social Studies Conference earlier this month, and the session he led was on incorporating graphic novels into the classroom (you can read more about it in the link above). I’d be interested in teaching with graphic novels since Jeff Kinney’s first Diary of […]