When my Principal mentioned that we would start the move towards Standards-Based grading next year, all I saw were looks of horror on most teachers’ faces. Look, I get it. Change is hard. Super hard. Among all the other tasks teachers are charged with, adding another just seems… impossible. But I also believe that change […]
classroom strategies
Using Experts in My Classroom
When I think about using experts in the classroom, I think about an experience my fourth graders had last year. It was roughly a month into the school year. We had built a community of learning, but at the same time, we were still working on certain fundamentals like listening respectfully to the speaker. But […]
Chromebook Conundrum: The Pros and Cons of Going Digital
This school year is the first year my school has gone one-to-one with students and electronic devices. During the first week of school, each student was given their own Chromebook to use in school and at home. A lot of exciting changes are happening, as teachers transition their classrooms from paper and pen to completely […]
The Novels I Use to Teach Secondary English
The Novels I Use to Teach Secondary English There are lots of wonderful things about teaching high school English. One of those is that I get to use a lot of fun novels to help my students reach the standards they need to achieve. To make it fun, I tried to pick a wide variety […]
Why I Create a Class Motto
Why do I spend several lessons during my first weeks of school creating a class motto? There’s so much to do. Students need to learn rules, routines, and procedures. There’s the beginning of the year assessments. And the curriculum isn’t waiting. Still, despite these many pressures, I find it worthwhile to take two or three […]
I No Longer Want to Be Professionally Developed Due to Brain Overload
I love conferences. I always have, and now that I’m working in education, I love them even more. My background is in history and archaeology, so there was always a lot of them. You would prepare research, or just go and listen to what other people in the field were doing. Plus, it was always […]
Positive Reinforcement: When Do We Want It? NOW
While I realize that effective classroom management is essential to effective teaching and learning, I sometimes worry that we educators over-do it. Are we failing to inspire a basic desire to do the right thing? Do we really need to hand out prizes for making it to school every day and not acting like an […]
Getting my Struggling Readers to Thrive in the Content Areas
How do you get your struggling reader to succeed in the content areas? This was my dilemma as a fourth-grade teacher. I was frustrated for my struggling students. They experienced failure in almost every class because they struggled in literacy. I worked hard over the years to get every student to meet my objectives. With text […]