How can teachers create more success in the classroom? Teachers everywhere clamor for the answer to this question in the face of increasingly higher demands on state assessments. In interviews with various teachers, Nieto (2003) revealed that caring will change the behavior of students. Further, Kottler, Kottler, and Zehm (2005) note that the teachers who […]
effective teaching
Posted inAsk a Teacher
Increasing Student Engagement through Belongingness and Cognitive Rigor
As a middle school teacher, the battle to gain and then hold the attention of students in the classroom is hard won. According to Christensen, Fulmer, Kackar-Cam, Trucano, and Turner (2014), middle school is when lack of engagement increases for many students. As a consequence for this disengagement, students will begin to exhibit disruptive behaviors, […]
Posted inClassroom Management, Featured
Why Emotions Matter in the Classroom
A teacher’s job is about more than just knowledge of content area. At times, it seems that so much of what we do every day has more to do with teaching social skills and everyday life skills than what our subject matter. Is it a waste of time to focus on the emotional well-being of the […]
Posted inFeatured, Instruction & Curriculum, Opinion
How to Stop Zombie Students Dead in Their Tracks
Last week, I wrote about how disengaged students are like zombies. It’s scary how quickly the epidemic of disengaged, zombie students spreads when you don’t take appropriate steps to prevent it, but thankfully there are measures you can take to bring your students back to life without creating a mob. Prevention Imagine a classroom where […]
Posted inClassroom Management, Featured, Opinion
10 Ways Disengaged Students are like Zombies
With all the zombie flicks out there today, I’ve started to become enthralled with the concept of zombies. I mean, how does a zombie epidemic start anyway? If you watch the movies and television shows out there, you’ll see that multiple theories exist for how zombies might come about, but there’s no research on it or how […]
Posted inFeatured, Instruction & Curriculum, Mathematics
Word Walls In Math? But, Why?
When I told my students that we would have a word wall in our class, they looked puzzled. “A word wall?” “I never heard of having a word wall in math class before.” “Huh?” I pointed their attention to the words we had already gone over and said that the wall would grow throughout the […]
Posted inFeatured, Middle School
Teachers: Lift Yourself Up Instead Of Beating Yourself Down
I’m moving into my 20th year of teaching. Two decades. I feel effective. I feel like I can pinpoint character traits, learning styles, academic issues and self-esteem challenges within minutes of meeting a child. I feel like my students love school, demonstrate learning and retain material within a high margin, and if you go off […]
Posted inFeatured, Literacy, Special Education
5 Strategies to Help the Struggling Readers in the Special Education Setting
Everywhere you look, it seems a new program has sprung up to help the struggling reader in the classroom. More and more children, it seems, get referred for special education services because of reading deficits. So what can you do in the classroom to help? You could ask your RTI specialist, your special education teacher, […]