After the energy and excitement of the first few months, fall and winter bring the annual challenge of maintaining student engagement. This precise point in the school year provides an opportunity for teachers to maintain critical student engagement through project-based learning (PBL), which allows for collaboration and student choice. Youki Terada powerfully conveys the value […]
Imagine this: You’re transitioning to a new lesson and suddenly your classroom is filled with bouncing legs and restless bodies. There’s chattering everywhere and irritating toys everywhere. It’s time to give the brain a break. It’s common knowledge that students need frequent breaks to stay focused and excited. However, during our so-called brain breaks, students’ […]
How do you and your students start the day? Some schools have a fairly short classroom or advisory period, but how students and teachers spend that time is open-ended. In other schools, students begin learning from the first bell of the day. As educators, we always want to maximize our instructional time, and there are […]
As educators, it’s imperative that we teach students how to stay safe online, especially with the rise of emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Generative AI. With rapidly evolving technological capabilities, it’s more important than ever to teach students about cybersecurity and online safety – topics that need to be discussed and explored […]
The rapid rise of generative AI has created challenges for me in assessing student work. It is becoming increasingly difficult to determine the extent to which students rely on tools such as ChatGPT in their writing. Using GPTZero, a colleague recently discovered that a student turned in a paper that was generated by ChatGPT. While […]
Giving feedback on academic or behavioral issues can be stressful for both students and teachers. However, there are ways to make the process feel supportive and affirming. Feedback is most effective in environments that emphasize caring, not just obedience. In classrooms where educators foster unconditional positive regard, or valuing and accepting each student as worthy […]
The overwhelming and sometimes overwhelming feelings are hard to control, especially for our youngest students. Over the past three years, many have experienced hardships – loss of loved ones, grief, loneliness, food and housing insecurity – and the effects of school continue. Of course, dealing with strong emotions and disorders in early elementary school is […]
One of the most important steps in the storytelling process is the first step: helping students decide which story to tell. Not only will this affect their engagement throughout the learning process, but it will also require them to think critically about their values and recognize the importance of paying attention to the world around […]
Five-gallon plastic drums make great buckets – inverted, the drums have a response head and a built-in resonator. Bucket drums can produce eight tones that correspond to the tones of a standard drum set. This versatility and low investment cost make bucket drums a fast-growing trend in music education – for music teachers who want […]
As a teacher, I am always looking for opportunities for my students to be exposed to the written word and challenged in their reading. I am also constantly looking for materials to develop literacy skills. It has always been a challenge for me to creatively and intentionally approach interactions with informational texts in my classroom, […]
