Grading your gradebook: reconsidering grading methods to improve student outcomes
For many teachers, summer has commenced, while for others such as myself, the beginning of a school year is right around the corner. I’ve seen so many teachers on various social media sites using their summer to plan for new and exciting things they want to do the next school year – new labels, bulletin […]
5 types of data you must collect to move your students forward
The beginning of the school year is probably right around the corner for you. You might be thinking about how you want to decorate your classroom, looking for back-to-school activities and getting-to-know-you ideas, and making copies of your syllabus. You may meet with your school and/or department prior to that first day, and then proceed […]
7 reasons why your students won’t do their assignment
Picture this: you’ve planned out the perfect unit, and today is when students really need to buckle down and get down to work. You disseminate the assignment, give the students directions, and send them off to learning land. While 30 sets of heads hover over their worksheet, you notice one looking out the window. Another […]
Your feedback to your students isn’t working…here’s how to fix it.
Have you ever labored over grading assignments, and find that your students keep making the same mistakes every time, even after you reteach it? Do you take the time to write thoughtful feedback, only to learn that your students never read any of it? Are you able to identify where students are struggling, but feel […]
6 foundations of teaching to focus on in your first year
I’ll bet that some of you are reading this blog post in an attempt to distract yourself from the crushing amount of work you need to do. Perhaps it’s 10:00 PM, and you still don’t know what you’re teaching tomorrow. Even worse, it’s now 11:00 PM, you don’t know what you’re teaching tomorrow, and you […]
Why effective lesson planning leads to good classroom management
The average teacher probably handles classroom management and lesson planning as separate entities. I know I do, especially since it seems like once you have your classroom management plan in place, you just have to worry about enforcing it. This leaves open the mental space to tackle everything else involved with teaching. I was recently […]
How to plan a lesson that will keep your students engaged and on-task
As a beginning teacher mentor, I have the privilege of helping our future educators wrap their brains around the many components of teaching. This requires me to get my own brain back into what it felt like to start out – the details I would miss, what I struggled the most with, and the mistakes […]
Does using tech in your teaching make you a better teacher?
Many schools across the world have been given the gift of technology. While tech in classrooms is nothing new (I mean, we had computers back in MY day), the scale and magnitude of its deployment has transformed the way many of us teach. Quite a few classrooms have adopted a 1-to-1 model where every student has […]
