What do the sculpture of Abe Lincoln, the Grand Canyon, and the ancient pyramids have in common? Well, someone familiar with geology sees granite, volcanic rock, limestone, and the Earth over millions of years–in other words, rocks. You can’t throw a rock without hitting another rock; they’re everywhere! Rock creates and shapes the Earth’s landscape. It forms our magnificent mountains, shapes the deepest oceans, and safely separates us from the boiling magma beneath our feet.…
For many teachers, building relationships is a priority in the classroom – they put in time and effort to incorporate strategies into lesson plans and daily routines to forge bonds with their students. But what happens when there’s a breakdown in communication or a relationship degrades over time due to conflict or disagreements? Developing a relationship is one skill; repairing that relationship when it becomes fractured is another, according to author and high school history…
Number sense is so innate to many adults that they may not remember being taught such skills, but it is crucial to mastering more complex math skills like manipulating fractions and decimals or solving equations with unknown variables, experts say. Research shows that a flexible understanding of numbers is strongly correlated to later math achievement and the ability to solve problems presented in different ways. Unlike the recent surge of evidence on science-based reading instruction,…
During the height of the pandemic, Christina Scheffel, a high school English teacher in Delaware, was desperate for ways to get students engaged in her presentation. As a solution, she started adding embellishments to her slide presentation, including cactus themed slides with cactus borders, font, and arrows. “Every single cactus emoji that I could find got put somewhere on these slides, and I really did think it was a way to bring some joy into…
Inclusive education is a practice that strives to create learning spaces in which all students are given the opportunity to learn alongside their peers. In special education, this means designing learning experiences and instructional strategies that provide access to content for all children with disabilities. This practice works best when it is tailored to the individual needs of each student. While many students with disabilities receive special education services in special education programs and classes,…
Teaching contemporary poetry can feel cumbersome or uncertain. Squinting into its bright light to find meaning—Is that what it could mean? Is that what it does mean?—is an act of curious vulnerability. There is a growing movement to stay with this vulnerability, both with ourselves and with our middle school and high school students. The Teach Living Poets movement invites us and our students to sit in the thrill of new poems in order to…
Ten years ago, Roy F. Smith, an English teacher at Round Rock High School in Texas, was inspired by the idea of putting a text under a microscope while reading “The Art of X-Ray Reading” by Roy Peter Clark. Smith, who has been teaching for 24 years, developed what he calls “spotlight reading,” a quick activity used at the start of class to get students to engage with written language without worrying about a grade.…
Teachers and parents can often forget what it’s like to be a student learning information for the first time. Many factors influence student retention, but “the more you know, the easier it is to learn new things,” said Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. When children learn new information, their ability to take in that information is informed by their prior knowledge of a related topic. However, when students lack…
What are human rights? It’s a question more and more kids are starting to ask as they see adults around them sporting “women’s rights are human rights” t-shirts and hear people on the news talking more and more about social justice issues. December presents a perfect time to talk about this challenging topic with our students and bring some relevant activities for kids into the classroom — after all, it’s Universal Human Rights Month. Add…
A word wall is a visible display in a classroom that features a collection of words that the students are currently studying. Word walls can focus on high-frequency words, word study examples, academic language, or words that are being introduced in classroom content. They can be used to support phonics, spelling, vocabulary, comprehension, writing, and more. Word walls have long been a useful strategy for helping younger students process words over the duration of the…
