window.addEventListener('LPLeadboxesReady',function(){LPLeadboxes.addDelayedLeadbox('w5B9CVVpZM3VM42aCMGWwh',{delay:'5s',views:0,dontShowFor:'3d',domain:'thescienceduo.lpages.co'});}); Let’s get right down to business. As a teacher, you are constantly searching for tools to help engage ALL of your students within your daily lessons. Unfortunately, many of you are also often faced
At the time of writing this article, Alexander ‘The Great’ Volkanovski has just lost his UFC Featherweight title after a long reign as champion. Like many other sporting superstars, we look at how these athletes handle their success and… importantly, how come back from failures and setbacks. This article will explain how I integrate character strengths with contemporary athletes into physical education lessons. Providing learning that develops the individual as a whole and not just their physical capabilities.
Dive into our comprehensive guide exploring various assessment methods designed to enhance your teaching strategies
Echolalia- Learn strategies for your Autism classroom. What echolalia is and how to reduce it with activities to decrease repetitive speech or non-authentic communication.
Teaching from a textbook or singular source can often leave the impression on our students that history is one-sided. After years of this indoctrination to history, our students are blind to the truth about history. It becomes a battle at the secondary level to teach students that there are always multiple perspectives, and that history […]
Hi everyone, Lots of you, on Facebook and Instagram, have asked me about my centers. Today, I'm here to show you my daily center routine. I should tell you
Make learning engaging with these 50 teaching tips, ideas, and techniques to engage students in your elementary classroom.
In our classrooms, students have the most important voices, but sometimes that is forgotten. This post shares 42 ways to amplify student voices.
Autonomy: the power to be independent and free; freedom from external control or influence.
Are you taking the leap into the wild and wonderful world of teaching elementary science? Congratulations! 🎉 From making science notebooks your best friend to transforming your classroom into a curiosity-filled lab (minus the lab rats), we’ve got tips and tricks that even Albert Einstein would high five us for! Ready to become the next superhero ... Read more
All students can benefit from learning and practicing executive functions. This 5-step system makes it possible without taking time away from class.
Difficult students provide the greatest challenge for most teachers. Learn just seven rules to transform them into valuable members of your classroom.
Behavior Reflections Sheet Morning Work Sheet Observation and Inference Activity This activity will allow the kids to be investigators for the day. They will be using their observation and inference powers to solve three different cases. Exit Slip Hopefully these will help me keep track of what knowledge my students are bringing to the lesson and what aspects of the lesson may not have been clear. Parent Contact Log Sheets
Want your students to actively engage in addressing inequality? Explore this annotated bibliography of resources for teaching students about social justice.
Save your voice for better things...like actual teaching.
I have a quick and simple tip for you today. Another teacher gave me this tip a few years ago and I love it! (I wish I remembered who gave me this tip and where they got the idea from so I could give the credit.) Do you ever start to give directions and you ... Read More about A quick classroom management tip
Use the jigsaw teaching strategy to engage your students and give them more ownership of their learning. Try it in your classroom.
This collection of tricks to remember students’ names is perfect for helping you get to know your new students and begin to build a great rapport with them.
Looking for ideas for teaching the Pythagorean Theorem? I’m so excited to share with you some of my favorite activities for this topic. This is one of my favorite things to teach all year, and
Use this lesson to help students understand how to find the THEME of their stories (the lesson the author wants us to learn) by giving characters advice, and turning that advice into "You should...." to help determine theme. This product is the first lesson (PART 1) and Part 2 can be found on my TpT p...
Discover step-by-step strategies, personalized examples on how to write behavior goals, and real-life examples to navigate the world of behavior goals with confidence. From identifying specific behaviors to crafting measurable and achievable goals, this resource provides insights for both seasoned educators and those new to the classroom. Foster a positive learning environment. Dive into the art of behavior goal-setting today!
HyperDocs make room for more interactive, personalized, and student-directed learning. Let's look at how they work.
Tackling vocabulary instruction in any classroom is a complex challenge. Add in students who function above or below the mean, and suddenly trying to meet everyone's vocabulary needs can feel pretty daunting! If you've ever felt overwhelmed by trying to figure it all out, you're not alone. I feeeeel ya! It took me some time, but over the years, I feel like I ended up with a sort of "system" of differentiated vocabulary instruction that worked really well for both me and my students. In the next few posts, I'd like to take you through my complete setup. In the Series... We'll start here with pre-assessment, and move on to instructional strategies here. Next up is independent learning activities, as well as some formative and summative assessment strategies used to measuring student growth. There are so many fun and simple things you can do with vocabulary instruction, I can't wait to share my ideas with you! I hope you'll join me as I spell it all out. If you have any questions along the way, free to leave it in a comment for me at the bottom of the post or send an email to me: [email protected] I would love to hear from you! First Things First Before I go around passing out new lists of words to my class, I spend time on something super important: FINDING OUT WHAT STUDENTS ALREADY KNOW! Ahh, sorry to shout at you there, but it's something that is SO important to me as an educator of any student, but especially gifted and talented learners who may come to you already knowing up to 80% of what you're planning to teach on any given day. There are many ways to quickly pre-assess. It can be as simple or as involved as you like. KWL charts, concept maps, graffiti walls, and formal pretests with multiple choice or short-answer prompts are some of the ways to check on students' prior knowledge. {Want to know more about this? Pop on over to this post here for more detailed information about pre-assessing student knowledge, including explanations for twelve different ways to do it.} My preferred method for pre-testing vocabulary is having students self-rate their knowledge of the word list. This is a research-based strategy credited to several authors (Blachowicz, 1986; Young et al. 2002, and Stahl & Bravo, 2010). The Self-Ratings Scale With a self-ratings scale, students are presented with the words and are asked to rate their knowledge and understanding of the words on a spectrum. It makes SO much sense if you think about your own understanding of words. Some words you have seen a zillion times, used them in your everyday vernacular, and could teach someone else about them in your sleep. Other words you may have seen and been able to infer the meaning in context enough to get by, and some words are completely new to you and you have approximately zero ideas of what they mean. Truly, we are the only ones who know the depth of our own understanding, so why not use this to our advantage in the classroom, and trust that students can be empowered to do the same kind of self-reflecting? Using a self-ratings scale can be done very informally using a fist to five-finger rating, with zero fingers up (fist) reflecting that a student has never heard or seen the word, all the way to a five-finger rating, meaning the student knows the word and it's definition and can teach it to someone else/use it in a meaningful sentence. For me, though, I like having a paper record of which words students are familiar with, and which ones are not known as well. It's nice for me to hang on to for my records, and it's fun for students to see their own growth before/after the unit. For the paper version, students are presented with a word (or words) and then they take a moment to reflect on their current understanding of the word. Then they give themselves a rating--this can either be done with a number scale or on a chart. Ratings range from students never having seen the word, to seeing it before but not really knowing what it means, to seeing it and being able to define it, to knowing it so well that they can both define the word and use it in a meaningful sentence. When students indicate knowing the word, it's meaning, and the ability able to use it effectively in a sentence, I do prefer them to prove it by defining the word and using it in a sentence so that I can judge whether they truly know the word or not. However, if we were ever short on time (who isn't?!), I developed a quick color-coding system for students to use. With their highlighters, students marked words with red (or pink), yellow, and green to indicate how well they knew each word. If they didn't know it well enough to define and use the word, it was highlighted red, if they kind of knew it and/or could figure it out in context, they marked it yellow, and if they 100 percent understood and could use the word, they colored it green. Words rated red or yellow or marked below 4 or 5 (students being able to define and use words in a sentence) became the targeted words they were responsible for learning during that vocabulary cycle. You can make your own ratings sheet or develop your own system, but if you're short on time, feel free to check out the one in my free resource library by clicking the image above or click here for your copy. *Just to be clear, by clicking to get the freebie (and instant access to the growing collection of free resources in my library of subscriber exclusives), you're also agreeing to be added to my email list, where I'll send occasional messages with fresh ideas, tips, and other resources straight to your inbox. You can unsubscribe at any time.* You may be thinking that students might try fib a little on these self-ratings scales so that they have fewer words to study. I'm sure someone might try it, but because students knew that they were really only hurting their own learning, in the end, I really never had a problem with it. Thanks so much for stopping by today! You can find the next post in the series here. Don't forget--if you have a question or comment, feel free to leave it for me below. I love hearing from you! SaveSaveSaveSave
Properties of logarithms can be tricky for students in Algebra 2 and teachers. I love using activities to teach logs and this post explains how I teach them to my kids!
Will you be teaching Wonder by R.J. Palacio in your curriculum? This post describes how I taught it to my 6th grade English langauge arts class.
I’m not going to get into the nitty gritty of what ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is. If you are reading this post there is an excellent chance you already know what it is because you are dealing with it in your classroom. I’m also going to go out on a limb and assume that […]
Use our blog on Teaching Internet Safety to Students for useful advice on the things you can do to keep your students safe, happy, and healthy online.
Improving Spelling for Students with Dyslexia
If you think I have the answers here, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. I'm far from having any answers.
The ability to ask for and receive your students’ attention is crucial. It’s crucial because it saves precious learning time. It improves listening and performance. It allows you to give instruction anytime you need to and know that it will be heard and understood. ... Read more
How can I help my child be better at following directions? For many kids, following even the simplest of instructions can be a daily struggle.
This model and template will help college, high school, and middle school teachers put together a syllabus that sets you and your students up for a great year.
By middle school most students are self-proclaimed "bad at math." Teach perseverance in math using our guest blogger's advice. Students CAN be good at math!
Advice from three ESL teachers on the things regular classroom teachers can do to help English language learners thrive in mainstream classrooms.
We all know and love Kahoot, right? If you do not know about Kahoot then we have a few blog posts with tips and ideas to get you up to speed.( here and here.) I LOVE how engaged and excited my students are when we play Kahoot. I LOVE that my students do amazing on my tests if we play Kahoot to review. But...what I don't love is how off-the-chains-crazy they get! I know they're having fun but it gets insane! I also don't enjoy the technology issues that go along with any lesson like this, students get kicked out in the middle of the game, it takes too long to log in, and not everyone has a device in my classroom. Unless you are a 1:1 school (I'm so jealous!) then it is hard to have devices for everyone to play along. Sometimes I really just want to use Kahoot as a formative assessment to see what my students actually know about a topic we have been studying, and not have them act like crazy people. So I came up with the paper Kahoot response system. All you have to do is use the game pin and log on with one student device (I actually just use my phone!) Then pass out the templates. If you already have them folded it works best. Then demonstrate to students how they will show you their answer. I love doing it that this way, the student can kind of cup the answer and not show it around to everyone but you. By playing Kahoot like this, it's actually a little calmer because they are trying to get the correct answer, not just just trying to be first. And you actually can scan the room to see who has it correct. Click on the template (on the right) and you can download it for FREE! I usually try to change things up in my room and not do it the same way every time. Sometimes, I just let them be crazy people! Do you love Kahoot? Pin for later....
Subscribe to the Teach 4 the Heart Podcast.It was a great day when I discovered 4 magic words that just seem to dissolve tension and eliminate at least half of the arguments in my classroom.And those words are: "You're not in trouble."Students can be so defensive, can't they? (and let's be honest,
Frustrated with peer revision? Not sure why your students are struggling to provide meaningful feedback? Check out these tips for making peer revision work!
Corkboard Connections is a blog written by Laura Candler who enjoys connecting terrific teachers with amazing resources!
