Teaching

Scaffold for Individual and Group Success

Supporting students’ cognitive development. As a first year teacher in a seventh grade classroom, I had several experiences that made me question my practice, try new strategies, and learn from my students. One particular problem seemed to reappear frequently throughout the year: students seemed to understand content during whole-class work, but then had difficulty transferring

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How can teachers help students become more self-aware?

This is part 1 of 5 in “Mentor Me” questions about Social and Emotional Learning (SEL). There are five components of SEL: Self-Awareness, Responsible Decision–Making, Relationship Skills, Social Awareness, and Self-Management. Classrooms where teachers both overtly and organically teach these crucial skills help students develop essential skills and dispositions. Like many teachers, I post a “daily

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Throw Out Your History Textbook

A case for primary source analysis. Jay Leno: Debbie, where you from? Debbie: South. South San Francisco. Jay Leno: South San Francisco. OK, and you’re a citizen of the United States? Debbie: I sure am. Jay Leno: Born here? Debbie: Sure was. Jay Leno: What country did we fight in the Revolutionary War? Debbie: [Pause] France. Jay Leno: What does the Emancipation Proclamation mean What

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Talking Tech for the PBL Classroom

Project Based Learning (PBL) is an instructional model that encourages active participation of students throughout the learning process. The Buck Institute describes PBL as, “a teaching method in which students gain knowledge and skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to an authentic, engaging, and complex question, problem, or challenge” (http://www.bie.org/about/what_pbl).

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We Have to Prepare Students for the Next Level, Don’t We?

Some universities blame the poor academic performance of their young adult students on the poor quality instruction they think students received in high schools. High schools blame the middle schools, middle schools blame elementary schools, and elementary schools blame their students’ gene pool. It is stunning how similar their commentaries are to those recorded by

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