On this blog, I tend to post about a lot of ideas that I find, and some readers don’t always get a chance to know if I ever tried them – or if they were complete flops. This week, I want to feature a few past ideas that I did try and that were successful … Read more
I’ve had many failures this year (which I will be outlining in some near future posts, I promise), but one message I definitely seemed to get across to my students was that I am done with ho-hum slide presentations that make everyone yawn. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the awesome presentation that some … Read more
One of my favorite new blogs to follow is Sonya Terborg’s. Every time I read a new post from her, I feel like we are kindred spirits. Recently, she wrote an article called, “Teaching Without a Plan…What???” in which she addressed how we, as teachers, can approach being “the guide on the side”. I think … Read more
According the the above website, “PechaKucha is a presentation format for creative work originally devised in 2003 by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein-Dytham Architecture in Tokyo, Japan. The name derives from a Japanese term for the sound of conversation or chit-chat.” I first heard about Pecha Kucha from some of my fellow G.T. … Read more
Teach with Tournaments is a curriculum written by Josh Hoekstra, and was recently featured in a blog entry by William Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education. I highly recommend that you read William Bennett’s blog entry, as it gives a very good summary of the idea successfully used by Mr. Hoekstra with his U.S. History students. I … Read more
If you are trying to allow some of your students who are reading at a higher level to work independently, you might find these literature units helpful. There are only 6, but they include discussion guides written with Bloom’s Taxonomy in mind. Another great thing about these materials is that they were created by students. … Read more