It is Open House season! Every year at this time, teachers invite parents into classrooms to view student work, projects, and to share successes from the year. This year, spice it up a bit. By the time that parents get to the upper elementary grades, they have seen it all. All Open Houses will blend together … More 5 Ways To Use Technology at Open House
Many educators indicate that mastering classroom management is one of the most difficult parts of the profession. Teachers who struggle with poor classroom management skills will never get their students to learn at their highest potential. Their students are seen off task, talking to their friends, defiant, and disrespectful. These students are often assigned consequences … More 5 Ways to Decrease Disciplinary Issues in the Classroom
Conducting classroom walk-throughs (CWTs) is not a new concept. Educators have been walking through classrooms, gauging instructional practices for years. Unfortunately, CWTs are often conducted due to mandates from downtown and not from the internal desire to improve educational practices. Administrators go through the motions of walking through without the school getting the benefits of … More 5 Ways to Make Classroom Walk-Throughs More Powerful
As we come to the end of another year, it is time once again to think about the changes we will make in the next 12 months. The world of education is changing rapidly. However, there are still many areas that need to be addressed. Here are five educational practices we need to say goodbye … More 5 Educational Concepts We Need To Eliminate In 2017
Schools across the country are creating intervention plans for students. However, most of these plans fall short and are just mere shells of what they could and should be. Schools are spending thousands of dollars and wasting precious time implementing plans that simply do not work, further frustrating students, teachers and parents. Students are still … More 5 Ways to Create a Powerful Response to Intervention Plan
We often talk about the need to differentiate instruction to meet the diverse needs of students. Rarely, do we speak of differentiating teacher professional development to meet the diverse needs of teachers. Teachers, like their students, are in different places in their careers. They have different skills sets as well as different areas of strength … More 5 Ways to Differentiate Professional Development for Teachers
When working with English Learners, educators often hear such phrases as: Model. Watch your rate of speech and offer wait time. Use non-linguistic cues. Provide opportunities to build background knowledge. Have clear expectations and instructions. Check for understanding. Encourage development of home language. All valuable instructional strategies and key phrases that are often thrown about … More 7 Ways To Support English Language Learners
Assessments are useless unless you do something with the data. It is not enough to administer assessments to students and then create colorful graphs and charts that display the data. Data must be filtered down in order to see trends, outliers, areas of opportunity, and areas of strength. Overall all percentage numbers are just a … More Five Ways to Filter Assessment Data
The topic of homework is a hot button issue in education. Do we give it? Do we not? What do we give? How much? We all have read articles about children crying and fighting with their parents over homework. Homework should never lead to tears. If homework is to be assigned, then let it … More 5 Ways to Change Homework Practices Now
A 2015 National Center of Education Statistics survey on teacher attrition found that about 15% of all teachers leave the profession within five years. A 2015 NPR article states that nearly half of all teachers will leave the school they are currently at, with rates being higher in high-poverty schools. This rate of attrition is … More 5 Ways To Improve Teacher Retention
