# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Replacement Skills Approach: Teaching Behavior Instead Of Managing It | Cult of Pedagogy

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Punishment only goes so far. What changes behavior long-term is viewing it through a skill lens, then teaching students the skills they need for real growth.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Executive functions: Early childhood learning trajectory

# data[].attributes.body
Using Artificial Intelligence to Craft High-Quality Lesson Plans

“Mitigating teacher workload is one of my core values as an instructional leader,” says Amir Taron Ayres in this Edutopia article. He remembers the countless hours he spent as a new teacher trying to write good lesson plans, and believes Gemini and other new chatbots can save teachers huge amounts of time as they create high-quality learning experiences for their students. From his current work supervising New Jersey ELA and social studies teachers, Ayres suggests the following steps to make the best use of AI. Click the article link below for his actual prompts and Gemini’s responses step by step.

• Reflect on the purpose of your lesson plan. This includes the curriculum standards, the academic needs of your students, and a lesson that is engaging, challenging, and effective.

• Use AI to unpack the curriculum standards and learning expectations. Ayres uses the ACDQ prompt: what the chatbot should act as, the context for the query, asking it to consider the lesson in some depth, and then asking the teacher questions. His prompt was for a 10th-grade ELA lesson in a unit on making an argument, argumentative texts, and argumentative writing. Gemini broke the lesson into three learning objectives: crafting precise claims, distinguishing claims, and organizing academic writing.

• Choose the goal you want to teach. Ayres prompted Gemini to revise the learning goals to ensure higher-order thinking based on Bloom’s taxonomy and measurability of knowledge, concept, and skill, focused on analyzing claims and counterclaims. Gemini responded with a revised set of goals reflecting the refined learning target.

• Use AI to provide options for assessment. Ayres prompted Gemini: “For each goal, think deeply and create a choice of three assessments per goal. Ask me any relevant questions including but not limited to my class, student demographics, reading proficiency levels, student disabilities, and languages spoken by students.” Gemini responded with three assessment options and six questions about student choice, technology access, collaboration, grading rubrics, assessment timeline, and specific examples of topics or issues that would be particularly engaging for this group of students. Ayres responded to each, and Gemini revised the assessments to reflect his preferences.

“Now that you have a great objective and aligned assessment,” Ayres concludes, “you can use AI to further assist in planning your instruction, or do that on your own. Rather than simply prompting the program to create the rest of the plan, think about each part of the lesson and tap your assistant when needed.”

“A Curriculum Supervisor’s Guide to AI-Assisted Lesson Planning” by Amir Taron Ayres in Edutopia, February 25, 2025

# data[].attributes.body
Principles of Effective Teaching

In their new online book, Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival, Tim Surma and co-authors from eight countries summarize research on the critical importance of background knowledge to successful student learning. The core idea: “It’s much easier to add new information to an organized set of existing knowledge than to start learning something completely new.” And this is not just memorizing a “bunch of facts,” they say. “Imparting specific shared knowledge in early grades is important for achieving high levels of citizen competence and high levels of equality and equity.”

In the book’s appendix, the authors address every teacher’s challenge: how to get key information into students’ long-term memories. They summarize what studies have found to be the most effective strategies for promoting “durable learning”:

-    Interest – Content is grounded in real-world issues of significance to students.

-    Test expectation – Students know there will be a final exam.

-    Coherence – Materials explicitly link concepts to each other and minimize distractions.

-    Segmentation – Complex new information is broken down into manageable chunks.

-    Prior knowledge – Relevant information stored in long-term memory is activated.

-    Dual code and multimedia – Words are accompanied by helpful images.

-    Multiple examples – Concrete representations and stories are provided and compared.

-    Worked examples – Step-by-step explanations present details of successful procedures.

-    Questioning and explaining – Students pose and answer deep-level questions.

-    Scaffolding – Support is adjusted to students’ needs and removed at mastery.

-    Deliberate practice – New knowledge and skills are gone over repeatedly.

-    Feedback – Students get information on how they are doing in real time.

-    Generative practice – Students produce explanations, outlines, summaries, drawings, answers, mind-maps from memory.

-    Retrieval practice – Students pull information from memory, which strengthens links.

-    Spaced practice – Learning sessions are spread out over time (versus cramming).

-    Interleaved practice – Practice sessions mix different knowledge and skills.

-    Self-regulated learning – Students get explicit instruction on understanding their cognitive processes and taking responsibility for their own learning.

Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival by Tim Surma, Claudio Vanhees, Michiel Wils, Jasper Nijlunsing, Nuno Crato, John Hattie, Daniel Muijs, Elizabeth Rata, Dylan Wiliam, and Paul Kirschner (Springer, 2025)

# data[].attributes.body
Getting Shy Students to Raise Their Hands in Class

In this American Educational Research Journal article, Lukas Mundelsee (Heidelberg University/University of Erfurt) and Susanne Jurkowski (University of Erfurt) make several observations about students’ oral participation in classrooms:

-    Worldwide, most class time consists of teachers’ questions and students’ answers.

-    Oral participation is predictive of student learning and academic achievement.

-    Therefore, creating opportunities for oral participation is an important teacher goal.

-    Students’ spoken answers give teachers real-time information on their progress.

-    Students’ responses allow teachers to praise good answers and correct mistakes.

-    Speaking in class allows students to think out loud and elaborate on their answers.

-    Teachers often call on students who raise their hands (versus cold-calling).

-    Students who raise their hands do better on tests, whether they are called on or not.

-    Only a handful of students raise their hands and participate orally on a regular basis.

-    One study found that one-third of students were silent and never raised their hands.

-    Shy students are especially reluctant to volunteer to speak in class.

-    Hand-raising is a “gateway” to student learning and achievement.

“Given the important role of oral participation within student learning and achievement,” say Mundelsee and Jurkowski, “the silent and passive in-class behavior of shy students causes them to miss important learning opportunities, and may explain their poor school attainments, even though they are no less intelligent.”

What is shyness? The authors define it as “a temperamental wariness in the face of social novelty and/or self-conscious behavior in situations of perceived social evaluation.” School is an especially problematic arena for shy children since being silent and passive deprives them of important learning opportunities. Teachers tend to mark shy students down, wrongly concluding they are uninterested and lack motivation. Unlike introverts and students who don’t care, shy students do want to engage, but hold back because they dread being the center of attention and making a mistake, and, if they give the right answer, fear classmates calling them a geek or nerd.

What can teachers do to encourage shy students to get more involved in class discussions? This is an especially important question for young adolescents, who are more sensitive to public embarrassment and peer disapproval. Mundelsee and Jurkowski conducted a study in German middle-school classrooms and identified six key variables:

• Student-teacher relationships – A positive bond between teachers and shy students can make students more willing to raise their hands and take part in class discussions. But there are two complicating factors: (a) if shy students believe the teacher understands and sympathizes, they might not raise their hands because they think the teacher won’t mind; and (b) if a shy student is seen as too close to the teacher, peers can react negatively toward a “teacher’s pet,” making it less likely shy students will speak up.

• Peer relationships – Perversely, the more popular shy students are with classmates, the less likely they are to volunteer in class. Mundelsee and Jurkowski believe this is because shy students don’t want to jeopardize their street cred by standing out as overachievers. Speaking up can also put them in direct competition with their classmates and be seen as “stealing the show.”

• Teacher’s wait time – How long a teacher pauses after asking a question encourages hand-raising by all students, including those who are shy. Mundelsee and Jurkowski speculate that there may be a sweet spot in wait time for shy students – not too short and not too long – because too little wait time pressures students to respond immediately and too long a pause might lead a shy student to ruminate about what the teacher is looking for and lay low.

• Cold and warm calling – Shy students dread being cold-called by teachers, and in classes where teachers do this a lot, students’ anxiety interferes with concentration and produces more wrong answers if they’re called on. Some teachers, aware of this dynamic, refrain from cold-calling shy students, but that, say Mundelsee and Jurkowski, risks reinforcing shy students’ never participating. Warm calling (allowing students to discuss a question with an elbow partner before being called on) should make things better for shy students, but this study didn’t find that to be true. The quality of teacher-student relationships was another variable in cold and warm calling, making it hard to draw clear conclusions.

• Class size – Not surprisingly, bigger classes make it less likely that shy students will raise their hands and participate, but it’s not clear that smaller classes will have the opposite effect. In a very small group – for example, seven students with positive relationships – shy students might be comfortable participating, but could also be more anxious about giving wrong answers or becoming the center of attention. Mundelsee and Jurkowski say more research is needed in this area.

• School subject – There wasn’t a clear finding across different middle-school subject areas. In one area (natural sciences) where shy students seemed to be raising their hands more often, other factors – teacher-student relationships, teacher personality, type of questions, wait-time, and cold-calling – made it impossible to draw a clear conclusion.

[These findings point to the importance of teachers moving away from calling on students who raise their hands and instead doing frequent checks for understanding with well-formulated “hinge-point” questions, using all-class response systems, and orchestrating small- and large-group discussions around students’ responses.  K.M.]

“Opening the Gateway to Oral Participation: Exploring Facilitative Contextual Factors in the Association Between Student Shyness and Hand Raising” by Lukas Mundelsee and Susanne Jurkowski in American Educational Research Journal, February 2025 (Vol. 62, #1, pp. 53-91)

# data[].attributes.headline
 How to Make Cold Calling Less Intimidating

# data[].attributes.subject
 How to Make Cold Calling Less Intimidating

# data[].attributes.body
How to Make Cold Calling Less Intimidating

In this Edutopia article, Youki Terada says cold calling has a mixed track record. When teachers call on students who haven’t raised their hands, it can get more students engaged and spark lively discussions, but it can also be seen by students as an ongoing gotcha, with anxiety overshadowing learning. Terada suggests how cold calling can be warmed up, helping teachers get feedback on how lessons are going, jump-start discussions, and get more students involved – including those who, for a variety of reasons, might not say anything.

• Focus on the effort, not the answer. Students will feel less intimidated by cold calling when it’s preceded by comments like, “This material is new, so I don’t expect you to have a perfect answer – I just want to hear your thinking on the topic” or “That’s a really good idea. Can anyone else build on it?”

• Offer a lifeline. As in the show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” students can “phone a friend,” ask the audience, or use a 50:50, choosing between two possible answers. One study found that giving students a chance to back out of a cold call cut down on anxiety.

• Use students’ names. Doing this in a friendly, welcoming manner, accompanied by eye contact and nodding, can make a cold call seem less like an interrogation and more of a genuine invitation to be part of the discussion.

• Build on what students know. If a student doesn’t seem to have the answer or is waffling, the teacher can rephrase the question, elicit a partial answer, and help them build on prior knowledge.

• Be mindful of your disposition. Teachers can sour the process by interrupting students’ responses, breaking eye contact or turning away, grimacing, or using an aggressive or condescending tone of voice.

• Call on groups. The teacher can divide the class into pairs or small groups, spreading out the responsibility for responding and allowing students to put their heads together to come up with high-level answers.

• Cast a wide net. Some teachers use equity sticks to randomly call on students, which keeps everyone on their toes, thinking about the answer, poised to contribute.

• Extend wait time. An effective way to improve the quality of students’ answers is to ask a good question and wait several beats before calling on a student. This gives everyone time to think, including slow-processing deep thinkers who will come up with great answers if they’re given a little more time.

“Does Cold Calling Work? Here’s What the Research Says” by Youki Terada in Edutopia, April 26, 2023

# data[].attributes.body
This brief article offers some good thoughts about rigor in classrooms.

# data[].attributes.body
Key Insights on During-the-Lesson Assessment of Student Learning

• Keep checks for understanding brief and frequent. “Delivering long blocks of direct instruction without stopping to assess can lead to big gaps in learning,” says Gonzalez. Better to inject formative assessments several times during a lesson. Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur saw game-changing gains in students’ achievement – especially their depth of understanding – when he began including several cycles of Question-Poll-Convince Your Neighbor-Consolidate in his classes.

• Plan “hinge” questions. Assessment guru Dylan Wiliam is an advocate of building in short, mid-lesson questions to check on whether students have grasped what’s been taught so far. A well-constructed hinge question (for example, tell which of these fractions is biggest: 4/5, 1/8, 2/2, 5/16) builds in common misconceptions and gives the teacher immediate feedback on how many students understand the concept or skill.

• Use a system that checks all students. Some teachers check for understanding by asking, “Any questions?” or having students  signal their level of understanding with thumbs-up, thumbs-sideways, or thumbs-down. These commonly used strategies often fail to reveal gaps in student understanding. Better to use high-tech polling (Kahoot, Plickers, or other digital polling programs) or low-tech approaches like small whiteboards or students responding to multiple-choice questions by holding one, two, three, or four fingers on their chests.

• Create a culture that normalizes mistakes. When formative assessments are low-stakes, students will take risks and explore their level of understanding without fear of negative consequences.

• Follow up on students’ responses. “Giving a formative assessment is pointless if we don’t do something in response to the results,” says Gonzalez. Some effective practices:

-    Telling students to “convince your neighbor” that their understanding is correct;

-    Reteach the concept to a small section of the class while other students work independently;

-    Have students visit learning stations that provide instruction for the different ways students may have misunderstood.

The key is prompt follow-up that directly addresses errors, misunderstanding, and confusion revealed by the formative assessment.

“5 Condition for Getting Formative Assessments Right” by Jennifer Gonzalez in Cult of Pedagogy, October 14, 2024

# data[].attributes.body
One teaching strategy that is a part of every lesson involves opportunities for students to respond (OTR).  An OTR is an instructional question, statement, gesture, or cue made by the teacher that invites an academic response from a student or students. OTR are at the heart of engagement, they decrease disruptive behavior, increase comprehension, maximize teaching and learning time, and allow for errors to be identified and corrected.  This might seem like a given but there is a craft to doing it well.  The idea is to be purposeful in the types of OTR provided so as to increase the number of students responding and the frequency in which they get to respond. Here is an example.  If a teacher asks a class a question and waits for students to raise their hands and then calls on a student, one student has had an opportunity to respond.  If that same teacher asked each student to write the answer on a whiteboard and then compare it with a neighbor, all students would have had two opportunities to respond in a short time.  Here is another.  A class is divided into groups to complete a test review.  In each group, one person answers a question. Then another person answers the next question.  In this scenario, more students are being given an opportunity to respond.  However, if each student answered each question and then the group discussed all the individual group member's answers every member of the class would be given many opportunities to respond over the course of the class.  As students consider a question or task and formulate a response, brain connections are made.  There are lots of ways to increase OTR. Here are a few examples:

Include choral responses for knowledge level questions.

Whiteboards

Finger voting

Cold calling- not calling on only those who raise hands

Quick writes

Cooperative structures

Exit tickets

Quick online surveys

Graphic organizers

Partner sharing

Pay special attention to students who are reluctant to respond.  They need scaffolding or other support.  In every class period, every student should have multiple opportunities to respond.  Elementary teachers have a variety of ways to monitor this.  At the secondary level, you may need to be more intentional. A class list where you can quickly add tally marks by names of students as they respond is one way to see how it is going.  In some classes 2 or 3 students monopolize responses and thus thinking.  Sometimes it's hard to shut down the eager responders. You might need to consider a guideline such as: three people have to respond after the last person who answered a question before he/she can respond again. In group settings, no one is allowed to answer until every other group member has contributed.

# data[].attributes.body
Authoring Tool (optional)
The Authoring Tool is available for Wyoming educators to build their own assessment items on the same platform as the statewide assessments. Refer to the Authoring User Guide for more information about how to create district, building, or classroom assessments in the Wyoming Authoring Tool.

# data[].attributes.body
PEAR Assessment offers a quick way to do formative or summative assessments. The database of questions is extensive. You can login through Clever.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Gathering Evidence of Student Achievement

# data[].attributes.body
These are materials from the mentoring training.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

# data[].attributes.body
Here is a summary of the PLC work expectations for this school year.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning

Engaging the fine motor system to produce letters by hand has positive effects on learning and memory

By Charlotte Hu

Handwriting notes in class might seem like an anachronism as smartphones and other digital technology subsume every aspect of learning across schools and universities. But a steady stream of research continues to suggest that taking notes the traditional way-with pen and paper or even stylus and tablet-is still the best way to learn, especially for young children. And now scientists are finally zeroing in on why.

A recent study in Frontiers in Psychology monitored brain activity in students taking notes and found that those writing by hand had higher levels of electrical activity across a wide range of interconnected brain regions responsible for movement, vision, sensory processing and memory. The findings add to a growing body of evidence that has many experts speaking up about the importance of teaching children to handwrite words and draw pictures.

Differences in Brain Activity

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

The new research, by Audrey van der Meer and Ruud van der Weel at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), builds on a foundational 2014 study. That work suggested that people taking notes by computer were typing without thinking, says van der Meer, a professor of neuropsychology at NTNU. "It's very tempting to type down everything that the lecturer is saying," she says. "It kind of goes in through your ears and comes out through your fingertips, but you don't process the incoming information." But when taking notes by hand, it's often impossible to write everything down; students have to actively pay attention to the incoming information and process it-prioritize it, consolidate it and try to relate it to things they've learned before. This conscious action of building onto existing knowledge can make it easier to stay engaged and grasp new concepts.

To understand specific brain activity differences during the two note-taking approaches, the NTNU researchers tweaked the 2014 study's basic setup. They sewed electrodes into a hairnet with 256 sensors that recorded the brain activity of 36 students as they wrote or typed 15 words from the game Pictionary that were displayed on a screen.

When students wrote the words by hand, the sensors picked up widespread connectivity across many brain regions. Typing, however, led to minimal activity, if any, in the same areas. Handwriting activated connection patterns spanning visual regions, regions that receive and process sensory information and the motor cortex. The latter handles body movement and sensorimotor integration, which helps the brain use environmental inputs to inform a person's next action.

"When you are typing, the same simple movement of your fingers is involved in producing every letter, whereas when you're writing by hand, you immediately feel that the bodily feeling of producing A is entirely different from producing a B," van der Meer says. She notes that children who have learned to read and write by tapping on a digital tablet "often have difficulty distinguishing letters that look a lot like each other or that are mirror images of each other, like the b and the d."

Reinforcing Memory and Learning Pathways

Sophia Vinci-Booher, an assistant professor of educational neuroscience at Vanderbilt University who was not involved in the new study, says its findings are exciting and consistent with past research. "You can see that in tasks that really lock the motor and sensory systems together, such as in handwriting, there's this really clear tie between this motor action being accomplished and the visual and conceptual recognition being created," she says. "As you're drawing a letter or writing a word, you're taking this perceptual understanding of something and using your motor system to create it." That creation is then fed back into the visual system, where it's processed again-strengthening the connection between an action and the images or words associated with it. It's similar to imagining something and then creating it: when you materialize something from your imagination (by writing it, drawing it or building it), this reinforces the imagined concept and helps it stick in your memory.

The phenomenon of boosting memory by producing something tangible has been well studied. Previous research has found that when people are asked to write, draw or act out a word that they're reading, they have to focus more on what they're doing with the received information. Transferring verbal information to a different form, such as a written format, also involves activating motor programs in the brain to create a specific sequence of hand motions, explains Yadurshana Sivashankar, a cognitive neuroscience graduate student at the University of Waterloo in Ontario who studies movement and memory. But handwriting requires more of the brain's motor programs than typing. "When you're writing the word 'the,' the actual movements of the hand relate to the structures of the word to some extent," says Sivashankar, who was not involved in the new study.

For example, participants in a 2021 study by Sivashankar memorized a list of action verbs more accurately if they performed the corresponding action than if they performed an unrelated action or none at all. "Drawing information and enacting information is helpful because you have to think about information and you have to produce something that's meaningful," she says. And by transforming the information, you pave and deepen these interconnections across the brain's vast neural networks, making it "much easier to access that information."

The Importance of Handwriting Lessons for Kids

Across many contexts, studies have shown that kids appear to learn better when they're asked to produce letters or other visual items using their fingers and hands in a coordinated way-one that can't be replicated by clicking a mouse or tapping buttons on a screen or keyboard. Vinci-Booher's research has also found that the action of handwriting appears to engage different brain regions at different levels than other standard learning experiences, such as reading or observing. Her work has also shown that handwriting improves letter recognition in preschool children, and the effects of learning through writing "last longer than other learning experiences that might engage attention at a similar level," Vinci-Booher says. Additionally, she thinks it's possible that engaging the motor system is how children learn how to break " mirror invariance " (registering mirror images as identical) and begin to decipher things such as the difference between the lowercase b and p.

Vinci-Booher says the new study opens up bigger questions about the way we learn, such as how brain region connections change over time and when these connections are most important in learning. She and other experts say, however, that the new findings don't mean technology is a disadvantage in the classroom. Laptops, smartphones and other such devices can be more efficient for writing essays or conducting research and can offer more equitable access to educational resources. Problems occur when people rely on technology too much, Sivashankar says. People are increasingly delegating thought processes to digital devices, an act called " cognitive offloading"-using smartphones to remember tasks, taking a photo instead of memorizing information or depending on a GPS to navigate. "It's helpful, but we think the constant offloading means it's less work for the brain," Sivashankar says. "If we're not actively using these areas, then they are going to deteriorate over time, whether it's memory or motor skills."

Van der Meer says some officials in Norway are inching toward implementing completely digital schools. She claims first grade teachers there have told her their incoming students barely know how to hold a pencil now-which suggests they weren't coloring pictures or assembling puzzles in nursery school. Van der Meer says they're missing out on opportunities that can help stimulate their growing brains.

"I think there's a very strong case for engaging children in drawing and handwriting activities, especially in preschool and kindergarten when they're first learning about letters," Vinci-Booher says. "There's something about engaging the fine motor system and production activities that really impacts learning."

A version of this article entitled "Hands-on" was adapted for inclusion in the May 2024 issue of Scientific American.

Charlotte Hu is a science and technology journalist based in Brooklyn, N.Y. She's interested in stories at the intersection of science and society. Her work has appeared in Popular Science, GenomeWeb, Business Insider and Discover magazine.

More by Charlotte Hu

This article was originally published with the title "Hands-on" in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 330 No. 5 (), p. 13
doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0524-13

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why Writing by Hand Is Better for Memory and Learning

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Engaging the fine motor system to produce letters by hand has positive effects on learning and memory

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Sharing Diigo Links and Resources (weekly) | Another EducatorAl Blog

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ditch the Detectors: Six Ways to Rethink Assessment for Generative Artificial Intelligence

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This article is based on a series of short LinkedIn posts and includes the original ideas, plus some of the feedback and discussion from the comments. Head over to my profile on LinkedIn to find th…

# data[].attributes.body
There are five videos. They are brief and well done. They provide a nice overview of AI in education.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Practical AI for Instructors and Students Part 1: Introduction to AI for Teachers and Students

# data[].attributes.body
Utilizing the power of physical presence in the classroom is one of the most underrated tools in the classroom management toolkit.  Often times you don’t need to stop what you are doing to utilize this skill, as you can continue to teach the lesson uninterrupted.  When using your physical proximity to students, they will often self-correct their own behavior.  (Teachers on Call)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Acceptable Use Policy for AI in the ELA Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Teachers of ELA classes will need to provide an Acceptable Use Policy for AI in the ELA Classroom. When school starts back up this is going to be essential for every ELA teacher to provide.

# data[].attributes.body
This is a pretty interesting article about sight word list updates. It also offers a good example of AI use to reinforce sight words.

# data[].attributes.body
A Tribute to Harry Wong

On February 20th, renowned writer and speaker Harry Wong died at 92. Here are some quotes from his book The First Days of School (with his wife Rosemary Wong) and other writings:

-    School is a concept wherein students are welcome to learn and enhance the quality of their lives without fear of intimidation or harm, guided by hospitable and caring people in a clean and orderly environment.

-    The most important day of a person’s education is the first day of school, not graduation day.

-    Greet your students at the door. What you do the instant the student enters the classroom communicates immediately if the student is welcome there.

-    It’s very reassuring to your students that you know what you are doing.

-    In an effective classroom students should not only know what they are doing, they should also know why and how.

-    The number one problem in the classroom is not discipline; it is the lack of procedures and routines.

-    A well-managed classroom is a task-oriented and predictable environment.

-    The effective teachers spent time organizing and structuring their classrooms so the students knew what to do to succeed.

-    Students like well-managed classes because no one yells at them and learning takes place.

-    Effective teachers spend the first two weeks teaching students to be in control of their own actions in a consistent classroom environment.

-    The three steps to teaching classroom procedures are (1) explain, model, or demonstrate the procedure; (2) rehearse and practice the procedure with your class; and (3) reinforce your students with praise and more practice until it becomes routine.

-    Do not stop teaching to give out a consequence.

-    Not all students complete their assignments, often because they either cannot understand the assignment or they fail to see the reason for doing it.

-    One of the greatest gifts a caring teacher can contribute to children is to help them learn to sit when they feel like running, to raise their hand when they feel like talking, to be polite to their neighbor, to stand in line without pushing, and to do their homework when they feel like playing. By introducing procedures in the classroom, you are also introducing procedures as a way of living a happy and successful life.

# data[].attributes.body
This is an interesting idea to help students know how much AI use is appropriate.

# data[].attributes.body
This site helps you generate AI prompts to use so you obtain the products you need.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
An AI prompt library is a comprehensive collection of pre-written prompts that can be fed to artificial intelligence (AI) models for a variety of educational purposes. This library is designed to provide teachers with a range of customizable prompts that can be used to save teachers countless hours of planning.

# data[].attributes.body
Teachers with high expectations don't accept "I don't know," but expect students to be engaged and "give it a shot." Teachers may need to coach some students a bit, but everyone knows that not answering isn't an option.

# data[].attributes.body
To check understanding, ask kids to write three different summaries: One in 10-15 words One in 30-50 words One in 75-100 words. The different lengths require different attention to details. Compare/ contrast with peers/ look at teacher model (via document camera.)

# data[].attributes.body
There are some great resources available here.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Joomla template for alumni and university - JA Alumni built with T3 Framework, fully responsive and integrates JA page Builder

# data[].attributes.body
This one has quite a cool developer for a student AI assistant among other options.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
AI-Powered Tutors and Learning Activities

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Raise your hand if any of these things have happened to you while in the classroom.

You gave an assignment only for half of your students to immediately decide they weren't going to do it.

You explained the directions for an assignment and a student asks if they could do something else instead.

You had to explain the directions of the assignment multiple times because it's obvious your students didn't pay attention the first time.

You are really excited about a creative activity you planned, and when a kid raises their hand to ask a question during your directions, you think they're pitching you an idea, but instead they ask to go to the bathroom. Then you quietly die inside.

Yeah... my arm is starting to hurt too. Let's call it penance for all of the times we created assignments our students thought were a waste of time.

The point is, student engagement is both the most important and most difficult part of creating a new activity. How can you possibly engage a class of 30 unique students with only one activity? The trick is... don't give one activity. Instead, give a choice board.

Using choice boards to maximize student engagement

A choice board is a collection of activities that students can choose from in order to obtain the same content knowledge, while utilizing different skills. This can be assigned for one class period, or across several. For example, if trying to teach the process of how a bill becomes a law, students can choose to read an article, watch a video, or take part in a simulation you hold within a small group. From there, students can then prove they learned the content by either writing a detailed summary, making an illustration or infographic, or creating a performance to demonstrate the process. Naturally, students with different interests will gravitate towards different activities, and every student will at most love that they got to use the skills they wanted to, or at least, be able to say they chose their activity.

When creating your own choice board, there are two styles to consider: tic-tac-toe and menu.

The tic-tac-toe choice board

The tic-tac-toe style choice board is great for younger grades, but it can also be used in any grade level. The premise is simple. Create a 3×3 board with different activities in each space. A student would choose three activities in a row to complete. Below is an example of a tic-tac-toe style choice board made for middle school ELA students.

Notice how there are activities that would engage different learning styles, while each activity maintains some kind of rigor. Some are easier than others, but generally an easier one is in the same row, column, or diagonal as a more difficult one. You can, of course, arrange your spaces however you think would be best for you students.
Here is a tic-tac-toe template for Google Doc you can use to create your own.
The menu choice board

The menu style choice board is perfect for older students. With this kind of choice board, students are given multiple sections where they select one activity within each section, just like you would order from a menu - one appetizer, one entree, and one dessert.

To truly engage your students, menus can also have a theme that relates to what students care about. Maybe they need to fill positions on a sports team, collect items to build a set, or play the role of a super villain trying to assemble a very powerful glove (your students would get the reference if you missed it). The point is, be creative! For older students, this is where you can foster some buy-in for the activities. Below is an example of the menu style choice board for high school history students.

Notice how the theme runs throughout the choice board. This way, students not only have the ability to choose based on the activities they prefer, but if in doubt, they can brag to their friends about the Dream Team they made. Or, listen to what your students are talking about in the classroom, and then use that as your theme.
Here is a menu template for Google Docs you can use to create your own.
With either style, creating these choice boards can be done easily with Google Docs or Microsoft Word. You can add images, videos, links to send students to particular websites (like YouTube, Newsela, or Pixton Comics), or even create links to the different activities.

To learn how to create these choice boards from scratch, check out our professional learning videos on OTIS for educators.

Now you have an activity that will engage all of your students and will surely be worth your students' time.

For more tips, tricks, and tools for teaching in and out of the classroom, check out more articles on the Teq Talk blog.

We also offer virtual professional development, training, and remote learning support for educators with OTIS for educators. Explore the technology, tools, and strategies that can spark student success - no matter where teaching or learning are happening.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How can you possibly engage a class of 30 unique students with only one activity? The trick is, don't give one activity, give a choice board.

# data[].attributes.body
This is a good example of how AI can help generate extension ideas.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ten Minute Team Tip – Making Tiered Task Cards with ChatGPT

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In this ten-minute team tip, I introduce viewers to Tiered Task Cards — a strategy for creating activities leveled by DOK for students to complete. Then, I show viewers how they can use ChatG…

# data[].attributes.body
In Stephen Covey's Seven Habits book, he makes a strong case that it is worth the time it takes to sharpen the saw. You can cut more wood with a sharp saw.

Sharpening the saw is a metaphor for enhancing your yourself. In the context of professional reading, sharpening the saw means taking time to read and learn new things that will help you grow professionally. It’s about staying up-to-date with the best practices in education and continuously upgrading skills and knowledge. Professional reading invites reflection, improvement, and change.  It also can validate current practices.  It feeds a growth mindset and invites sharing with colleagues.  Professional reading also keeps us looking through the lens of learners which can make us better teachers.

Making and taking time to sharpen the saw through professional reading will pay large dividends.

# data[].attributes.body
This is the start to a document that will summarize what mastery teaching encompasses.

# data[].attributes.body
Dipsticks: So-called alternative formative assessments are meant to be as easy and quick as checking the oil in your car, so they’re sometimes referred to as dipsticks. These can be things like asking students to:

write a letter explaining a key idea to a friend,

draw a sketch to visually represent new knowledge, or

do a think, pair, share exercise with a partner.

Your own observations of students at work in class can provide valuable data as well, but they can be tricky to keep track of. Taking quick notes on a tablet or smartphone, or using a copy of your roster, is one approach.

# data[].attributes.body
Free use for teachers.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
MagicSchool.ai - AI for teachers - lesson planning and more!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Join over a million teachers saving hours of time using the #1 AI Platform for Education, MagicSchool, to help lesson plan, differentiate, write assessments, write IEPs, communicate clearly, and more!

# data[].attributes.body
Be consistent, insistent, and persistent

Once you’ve established your rules and behavior management plan, stick with it, every single day. When you tell kids to stop talking and get back to work, but you don’t follow through, you are effectively telling them it doesn’t matter that much. This can lead to teachers raising their voices and saying things they regret. You don’t have to be mean—you just have to mean it. (Weareteachers.com)

# data[].attributes.headline
Useful Sites for Teachers From Adrienne Turner

# data[].attributes.subject
Useful Sites for Teachers From Adrienne Turner

# data[].attributes.body
https://lead4ward.com/playlists/

https://lead4ward.com/docs/instructional_strategies/playlist_2023_24.pdf

https://www.magicschool.ai/

# data[].attributes.body
Think-Pair-Share (TPS) is a cooperative learning activity that can work in varied size classrooms and in any subject. Instructors pose a question, students first THINK to themselves prior to being instructed to discuss their response with a person sitting near them (PAIR). Finally, the groups SHARE out what they discussed with their partner to the entire class and discussion continues. Students get time to think critically, creating a learning environment that encourages high quality responses (Rowe, 1972). TPS provides an opportunity for students to work in groups toward a common goal, increasing their own and others’ understanding in a safe environment to make mistakes (Johnson & Johnson, 1999).

# data[].attributes.body
Wait time refers to two specific practices where instructors deliberately pause. First, wait time 1 constitutes a 3-5 second pause between asking a question and soliciting an answer. Second, wait time 2 is a 3-5 second pause after a student response. This time provides students with time to think about the question and develop a response, either to the instructor’s question or a peer’s response. As a result, more students may be willing to answer the question and responses may be more thoughtful. While this deliberate pause sounds simple to implement, many instructors have been habituated to resist any silence in the classroom and may find it surprisingly difficult to enact this pause.