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Carousel: A Dive Into The Evidence (Part 1): Retrieval Practice

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Carousel: A Dive Into The Evidence (Part 1): Retrieval Practice

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Carousel | Carousel: A Dive Into The Evidence (Part 1)

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Keep encouraging your students Download a PDF or view slides with all 60+ silly growth encouragement messages.

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Download a PDF or view slides with all 60+ silly growth encouragement messages. You will have “groan” after viewing these posters.

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Maths teaching fails pupils by ignoring cognitive science findings

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Maths teaching fails pupils by ignoring cognitive science findings

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Opinion: In the arena of educational policy, where decisions shape the future of our students, the plight of mathematics education in New Zealand has become a drawn-out match of political football.

As head of the mathematics education unit in the mathematics department at the University of Auckland, I've spent the last three years dissecting the factors contributing to the steady decline in mathematical proficiency across our nation's schools. What I've observed is a troubling dissonance between the prevailing educational theories that have shaped policies for decades and the empirically grounded insights offered by cognitive science. The widening disconnect at the academic level has led to what I perceive as an undeclared paradigm war.

In New Zealand, the educational landscape has a multitude of approaches, each rooted in various educational philosophies and theories - project-based learning, inquiry-based learning, and traditional teacher-led instruction to name a few.

As a mother of three children navigating the New Zealand school system, I've witnessed the diverse methods used in their classrooms. My children have shown a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the project-based learning environment embraced by their intermediate school. Having spent two years immersed in this approach, they felt they haven't progressed beyond the primary school curriculum. The teacher's role seems confined to that of a facilitator - a telltale sign of adherence to a particular educational philosophy. My son recounted his frustrations: "Our teacher doesn't offer much explanation; she simply assigns problems for us to solve in groups, and every third lesson, she checks in to see if we have any questions."

While these approaches reflect differing perspectives on education, some of them neglect to fully integrate the findings of cognitive science, which offer invaluable insights into how we learn and retain information.

One damaging consequence of this paradigm war is the false dichotomy between 'rote learning' and 'learning with understanding'. Mathematics education in New Zealand, as well as in other English-speaking nations, has fallen prey to a misguided notion: that prioritising the memorisation of key mathematical facts, such as multiplication tables, is detrimental to students' comprehension and enthusiasm for the subject. This belief rests on the misguided notion that long-term memory plays a minimal role in fostering understanding. In reality, the information stored in our long-term memory is instrumental in facilitating effective thinking and learning.

When encountering and processing new information, the thinking process occurs primarily in the working memory. However, the capacity of the working memory is limited in terms of the number of elements it can handle simultaneously and the duration of this processing. We can only process a finite amount of novel information at any given time within our working memory. Exceeding this limit leads to cognitive overload, hindering the ability to absorb and comprehend new material.

These limitations essentially vanish when the working memory processes information that is easily retrieved from long-term memory. Well-organised information that can be easily accessed (without thinking twice) from long-term memory means the working memory operates without apparent constraints. The more we remember, the easier it is for us to think and learn. Neither Google nor ChatGPT are substitutes for long-term memory; the novel information found on Google is subject to the limitations of our working memory - it adds to the count of the elements to be processed. Thus, the metaphor of an external memory stick expanding memory reserves fails to accurately depict the intricacies of human cognitive architecture.

Another detrimental fallout of the paradigm wars is the vilification of the teacher-led classroom model. Teacher-led instruction is often said to stifle students' innate curiosity, extinguish their interest, and obstruct conceptual comprehension. This conflicts with the science. A well-crafted explanation of a mathematical concept or procedure by a proficient educator serves to channel learners' attention towards incoming information, fostering active cognitive engagement crucial for selecting pertinent information for further processing in the working memory. This, in turn, enhances our capacity to comprehend new mathematical concepts.

Scientific research has clearly demonstrated the efficacy of explicit instruction when students are introduced to novel concepts and procedures. Teacher-led instruction involves the provision of clear explanations, demonstration of examples, and immediate corrective feedback during initial practice attempts.

Subsequently, as proficiency increases to a satisfactory level of accuracy, students should transition to a phase characterised by extensive practice - a phase marked by repetition and reinforcement. It is through copious and meticulous practice that students achieve the requisite speed of execution, paving the way for the development of automaticity - the ability to do things without thinking too hard, such as riding a bike or driving a car.

The speed is not merely 'nice to have', it is a crucial catalyst for mathematical generalisation. Without the attainment of automaticity (mathematical fluency), the ability to generalise becomes arduous. After all, the capacity to generalise is intricately linked with what is commonly perceived as conceptual understanding - the oft-cited pinnacle of learning objectives.

There is much more that we have learned about mathematical cognition (for further reading I'd recommend An Introduction to Mathematical Cognition) and the most effective ways to develop mathematical thinking based on decades of research. I hope policymakers will take a break from the ongoing political football match, which seems to be progressing without on-field referees, who are left yelling from the sidelines, often completely ignored.

I urge them to instead prioritise the science of learning over political expediency. It is imperative that we heed the insights provided by research to inform policy and shape recommendations for a revitalised mathematics curriculum and a common practice model for mathematics teaching and learning.

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Maths teaching fails pupils by ignoring cognitive science findings

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From the University of Auckland: We have to prioritise the science of learning over political expediency, to revitalise the mathematics curriculum and its teaching, argues Dr Tanya Evans

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Tapping Into the Metacognition of Mistakes

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Tapping Into the Metacognition of Mistakes

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Getting kids to identify and classify the types of mistakes they make gives them the tools they need to drive their own learning.

Among teachers, it's now conventional wisdom: Mistakes aren't something to be feared, but are a crucial, even necessary, part of the learning journey.

But lumping mistakes together isn't especially productive; it's important to take things a step further and teach students that not all mistakes are created equal, according to veteran elementary teacher Jennifer Mangels.

Mangels asks her students to classify the types of mistakes they commit-from sloppy procedural errors to conceptual errors-so that they become more reflective learners who can self-diagnose issues as they tackle challenging academic work on their own.

"When students take the time to find patterns in the types of mistakes they're making, they take greater ownership of the learning process and are more willing to challenge themselves academically," Mangels wrote in a recent ASCD article.

This metacognitive approach requires some setup: To start, spend time explaining to students why mistakes are moments to learn from and pay close attention to, and have students self-identify some of their own errors by drawing a heart around each of them. The hearts, Mangels says, help students "reframe mistakes as expected, powerful, and celebrated parts of learning," and also serve as visual markers students can return to in their notebooks as they learn how to classify their mistakes.

Classification: The Taxonomy of Mistakes

Mangels teaches her students about three main hierarchies of mistakes: sloppy mistakes, "aha!" mistakes, and stretch mistakes.

Sloppy mistakes, she says, are those that "typically happen because students are working quickly or aren't particularly focused at the moment." They are likely to be the most common mistakes students make in the classroom. For example, a student knows how to add up multiple sums, but does so too quickly and makes an error.

"Aha!" mistakes are those that "are unintentional but lead to a new understanding that is informative to us as learners," Mangels said. An example would be when a student believes they're taking the right path toward a solution, but aren't because they don't have all the information necessary to get there.

For instance, a student asked to find the median in a set of numbers may understand they should focus on the number in the middle of the set, but not yet understand that if there are an even set of numbers, they must add the two middle numbers and divide them to get the correct answer.

Stretch mistakes distinguish themselves from aha mistakes because they occur when "students are challenged because much of what they're processing is new," Mangels writes. These mistakes are also more expected because students "fail more when doing something completely unfamiliar."

Making Time for Integration

Getting kids to do the work of reflecting on specific mistakes on their own-asking what category it belongs to, and how they can look out for it again in the future-requires more specific direction.

To create a wider classroom culture around learning from mistakes, for example, middle school math teacher Crystal Frommert, recommends highlighting the "good mistakes" in student work-she takes photos of common mistakes in assignments and shows students her favorite before holding a group discussion to normalize and learn from common errors. This strategy works best when students are attempting to solve challenging, open-ended problems that will very likely result in stretch mistakes that require more processing, according to Mangels.

To do this in your classroom, Mangels recommends first having students attempt to solve the problem in small groups, and then present to the class "their most informative mistake" made during the problem-solving process. "Suddenly, the students are embracing breakthrough moments [together]," she said.

Individual reflection can also help stimulate the metacognitive work of processing and learning from mistakes. While learning new material and completing practice problems, Mangels may ask students to reflect on questions like: "If you noticed several sloppy mistakes, what strategies can you use to become more accurate?" or "How did your types of mistakes change as you progressed through your work?"

To dive a little deeper, she follows summative assessments up with review sessions: students classify their mistakes, "write a short reflection on the pattern of mistakes they noticed," and "set a goal for themselves to continue improving," Mangels said.

For students who score lower on important assessments, Mangels recommends meeting individually with them to "frame their score as an opportunity to look at the details of each answer" and work together to classify each mistake and identify areas for growth. "The assessment score becomes less about a low number and more about an action plan for continued growth," she said.

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Tapping Into the Metacognition of Mistakes

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Getting kids to identify and classify the types of mistakes they make gives them the tools they need to drive their own learning.

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44 Powerful Instructional Strategies Examples for Every Classroom

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44 Powerful Instructional Strategies Examples for Every Classroom

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Looking for some new ways to teach and learn in your classroom? This roundup of instructional strategies examples includes methods that will appeal to all learners and work for any teacher.

What are instructional strategies?

In the simplest of terms, instructional strategies are the methods teachers use to achieve learning objectives. In other words, pretty much every learning activity you can think of is an example of an instructional strategy. They're also known as teaching strategies and learning strategies.

These strategies are sometimes broken into five types: direct, indirect, experiential, interactive, and independent. ( Learn more about the types of instructional strategies here.) But many learning strategies examples fit into multiple categories. The more options teachers have in their tool kit, the easier it will be to help all learners achieve their goals.

Don't be afraid to try new strategies from time to time-you just might find a new favorite! Here are some of the most common instructional strategies examples.

1. Problem-Solving

Source: STEM Activities for Kids

In this indirect learning method, students work their way through a problem to find a solution. Along the way, they must develop the knowledge to understand the problem and use creative thinking to solve it. STEM challenges are terrific examples of problem-solving instructional strategies.

Learn more: Teaching Problem Solving

2. Lecture

This method gets a lot of flack these days for being "boring" or "old-fashioned." It's true that you don't want it to be your only instructional strategy, but short lectures are still very effective learning tools. This type of direct instruction is perfect for imparting specific detailed information or teaching a step-by-step process. And lectures don't have to be boring-just look at TED Talks.

Learn more: Advantages and Disadvantages of Lecturing

3. Didactic Questioning

These are often paired with other direct instruction methods like lecturing. The teacher asks questions to determine student understanding of the material. They're often questions that start with "who," "what," "where," and "when."

Learn more: Asking Questions

4. Demonstration

In this direct instruction method, students watch as a teacher demonstrates an action or skill. This might be seeing a teacher solving a math problem step-by-step, or watching them demonstrate proper handwriting on the whiteboard. Usually, this is followed by having students do hands-on practice or activities in a similar manner.

Learn more: Preparing Effective Demonstrations for the Classroom and Laboratory (PDF)

5. Storytelling

Ever since Aesop's fables, we've been using storytelling as a way to teach. Stories grab students' attention right from the start and keep them engaged throughout the learning process. Real-life stories and fiction both work equally well, depending on the situation.

Learn more: Storytelling in the Classroom

6. Drill & Practice

If you've ever used flash cards to help kids practice math facts, or had your whole class chant the spelling of a word out loud, you've used drill & practice. It's another one of those traditional instructional strategies examples. When kids need to memorize specific information or master a step-by-step skill, drill & practice really works.

Learn more: Drill and Practice

7. Spaced Repetition

Often paired with direct or independent instruction, spaced repetition is a method where students are asked to recall certain information or skills at increasingly longer intervals. For instance, the day after discussing the causes of the American Civil War in class, the teacher might return to the topic and ask students to list the causes. The following week, the teacher asks them once again, and then a few weeks after that. Spaced repetition helps make knowledge stick, and it is especially useful when it's not something students practice each day but will need to know in the long term (such as for a final exam).

Learn more: Spaced Repetition: A Guide to the Technique

8. Project-Based Learning

When kids participate in true project-based learning, they're learning through indirect and experiential strategies. As they work to find solutions to a real-world problem, they develop critical thinking skills and learn by research, trial and error, collaboration, and other experiences.

Learn more: What Is Project-Based Learning?

9. Concept Mapping

Source: Cornell University

Students use concept maps to break a subject down into its main points, and draw connections between these points.

Learn more: Concept Mapping at Cornell University

10. Case Studies

When you think of case studies, law school is probably the first thing that jumps to mind. But this method works at any age, for a variety of topics. This indirect learning method teaches students to use material to draw conclusions, make connections, and advance their existing knowledge.

Learn more: The Case Method

11. Reading for Meaning

This is different than learning to read. Instead, it's when students use texts (print or digital) to learn about a topic. This traditional strategy works best when students already have strong reading comprehension skills. Try our free reading comprehension bundle to give students the ability to get the most out of reading for meaning.

Learn more: Reading for Meaning

12. Science Experiments

Source: Rhythms of Play

This is experiential learning at its best. Hands-on experiments let kids learn to establish expectations, create sound methodology, draw conclusions, and more.

Learn more: Hundreds of Science Experiment Ideas for Kids and Teens

13. Field Trips

Heading out into the real world gives kids a chance to learn indirectly, through experiences. They may see concepts they already know put into practice, or learn new information or skills from the world around them.

Learn more: The Big List of PreK-12 Field Trip Ideas

14. Games

Teachers have long known that playing games is a fun (and sometimes sneaky) way to get kids to learn. You can use specially-designed educational games for any subject. Plus, regular board games ( like these classroom favorites) often involve a lot of indirect learning about math, reading, critical thinking, and more.

Learn more: 10 Benefits to Playing Games in the Classroom

15. Simulations

This strategy combines experiential, interactive, and indirect learning all in one. The teacher sets up a simulation of a real-world activity or experience. Students take on roles and participate in the exercise, using existing skills and knowledge or developing new ones along the way. At the end, the class reflects separately and together on what happened, and what they learned.

Learn more: A Simple Approach to Using Simulations in Any Classroom

16. Service Learning

This is another instructional strategies example that takes students out into the real world. It often involves problem-solving skills and gives kids the opportunity for meaningful social-emotional learning.

Learn more: What Is Service Learning?

17. Peer Instruction

It's often said the best way to learn something is to teach it to others. Studies into the so-called "Protégé Effect" seem to prove it too. In order to teach, you first must understand the information yourself. Then, you have to find ways to share it with others-sometimes more than one way. This deepens your connection to the material, and it sticks with you much longer. Try having peers instruct one another in your classroom, and see the magic in action.

Learn more: Want Students To Remember What They Learn? Have Them Teach It

18. Debate

Source: The New York Times

Some teachers shy away from debate in the classroom, afraid it will become too adversarial. But learning to discuss and defend various points of view is an important life skill. Debates teach students to research their topic, make informed choices, and argue effectively using facts instead of emotion.

Learn more: 100 High School Debate Topics To Engage Every Student

19. Class or Small-Group Discussion

Class, small-group, and pair discussions are all excellent interactive instructional strategies examples. As students discuss a topic, they clarify their own thinking and learn from others' experiences and opinions. Of course, in addition to learning about the topic itself, they're also developing valuable active listening and collaboration skills.

Learn more: 13 Strategies to Improve Classroom Discussions

20. Fishbowl

Take your classroom discussions one step further with the fishbowl method. A small group of students sits in the middle of the class. They discuss and debate a topic, while their classmates listen silently and make notes. Eventually, the teacher opens the discussion to the whole class, who offer feedback and present their own assertions and challenges.

Learn more: How I Use Fishbowl Discussions to Engage Every Student

21. Brainstorming

Rather than having a teacher provide examples to explain a topic or solve a problem, students do the work themselves. Remember the one rule of brainstorming: Every idea is welcome. Ensure everyone gets a chance to participate, and form diverse groups to generate lots of unique ideas.

Learn more: Brainstorming in the Classroom

22. Role-Playing

Role-playing is sort of like a simulation but less intense. It's perfect for practicing soft skills and focusing on social-emotional learning. Put a twist on this strategy by having students model bad interactions as well as good ones and then discussing the difference.

Learn more: How To-and How Not To-Teach Role Plays

23. Think-Pair-Share

This structured discussion technique is simple: First, students think about a question posed by the teacher. Pair students up, and let them talk about their answer. Finally open it up to whole-class discussion. This helps kids participate in discussions in a low-key way and gives them a chance to "practice" before they talk in front of the whole class.

Learn more: Think-Pair-Share and 10 Fun Alternatives

24. Learning Centers

Source: Pocket of Preschool

Foster independent learning strategies with centers just for math, writing, reading, and more. Provide a variety of activities, and let kids choose how they spend their time. They often learn better from activities they enjoy.

Learn more: 6 Important Benefits of Learning Centers in the Classroom

25. Computer-Based Instruction

Once a rarity, now a daily fact of life, computer-based instruction lets students work independently. They can go at their own pace, repeating sections without feeling like they're holding up the class. Teach students good computer skills at a young age so you'll feel comfortable knowing they're focusing on the work and doing it safely.

Learn more: Computer-Assisted Instruction and Reading

26. Essays

Writing an essay encourages kids to clarify and organize their thinking. Written communication has become more important in recent years, so being able to write clearly and concisely is a skill every kid needs. This independent instructional strategy has stood the test of time for good reason.

Learn more: The Big List of Essay Topics for High School

27. Research Projects

Here's another oldie-but-goodie! When kids work independently to research and present on a topic, their learning is all up to them. They set the pace, choose a focus, and learn how to plan and meet deadlines. This is often a chance for them to show off their creativity and personality too.

Learn more: Tips and Ideas for Research Projects in the Classroom

28. Journaling

Personal journals give kids a chance to reflect and think critically on topics. Whether responding to teacher prompts or simply recording their daily thoughts and experiences, this independent learning method strengthens writing and intrapersonal skills.

Learn more: The Benefits of Journaling in the Classroom

29. Graphic Organizers

Source: Around the Kampfire

Graphic organizers are a way of organizing information visually to help students understand and remember it. A good organizer simplifies complex information and lays it out in a way that makes it easier for a learner to digest. Graphic organizers may include text and images, and help students make connections in a meaningful way.

Learn more: Graphic Organizers 101: Why and How To Use Them

30. Jigsaw

Jigsaw combines group learning with peer teaching. Students are assigned to "home groups." Within that group, each student is given a specialized topic to learn about. They join up with other students who were given the same topic, then research, discuss, and become experts. Finally, students return to their home group and teach the other members about the topic they specialized in.

Learn more: Why Use Jigsaw?

Which of your favorite instructional strategies examples did we miss? Come share in the WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook!

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30 Instructional Strategies Examples for Every Kind of Classroom

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Looking for new and exciting instructional strategies examples to help all of your students learn more effectively? Get them here!

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Collection of The 20 Best HyperDocs - The Infused Classroom

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This is a curated list of some of the best HyperDocs on the planet.

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HOW TO INCREASE READING FLUENCY WITH REPEATED READING STRATEGIES

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HOW TO INCREASE READING FLUENCY WITH REPEATED READING STRATEGIES

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How do you increase a child's reading fluency? It's a question that seems to have an easy answer. One common response is that you give them more opportunities to listen to others as they read. You also make it important for them to read aloud and then provide them feedback on their reading. In this blog entry, we'll explore a high-effect size instructional strategy that can increase reading fluency and explore some ways technology can make implementing this strategy easier.

A Quick Review

If you've been following the TCEA TechNotes blog, you've sensed our new focus on the work of John Hattie. Hattie conducted meta-analyses of research on instructional strategies. Some strategies fall above what he characterized as the "hinge point," or an effect size of .40. Strategies that speed up student growth in one year fall above the hinge point. For example, the jigsaw approach (1.20) yields three years of growth in one year when used in a consistent way. Reciprocal teaching (.74) yields almost two year's growth in one year.

Picking a high-effect size strategy is not enough. These strategies also fall into general categories. They include "surface," "deep," or "transfer" learning. That's because Hattie defines learning in this way:

...the process of developing sufficient surface knowledge to then move to deeper understanding such that one can appropriately transfer this learning to new tasks and situations. (Source: Visible Learning for Literacy)

Jigsaw is a surface learning approach that assists students in two ways. Fisher, Frey, and Hattie says that surface learning consists of two sub-phases. The first to help students acquire, summarize, and outline a topic. The second is to practice testing and receiving feedback. As you might imagine, the jigsaw approach works great for this.

Reciprocal teaching focuses on comprehension. As such, the goal is to assist students to transition. That transition is from surface knowledge to a deeper, conceptual understanding. Knowing when and why you will use a strategy remains important. Neither strategy (e.g. jigsaw, reciprocal teaching) would be appropriate for developing decoding as a part of reading fluency, which is our primary concern in this blog entry.

Definition: Decoding: Decoding is the ability to apply your knowledge of letter-sound relationships, including knowledge of letter patterns, to correctly pronounce written words. Understanding these relationships gives children the ability to recognize familiar words quickly and to figure out words they haven't seen before. (Source: Reading Rockets)
Definition: Fluency is defined as the ability to read with speed, accuracy, and proper expression. In order to understand what they read, children must be able to read fluently whether they are reading aloud or silently. When reading aloud, fluent readers read in phrases and add intonation appropriately. (Source: Reading Rockets)

Developing Decoding Skills

Listening to teachers in TCEA's empowerED program, one teacher pointed something out. She made a connection to the type of problem reciprocal teaching solves. "Students first need to move beyond the mechanics of reading. They need to become fluent readers first." Reciprocal teaching, covered in detail in the empowerED program, addresses a different problem. That problem is, "What if students are fluent readers, but cannot comprehend what they read?" But what about those students who haven't overcome the mechanics of decoding?

Why Decoding and Fluency Are Important

Students, from grades one through middle school, may encounter decoding challenges. This might also be true for older students learning a second language. Timothy Shanahan offers the need to:

Get students to read the author's words in an accurate manner.

Read texts at about the speed of oral language.

Make reading sound like language. This involves pausing in the right places so that text makes sense.

While there are several approaches for addressing decoding, repeated reading offers one approach. It works for young readers as well as middle school students. Repeated reading (effect size of .75) enables students to move from decoding to meaning:

Repeated reading involves students reading the same passage (=>3x) to teachers. When the student miscues, the teacher can read the correct word aloud. Then, the student rereads the passage until reaching a satisfactory reading level.

Repeated Reading Approach

There are several other approaches to achieve repeated reading effectively. One way is to have a student listen to a passage read aloud by the teacher. Then the student reads it to himself several times. Then, the student reads it aloud. The teacher calculates the rate, accuracy, intonation, pacing, and expressiveness and reports this to the student along with elapsed time. The student re-reads the passage again with this information in mind. The student has the goal of improving these elements.

How could classroom technologies facilitate repeated reading as a strategy? Let's consider one of the challenges teachers and students face.

Opportunity for Repetition with Repeated Reading

One of the challenges teachers and students may encounter with repeated reading is the opportunity for repetition. A teacher with a large class may be unable to read for each child. Noam Chomsky suggested another approach that involves teachers recording a selection to audiotape. Students are then invited to record themselves as well.

With modern technologies, teachers have several options:

Option #1: Use Flipgrid. The teacher can read the text, modeling facial expressions and word formation for students. This is great for dramatic readings since students can see it. In return, students can record themselves reading their text. They can submit as many repeated responses as they like. What's more, Flipgrid includes Microsoft's Immersive Reader. This makes it a fantastic addition given Immersive Reader's features.

Option #2: Seesaw. Teachers can share an audio/video recording of a reading, then invite students to leave a video/audio recording of their repeated reading. This is great because it makes archiving and tracking student growth easy for sharing via Seesaw.

Option #3: Google Slides or PowerPoint Online. The teacher can display text to be read on screen via a slide and then insert an audio recording. Students can then record their own versions for a particular number of times (three to five times) before turning it in to their teacher.

Option #4: Use web-based audio recorder. Using a web-based audio recorder, the teacher or student can record audio. Copies of recorded items can be saved to Google Drive, OneDrive, or submitted as part of Microsoft/Google Forms.

These are great options to use because they result in a record of reading, and it can be dramatic to see growth over time. What's more, they make it easier for the teacher to provide corrective feedback. Corrective feedback has a significant impact on fluency and comprehension.

"Repeated readings has been the most researched and successful approach to improving reading fluency," says Lauren Nienhuis. These technology tools mentioned can assist you in maximizing your impact on student readers. Give them a try for repeated reading.

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Increase Reading Fluency with Repeated Reading Strategies * TechNotes Blog

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How do you increase a child's reading fluency? It's a question that seems to have an easy answer. One common response is that you give them more opportunities to listen to others as they read. You also make it important for them to read aloud and then provide them feedback on their reading.

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8 Evidence-Based Tips to Make Your Lectures More Engaging—and Memorable

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8 Evidence-Based Tips to Make Your Lectures More Engaging—and Memorable

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8 Evidence-Based Tips to Make Your Lectures More Engaging—and Memorable

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When done right, lectures remain an invaluable tool for building student knowledge. Here’s the research on how to optimize your time in front of the class.

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Retrieval practice in the classroom – Boost long-term knowledge retention with this powerful learning strategy

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Retrieval practice in the classroom – Boost long-term knowledge retention with this powerful learning strategy

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Use these retrieval practice examples, activities, templates and ideas to help students recall previously taught information...

What is retrieval practice?

Retrieval practice is a " simple research-based teaching strategy " that involves students retrieving and bringing information to mind. The challenge of remembering this information produces durable long-term learning.

In this episode of The Cult of Pedagogy podcast, Jennifer Gonzalez speaks to Pooja Agarwal about what retrieval practice is and how you can start incorporating it into your classroom right away.

JUMP TO A SECTION

How to boost information recall in the classroom

If your pupils struggle to recall yesterday's lesson, prompt them to retrieve information from memory by embedding regular quizzes into your curriculum design, with these ideas from Jon Hutchinson, director of training and development at the Reach Foundation...
Back in the 1880s, when Hermann Ebbinghaus measured the rate that which information is lost after initially learning it, the conclusions were clear: everybody forgets things unless they revisit that information regularly.

"Everybody forgets things unless they revisit that information regularly"

These results have since been repeated in multiple contexts and under a huge variety of conditions.

In the classroom, this means that we shouldn't be entirely surprised (or cross) by our pupils struggling to recall their initial learning from yesterday's lesson. Indeed, it is an inevitable and perfectly natural part of the learning process.

Our job is to interrupt this forgetting, by using effective strategies to prompt children to retrieve information from memory.

Embed multiple-choice quizzes into your classroom practice

It is for this reason that, as part of our curriculum design at Reach Academy Feltham, we have embedded regular multiple-choice tests and quizzes into our curriculum design to help us reap the benefits of retrieval practice.

Aside from Ebbinghaus, our decisions have been influenced by more recent research into retrieval practice, spearheaded by professorial power couple Robert and Elizabeth Bjork (very much the Beyoncé and Jay-Z of the cognitive science world).

Retrieval strength and storage strength

They suggest that any information tucked away in our memory can be measured in two ways.

First, there is the speed at which you can recall some fact or skill: the 'retrieval strength'.

Second, we can consider how well connected and robust the knowledge is - known as 'storage strength'.

New information which is not linked to anything else stored in your long-term memory will have a low retrieval strength, as well as a low storage strength.

This is the reason that they write the hotel room number on your card when checking in: you will probably forget it.

By the end of the week, the retrieval strength of your hotel room number will have increased, by regularly having to recall it. However, the storage strength is likely to remain low; you probably won't be able to recall it in a year or two.

Other information - perhaps the name of a child in your class back at primary school - could have a high storage strength (they are connected to tonnes of other memories) but a low retrieval strength (what was their name again? Patrick? Peter?).

Finally, information can have both high retrieval and high storage strength. An example might be the name of your current best friend.

This, of course, is what we are aiming for in what we teach. And based on what we know about how memory works, we think that the testing effect is an indispensable tool to achieve it.

Retrieval practice examples

We can capitalise on this in lessons in a few different ways. First, always begin a lesson with retrieval practice - a short quiz, including five, multiple-choice questions of previously learnt material.

Beginning with a retrieval practice technique ensures a calm, focused and motivational start to the lesson.

Let's take an example. In the first lesson of our unit on Roman Britain, the class learn about how Romulus killed his brother to found the city.

Within that lesson, there will be some key facts that we don't want the children to forget. So the very first thing that we do at the start of the next lesson is ask all children to answer the question, "According to myth, who founded Rome?"

These quizzes have no stakes. That is to say, we don't collect any scores, and we don't tell children off or express disappointment if they get a question wrong. That is not the purpose.

Instead, what we are trying to do is deliberately interrupt the forgetting curve. It is better to think of this regular quizzing as a student learning event in itself, as opposed to an assessment.

"What we are trying to do is deliberately interrupt the forgetting curve"

It doesn't really matter whether the children get the question right or wrong; they benefit either way from this effective learning technique.

Ancient Greece retrieval practice quiz example

In what year did Ancient Greece's 'Golden Age' begin?

2. How many citizens had to vote for someone to be sent into exile?

3. Name one Greek philosopher

4. Where were the first recorded Olympic games held?

5. Name one Greek City State

Retrieval practice activities

Writing good multiple-choice questions is devilishly difficult. Ours focus on the most important things we want children to remember from previous lessons.

A knowledge organiser is a good learning tool to start from here, as it should include the core information.

I often begin planning a lesson by asking myself, "What are the five things that I want all children to remember by the end of this lesson?" These then become the targets for quiz questions in the following lesson.

"What are the five things that I want all children to remember by the end of this lesson?"

In the example about Roman Britain above, we would include the correct answer (Romulus), but then also add in plausible distractors. These would include Remus, Julius Caesar and Tiberinus (the god who saved Romulus and Remus from the river).

Children rack their brains, circle what they think is the correct answer, then move on to the next question.

A few minutes later, I'll switch to the next slide which has all of the correct answers on, and pupils can self-mark, correcting anything they got wrong.

While this takes place, I'll whizz around the classroom and make a note of any common misconceptions. The whole episode takes around five minutes.

So, while quizzing may not be the flashiest or most fashionable classroom activity, there is an abundance of science outlining the learning rewards.

Mistakes to avoid

When I first began using test-enhanced learning I made a few mistakes that reduced the effectiveness of retrieval practice. The first was using funny or wacky answers within the distractors.

Since I very much consider myself to be an as-yet-undiscovered comedian of world-class talent (who is, frankly, wasted on primary school children), I can't resist popping in a humorous answer to elicit a giggle.

When asking the pupils "Why did Alexander the Great weep?" I'll want to include an option like, "because the Nando's in Persia had run out of chicken" (wasted, I tell you).

The problem with adding in these silly options is that they distract children from what you actually want them to remember (that "there were no more worlds to conquer").

They'll tell you about how funny it was to think about Alexander having a Nando's. Some children may not get the joke and actually think Alexander the Great did eat Nando's.

The correct answer, a wonderful piece of cultural knowledge and a useful window into the success and ambition of the Macedonian King, gets lost somewhere in laughter. The kids just remember Alexander eating a Nando's.

"Some children may not get the joke and actually think Alexander the Great did eat Nando's"

The second mistake is to let children look back at their notes. In doing so, we kill the benefits of the testing effect, because children do not have to try and recall from memory; they are just rereading and copying down the answer.

It may seem counterintuitive, but that effortful struggle is exactly what produces the strengthened retrieval in future.

Kate Jones retrieval practice templates

Teacher and author Kate Jones explains how to use her retrieval practice challenge grid at the start of your lesson...

I designed the retrieval practice challenge grid to help you purposefully revisit subject knowledge and content previously studied.

The questions differ based upon when the subject content was taught. The further back this was, the higher the number of points on offer.

I use this approach at the start of a lesson as it includes a wide range of questions that require students to recall information from last lesson, last week and even further back - it's a simple and efficient way to begin.

Five a day method

We are all familiar with the 'five a day' message as it applies to including portions of fruit and/or vegetables as part of our daily routine to stay healthy.

This concept can be applied to the classroom with a twist, focusing on a daily review of five a day to promote healthy retrieval. It could simply be five quiz questions to start the lesson.

Another idea is to have five keywords on the board. Students must define each one or write a paragraph summarising previous learning including all five words. Alternatively, they can create five questions where each keyword is the answer.

Below you can see examples of teachers using retrieval practice tests in several different ways to encourage effective retrieval practice.

More retrieval practice teaching methods

Make sure your students can actually use the information you've spent all that time putting into their heads with these helpful tips from teacher and author Paul Wright...
Recall checks

Look at your scheme of learning for a half term. Decide what the key takeaway concepts or vocabulary are at that time.

Design five to eight questions that help students practise retrieving their knowledge on the topic from memory and applying it to answer the question.

Over the six weeks, continue to cover the same five to eight concepts, theories or terms in your questions, but pose the questions in different ways.

Alternative dimensions

Challenge learners' knowledge security by presenting facts from another dimension and asking them to compare these to ours, stating what the equivalent is in our dimension.

For example, say 'In this universe, the sky is pink. What colour is it in your universe?'

Learners can select the correct answer from memory (higher challenge). Alternatively, you can scaffold the activity by making it multiple-choice.

Try throwing in some questions where the answer is already correct (ie where something is the same in both dimensions) and see if they notice!

Memorise this...

Prepare a three-slide presentation:

1 - show things you want the students to remember

2 - black screen with a countdown timer in the centre

3 - space for items to be written in or revealed

Explain that the students will be given time to look at the first slide and store the information in their minds, without writing anything down.

When the screen goes black, the timer starts. Pupils must write down as much information as they can remember. When the timer ends, reveal the third slide and ask the learners to share what they're able to recall.

What stuck?

Stand your learners behind their desks a few minutes before the lesson ends. Tell them that you'll dismiss each person in turn when they can tell you something that has stuck with them in your lesson.

This challenges their short-term recall and allows you to challenge their ability to express knowledge they have retained succinctly.

Be fair and allow one repeat, but students can't repeat the same thing as the person who spoke before them.

Using retrieval practice as a revision tool

Science teacher Adam Boxer explains that while retrieval practice isn't the easiest way to revise, it's definitely the most effective...
As teachers across the UK become more and more evidence-informed, we're learning to ditch revision games, posters, highlighting, re-reading and mnemonics.

Instead, we're replacing these with powerful teaching strategies such as frequent retrieval practice and low-stakes quizzing on core material.

"We're learning to ditch revision games, posters, highlighting, re-reading and mnemonics"

In fact a paradigm shift is occurring around revision itself. We've moved away from a system where we teach a sequence of lessons, have a revision lesson and then a test.

Instead, we're moving towards a system where we remove the revision lesson and replace it with frequent opportunities for retrieval practice built into the main sequence of lessons.

These changes are possible because of how well-researched retrieval practice is. Cognitive scientists have spent decades investigating its use as a memory technique. Though nothing in science is ever beyond question, the positive results across a vast number of studies certainly seem to suggest it's an effective method.

Discoveries

There are, however, aspects that you might not be aware of. For example, Hungarian researchers tested whether or not retrieval practice could help mitigate the debilitating cognitive effects of being in a high-stress environment.

Psychologists (and teachers!) have known for a long time that a little bit of stress is a good thing in terms of student performance. However, too much stress can be debilitating and hinder performance.

The researchers found that the power of retrieval practice to prepare students for tests held even when they took the tests under extremely stressful conditions.

Another fascinating finding relates to " participant prediction of recall ". Participants in a study used either re-reading or retrieval practice to learn material, but in varying amounts. After they had a set amount of time with these techniques, they were asked to predict how well they thought they would recall that information in a week or so's time.

Participants who had done the least amount of retrieval practice thought that they would recall the most. Participants who had done the most amount of retrieval practice thought they would recall the least.

As we can probably guess by this point, the results for the actual test showed the exact opposite. So participants who thought they had learned the least, actually learned the most.

Rich rewards

I think the best way to explain this finding is by thinking about the relative difficulty of the two tasks.

Re-reading is, cognitively speaking, easy to do. Reading is easy. When we re-read material we have a voice in our head saying, "Yes, I got that", no problem.

But there is a difference between understanding something and committing it to long-term memory.

You can probably understand this article very easily, but if you sat a test on it next week would you remember all, or even most, of its details? Probably not.

"When we re-read material we have a voice in our head saying, "Yes, I got that""

To prepare yourself for such a test you would have to expend serious mental effort. And in the short term, it would certainly feel like you weren't getting anywhere. It would feel painful, slow, and frustrating.

But what if you did put in that effort, and it worked out? What if you persevered through that short-term pain and feeling of frustration? Imagine you really committed yourself to retrieval practice and were duly rewarded in a test.

What would that feel like?

No doubt, you would probably feel quite proud of yourself. You would start to feel competent in whatever subject you had decided to really commit to.

And psychologists point to competence as an incredibly powerful driver of long term motivation. As we get better at things, we start to enjoy them more.

"In the short term, your students will hate retrieval practice"

In the short term, your students will hate retrieval practice. They will hate not knowing an answer or getting things only partially correct. But the science is clear: it works.

If you can build a culture that looks beyond that short-term pain and understands that it's worth it in the long term, your students will truly fly.

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Retrieval practice in the classroom - Boost long-term knowledge retention with this powerful learning strategy

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Use these retrieval practice examples, activities, templates and ideas to help students recall previously taught information...

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Preparing for exams can be a daunting task, so here’s how to help students cultivate effective study habits…GCSE revision – Maximising potential from KS3 onwards

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GCSE revision – Maximising potential from KS3 onwards

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GCSE revision – Maximising potential from KS3 onwards

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GCSE revision – Maximising potential from KS3 onwards

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If you want to ingrain good GCSE revision habits among your students, the real work should begin at KS3, advises Charlotte Lander…

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Providing students with better instructional scaffolding is often a schoolwide objective, but how can school leaders and teachers put this big idea into practice? Imagine someone plopping a giant box of odds and ends in front of you and telling you to figure out what to do with them with no further instructions. Without being told the purpose of the activity, specific expectations, or background information, it would be overwhelming and discouraging to say the least. Almost all students, particularly those with unique learning needs, have felt exactly this way in the classroom at one time or another. Luckily there are many strategies educators can use to help students, and among the most important is scaffolding.

Below you'll learn more about scaffolding in education, including 18 effective ways to scaffold learning. If you're a teacher, integrate these as best practices, and observe their impact. If you're an administrator, share these practices with your teachers, and look for them during classroom walk-throughs.

What is scaffolding in education?

Scaffolding is a way to provide support for students by breaking down learning into manageable chunks as they progress toward stronger understanding and ultimately greater independence. In other words, it's a way for teachers to provide support while students master new concepts and skills.

The strategy is based on the work of Russian psychologist Len Vygotsky, whose theories stress the fundamental role of social interaction in cognitive development. He theorized that children learn best when they interact with other people, particularly more knowledgeable people, who provide guidance and encouragement to master new skills.

Using the much-lauded concept the Zone of Proximal Development, teachers can guide, support, and encourage students as they help them develop problem-solving strategies that can be generalized to other situations.

Scaffolding Strategies

1. Teach mini-lessons

Break down new concepts into bite-sized pieces that build on one another. Teaching a series of mini-lessons provides students with a safety net that moves them progressively toward deeper understanding.

Learn more: Essentials of a Mini-Lesson

2. Use explicit instruction

One of the best practices in supporting learners is the use of systematic, explicit instruction. That is, instruction that includes clear modeling, think-alouds, and multiple examples, which are described in greater detail below. In addition, immediate corrective feedback is critical. Catching students' errors while they're still practicing will prevent them from learning the skill incorrectly and then continuing to practice it incorrectly for homework and on other assignments.

Learn more: Explicit Instruction: Best Practices for Teaching Math to Unique Learners

3. Use think-alouds to model or demonstrate

One of the best ways to scaffold learning is to show your students an example of what they will be learning. For example, demonstrate a science experiment so they can see how it's done before they do it themselves. Or gather them on the rug and let them watch you solve a math problem in a new way. Verbalize your thought process as you demonstrate. Use a think-aloud strategy to give your students a model for an inner dialogue they can copy.

Learn more: Improve Reading Comprehension With Think-Alouds

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4. Describe concepts in multiple ways

Support different learning styles by approaching new concepts from multiple angles. Show them, tell them, and let them try it for themselves. The more ways you approach learning, the more sense it will make for students.

Learn more: Different Learning Styles: What Teachers Need To Know

5. Break large tasks into smaller steps

Sometimes it's hard for students to remember all the steps they have to follow for an assignment. Scaffold learning by breaking down directions into chunks that students can complete one step at a time. Give them a checklist that they can follow. By breaking it down, you're providing scaffolds that students need.

Learn more: Chunking Information for Instructional Design

6. Slow down

Here is some great advice from elementary teacher Tammy DeShaw. "We move so fast as teachers because we fear that we won't get through it all," she says. "But when we slow down and give students more time to process, we are really helping students. It is an effective scaffolding strategy when we pause at various points of instruction and break it up. Think about it. If something is above your head, it's immediately overwhelming. But if you break it into manageable chunks and take your time through it, you're able to process it much better!"

Learn more: Scaffolding Strategies

7. Incorporate visual aids

Show a video, pass out colorful images, or provide a concrete object to start off a new lesson. For example, if you're teaching a lesson on polyhedrons, place models of different types on tables for students to see and touch.

Learn more: Making the Most of Visual Aids

8. Front-load concept-specific vocabulary

Arm students with specific academic language they will need to understand ahead of time so that vocabulary doesn't become a stumbling block to higher-level learning.

Learn more: Pre-Teach Vocabulary

9. Activate prior knowledge

Show students the big picture. Make connections to concepts and skills students have already learned. Connect to experiences they have had, such as field trips or other projects.

Learn more: Teaching Reading Strategies: Activate Prior Knowledge

10. Give students talk time

Be sure to give kids plenty of time to process new information by partnering them up or breaking them into small groups. Have them articulate concepts in their own words to one another. Come back together as a whole group and share any insights that might be helpful to everyone.

Learn more: Cooperative Learning Structures: Fun Alternatives to Think-Pair-Share

11. Give students time to practice

After you model learning for your students, take some time to practice with them. Have a few students come up to the board and try a math problem. Or write a paragraph together on chart paper. Think of this guided practice as a series of rehearsals before the final performance.

Learn more: The I Do, WE Do, YOU Do Model Explained

12. During lessons, check for understanding

Check in often to make sure students are with you. A simple thumbs-up, a sticky note check-in, or a desktop flip chart are a few of the ways you can check for understanding. See who's good to go, who's almost there, and who needs some one-on-one.

Learn more: Creative Ways To Check for Understanding

13. Use graphic organizers

A graphic organizer is a powerful visual learning tool that teachers can use to help students organize their thinking before, during, or after a lesson. They are a great way for students to classify and communicate their ideas more effectively. A simple Google search will connect you to all kinds of printable graphic organizers that you can customize to the material you are teaching.

Learn more: Graphic Organizers 101

14. Try sentence starters

Sometimes a head start helps students gather their thoughts. Provide students with the first part of a statement and ask them to fill in the blanks. Sentence starters can be an especially great support for English-language learners.

Learn more: Using Sentence Stems in the Classroom

15. Coach students to help each other

When learning a new concept or reading a difficult passage together, call on a strong student to answer a question. Then, call on another student to repeat, in his or her own words, what was just said. By listening and repeating, you reinforce your students' understanding.

Learn more: Fun Ways To Help Your Students Collaborate in the Classroom

16. Set clear expectations

Students (like most of us) perform better when they fully understand what is expected of them. Describe the purpose of the assignment, and give them concrete examples of the learning goals they are expected to achieve. Give them clear directions and show them exemplars of high-quality work. Finally, provide them with a rubric so they know exactly what to do to successfully master the concept.

Learn more: Developing Clear Expectations for Learning

17. Ask open-ended questions

Another important tool we have is questioning. Asking questions allows students to organize their thoughts and elaborate on their processes. The key is making sure you ask meaningful questions. Make sure they can't be answered with a simple yes or no. In addition, the questions you ask should require reflection. And finally, questions should direct students to important, pivotal aspects of the task they are working on.

Learn more: Instructional Scaffolding Strategies

18. Use technology

Technology can help simplify the scaffolding process. Make playlists of lecture videos for students to watch before the lesson. This will allow them to preview the material and be ready to engage with the content in class. Another tip is to provide links to websites that have different ways to engage with the content, such as videos, games, articles, or demonstrations.

Many online curriculum programs are adaptive, meaning they can assess what a student knows and what information they need next. This allows students to follow a personalized learning path toward meeting learning objectives.

Learn more: Using Technology to Scaffold Student Learning

Does scaffolding learning really work?

Overall, scaffolding is an extremely effective instructional strategy when both administrators and teachers embrace and implement it consistently. But like any teaching strategy, scaffolding has its benefits and challenges.

Benefits of scaffolding:

Promotes a positive learning environment because students feel supported and are able to ask questions, encourage their classmates, and offer their opinions.

Builds students' confidence as they progress to more difficult tasks.

Leads to higher engagement, which motivates students to learn more on their own.

Improves comprehension and problem-solving.

Allows teachers to move to a facilitator role, guiding students to take ownership of their own learning.

Challenges of scaffolding:

Takes more planning and is more time-consuming as teachers need to evaluate lessons and figure out where scaffolding is needed.

Finding appropriate scaffolds that match the diverse learning and communication styles of students.

Correctly identifying students' zone of proximal development.

Knowing when to taper off and allow students to work independently.

Releasing more responsibility to students.

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18 Ways To Scaffold Learning for Your Students

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Breaking learning into manageable chunks, modeling, and guided practice are some of the ways to scaffold learning for your students.

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Whenever I meet someone new, and they ask me what I do for work, and I reluctantly (because I know what's about to come) tell them that I'm a math teacher, I am undoubtedly met with their story of math trauma and everything they dislike about our profession. It's usually followed by, "Why don't you teach people how to do their taxes?" To which I normally answer, "Do you ask art teachers to teach children to cut corners when painting a wall, or English teachers to skip the classics or grammar and get down to how to send a fun but professional work email?" It does, however, raise a deeper question: these people all saw the math they were being taught not only as boring and unengaging but also as pointless. Ultimately, what is our job? Is it to make kids good at algebra or to open the world to critical and curious thinkers? When we start to view our job as the latter and see the curriculum as a tool to unlock that potential, we see more engaged, excited, and happy learners.

People often think of practical and engaging as the same thing, which leads us to ask questions like this:
In Natasha's candy shop, chocolate, which sell for $4 a kilogram, is mixed with nuts, which are sold for $2.50 a kilogram. Chocolate and nuts are combined to form a chocolate-nut candy, which sell for $3.50 a kilogram. How much of each are used to make 30 kilograms of the mixture?
The natural response to this question is, "$2.50 a kg for nuts?! In this economy, I need to get her supplier." Alternatively, questioning Natasha's business sense: is she just randomly allocating sale prices and working backward to figure out her margins? What is this candy shop that deals in chocolate by the kilo? Notice that none of these thoughts that immediately spring to mind are "ahh yes, better set up a system of equations"-unless you're a math teacher, that is.

How Can We Foster Engagement?

Encourage Students to Feel Safe Taking Risks

Many students carry trauma into a math classroom, be it the high academic weight that the course holds, past failures imprinted on their memories, or the mathematical fear they've heard in the zeitgeist. Use these strategies to support your students' mental health in the mathematics classroom:

Establish Classroom Routines - Knowing what's coming and daily predictability can help students be more relaxed in a space and move them out of fight or flight.

Take an interest in your students - Build welcomes and farewells into your classroom routine. Talk to your students about their interests. What clubs are they a part of? Do they play sports? Watch TV? You don't need to know what they're talking about or try to shoehorn in a connection to your life; just showing you're interested is enough. Remember, every day is a new day; hold no grudges.

Try this technique!

Empower Students to Take Risks - When providing students with math questions, give them the opportunity to self-select the difficulty of the problem (fig 1). I split my questions for that day's concepts into three, sometimes four levels of difficulty. I ensure the labels of the levels don't resemble grades in any way, so level 1, 2, 3, 4 are out, as are 'easy, average, and hard'. I opt for levels of spice: Mild, Medium, Spicy, and Extra Hot. I then ask the students to select where they think they are at today. This not only gives students choice, empowering them in their own learning but also promotes safety as the students will know there will never be a day in math class where they can't be successful in some way as they work toward grade-level standards. The knock-on effect is that when the students feel safe, they take more risks with their selections and challenge themselves routinely.

Encourage Students to Collaborate to Help Address Gaps in Knowledge

Collaboration embodies the Swiss cheese model, where each student is likened to a slice of Swiss cheese with knowledge gaps represented as holes. As these slices are stacked atop one another through collaboration, these gaps are gradually filled. By encouraging meaningful sharing, not only does the group collectively solve problems, but each student's individual knowledge gaps also shrinks and fluency increases. Explore these methods to create a community within your classroom:

Randomize Groups - I start every one of my classes by randomly allocating students to seats. It's important these groups aren't pseudorandom, as this will not build trust in the classroom; the randomness is fair, and students soon adjust to working with all people in the space. Here's a Google sheet that will do it all for you! Make a copy and make it your own.

Co-construct a list of classroom norms - When students create these, the entire classroom (including you) is held accountable. When a kid steps away from these norms, this document can be used to redirect the student.

Encourage Sharing - When the students are working on a set of problems, and the goal is learning, not summative assessment, encourage them to share knowledge with each other. Scaffold for them what it looks like to support a student in understanding versus giving them the answer.
Fill in the Gaps - Specific practices involving group work and sharing can assist students in addressing gaps in their math knowledge and fluency.

Try these techniques!

Sharing the Pen - Limiting each group to only one writing implement that way, students are compelled to communicate effectively. A crucial aspect of this approach is that the student holding the pen cannot contribute ideas. This ensures that students who may be struggling with a problem are actively guided through every level of understanding.

Share Back - After individually solving a problem, prompt students to share their solution within small groups and explain the process they used. The goal is any group member should be able to talk through the solution. When serving as a facilitator walking the room, adopt the role of a toddler, constantly asking "why." Challenging mathematical assumptions held by some students and requiring them to explain promotes a deeper understanding and helps others fill in their knowledge gaps. Additionally, having students share their solutions can unveil new perspectives on problem-solving for the entire class.

Reflect

One of my most hated clauses in the English language is, "I like math because it's right or wrong." This statement shows a gross understanding of math. When we support students in their reflection of their math, we promote deeper thinking and engagement.

Replace Grades with Feedback (when possible): Whenever possible, remove grades from work and replace them with comments. Comments force students to look back on their work and actively reflect on how they could approach the problem next time. The general structure of these comments is: you are here, this is where you can be, this is how we get there. I've experimented with grades and feedback, proficiency and feedback, even checkmarks and feedback, but I've found that as soon as you put any kind of quantitative data on work, a student stops engaging in the rich qualitative feedback, and learning stops. If you are required to grade quantitatively, you can try to release them the following day or class to further encourage student engagement.

Try this technique!

Deeper Reflection - At the end of the class, challenge students to reflect on their work. This needs to be scaffolded as looking inward is challenging for teenagers, and they'll often come back with rich thoughts like "I got question 6 right." The purpose of the reflection is to get them to inform their future learning. Share guiding questions such as:

How did the challenge feel to you?

How do you think you could have collaborated better?

What barriers did you face? (I.e. Did you feel too tired to learn? If so, why, and how do we change that for the next class?)

Implementing Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in math classrooms can be challenging. The tiered nature of the subject means that if too many pieces of the Jenga tower are missing, it all comes down. As teachers, we feel pressured to ensure we aren't setting up our students for failure in future years. This pressure can lead us to power through the same way that, potentially, we learned. However, I chose the strategies outlined above because they can be implemented incrementally and have been shown to increase understanding and retention in all students. Remembering how we learned math can blind us to seeing that UDL is essential for some students to learn math and is beneficial for all.

Continue Your Learning:

Blake Mahovic is a mathematics and inclusive education specialist in British Columbia, Canada. His approach and commitment to UDL are framed by personal experiences as a student with learning disabilities. Despite leaving high school math at 16, Blake achieved a First-Class Honours degree in mathematics. Now, he advocates for equitable opportunities and empowers students and educators alike to see the beauty, versatility, and multifaceted nature of mathematics.

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Increasing Engagement In Mathematics Classrooms - 3 Techniques to Try Now!

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Discover 3 tried and true techniques that promote student engagement in the mathematics classroom. Foster a more effective learning experience with UDL.

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Teachers can use insights from neuroscience to help ensure that learners stay engaged during class and are more likely to retain information.

In this article, we'll touch on insights from neuroscience about the attention-getting system of the brain. Understanding this process informs teachers about specific techniques they can employ to capture students' attention as new topics are introduced.

The brain evolved to promote survival. Every second, millions of bits of sensory information from the receptors of the eyes, ears, internal organs, skin, and muscles make their way to the brain's attention entry gate, but only about 1 percent of it enters consciousness. The system that determines what gets in (i.e., what the brain attends to) is the reticular activating system (RAS). This primitive network of cells in the lower brain stem, through which all sensory input must pass to reach any higher regions of the brain, is essentially the same in your cat, your dog, your child, and you.

In the wild, an organism is well-served by an attention system that gives priority to things that are unexpected, changing, and different from the usual. This is the key to the RAS attention gate: Any perceived source of danger is prioritized. However, in the absence of threat, attention is directed to any changes in an animal's or human's environment.

CAPTURING ATTENTION IN THE CLASSROOM

Although survival in the wild isn't much of a priority for most humans today, the RAS is still programmed to attend to perceived threats and change. If students feel physically and psychologically unsafe in a school or a classroom, they're less likely to focus their attention on the lesson. As noted earlier, in the absence of perceived threat, our brains are particularly receptive to what's new, curious, or unexpected.

In school, the students' brains are always attending... just not always on the topics we're teaching! When students aren't attentive to a lesson or a textbook, the RAS isn't giving priority entry to the teacher's voice or words on the page, but to other more interesting or distracting sights, feelings, and thoughts.

In order to capitalize on the brain's selectivity, here are six practical and proven attention-getters you can use at the start of a new unit or lesson.

1. Surprise students

Since the brain is attracted to novelty, do something unusual or unexpected to arouse curiosity and open the RAS attention filter.

Examples: Wear something unique, bring in an unusual object, or play a song when students enter the room to promote curiosity, hence focus. Tell students that there's a link between your clothes, the object, or the words in the song and something in the lesson. Invite them to guess what it is.

At the beginning of a unit on negative numbers, or on past tense in language, a teacher enters the room by walking backward and then asks students to guess why.

2. Present odd facts, anomalies, or discrepant events

The brain is fundamentally a pattern-making organ. Constructing patterns enables humans to make sense of the world. However, when an established or expected pattern is broken, the brain is immediately aroused.

Example: A science teacher blows up a balloon, then slowly pierces one end with a sharpened wooden cooking skewer. To the amazement of students, the teacher pushes the skewer through the opposite side of the balloon without bursting it. Students are transfixed and want to see the demonstration again!

3. Invite students' predictions

The ability to make sound predictions is fundamental to survival, and the brain rewards successful prediction through its release of dopamine, a pleasure-inducing chemical. Teachers can provide opportunities for students to make predictions about the relationship of the curious sensory input or other novelty to the lesson. When this happens, students will seek information to help them make correct predictions and remain attentive as their brains seek to find out if their predictions are correct.

Examples: In a science lesson for first graders, ask children to predict which objects will float and which will sink in a tub of water. A high school psychology teacher can ask students to predict the results of a schoolwide student survey. In both cases, students are engaged and eager to find out if their predictions are correct.

4. Pose a provocative (hook) question

A stimulating question can be an "itch" in students' brains that they'll want to scratch.

Can what you eat prevent zits? Does a fart contain DNA? Is aging a disease? What superpower would you want?

The best hook questions are open-ended. They're meant to stimulate thinking and discussion and to open the door to further exploration. Give students a reasonable amount of quiet thinking time before they answer. Have them do a quick write about their thoughts and/or engage in a think-pair-share with another student. After this personal engagement, learners are likely to be more attentive to your teaching on the related topic.

5. Cite a current event or issue relevant to students

Students often have opinions about current events or controversial issues in their school, town, state, etc., and these can be used to spark engagement.

Example: For a unit on persuasive writing, a middle school teacher shows a newspaper article about a school board proposal in another district that would require students to wear uniforms. Students then discuss the pros and cons, state their position, and even switch sides to try to better understand different perspectives and develop rebuttals, all as an opening to the unit on persuasion.

Humor is a guaranteed dopamine booster and can serve as a great attention hook.

Example: A sixth-grade mathematics teacher begins a unit on ratio and proportion by presenting funny caricatures of celebrities. She asks students to describe why the pictures are funny, and they note that various physical features (e.g., eyes, nose, ears, head) of the characters are greatly exaggerated. Then, the teacher shows da Vinci's Vitruvian Man to illustrate idealized proportions of the human body.

Hook and Hold Attention

We recommend that you rotate your attention-getting techniques to avoid being predictable. The intent of using the techniques described above is to hook student attention, but the intent isn't simply to gain immediate attention for the moment. The longer-term goal is to hold that attention over time. There are numerous ways to capitalize on initial attention by employing active-learning strategies, including the use of authentic tasks and projects, inquiry-oriented instruction, cooperative learning, Socratic seminars, simulations and role-plays, and design thinking (e.g., using makerspaces, where students can create tangible products), and allowing students appropriate "voice and choice" options in assignments and performance tasks.

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Teachers can use insights from neuroscience to help ensure that learners stay engaged during class and are more likely to retain information.

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Spreadsheet Activities for all Subjects Session Agenda    Presenter  Eric Curts Technology Integration Specialist Google Certified Trainer, Google Certified Innovator Eric’s Google resources - http://www.controlaltachieve.com Email - ericcurts@gmail.com - eric.curts@apps.sparcc.org  Twitte...

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4 Reasons to (Re)Focus on Formative Assessment

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4 Reasons to (Re)Focus on Formative Assessment

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4 Reasons to (Re)Focus on Formative Assessment

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Alex Quigley’s blog sharing ideas and resources on literacy and education

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70+ real world problem-based math lessons that you can download for free and use with your students

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70+ real world problem-based math lessons that you can download for free and use with your students

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My growing list of free real world problem-based lessons for grades 2 through high school. Includes links to download multimedia and teacher guide.

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New templates in Google Docs: designed by experts, made for you

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New templates in Google Docs: designed by experts, made for you

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GV provides venture capital funding to bold new companies. In the fields of life science, healthcare, artificial intelligence, robotics, transportation, cyber security and agriculture, GV's companies aim to improve lives and change industries.The new GV pitch template in Slides helps entrepreneurs share their vision, based on proven presentation tactics.

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New templates in Google Docs: designed by experts, made for you

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We're adding to our collection of templates in Docs, Sheets and Slides.

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Strategies to Engage Students and Manage Challenging Behaviors

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Strategies to Engage Students and Manage Challenging Behaviors

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Learn to Understand and Address the Causes of Student Disengagement

By Lee Ann Jung

When asking teachers about some of the most challenging parts of their job, they often want to know ways they can motivate their students or how to address challenging behaviors. They want students to be engaged. Just this week, a high school math teacher with defeated tone asked, "I have some I can't even get to pick up the pencil. How do I get them to pick up the pencil?" Students can't learn when they aren't engaged, and I wish there was a single answer to the question of disengagement. But it isn't always "plug and play."

Before we even get started thinking about what could be contributing to disengagement, we need to first check our biases and judgment. A student who isn't engaged isn't inherently "bad" or "difficult." And they aren't trying to make our lives difficult. Some students are lackluster about certain subjects because it's not in line with their personal interests. Aren't we all lackluster about some content areas? Even the most curious, self-directed learner isn't enthusiastic about learning everything. This means we have to pull out all of the stops to make our learning experiences as engaging as possible, intentionally thinking about the students who are the least engaged as we iterate our lessons. The Universal Design for Learning framework offers a curated list of high-leverage strategies, like teacher clarity, offering choice, bringing relevance to the learning at hand, and using mastery assessment practices. With the best UDL practices in place, engagement drastically improves.

But even with robust UDL in place, there are students who continue to have difficulty engaging. In order to design responsive experiences, we have to uncover what's beneath the surface of disengagement. And there are many possibilities. One of the most difficult types of disengagement to break is the kind that results from low confidence. Low confidence generally arises from a pattern of failures. Perhaps it started with a particular content area not being interesting to a student and a less-than-engaging experience with that content. A persisting lack of engagement can lead to visible teacher frustration. The student may not have a good relationship with the teacher, and the student definitely doesn't have a good relationship with the content area. The latter relationship can persist indefinitely and can lead to a poor relationship with school altogether. The longer this goes on, the more intractable it becomes. It's a transactional pattern of student-teacher relationships and self-efficacy.

Disengagement that results from low confidence requires we design experiences that give the student a "win," or a mastery experience. Mastery experiences are those times when we succeed at something we thought was too hard-in other words, success in the zone of proximal development. Mastery experiences signal our brains that we can accomplish something difficult-that we were wrong and we have higher abilities than we thought. This resulting increase in self-efficacy means that next time we encounter something that feels a little bit too difficult, we'll have more of a sense that we can do it. This relationship between self-efficacy, motivation, and mastery experiences calls in to question the logic of threatening students with poor grades to motivate them to give effort, doesn't it? The next time you see a student who seems to have given up or is "too cool for school," consider the possibility of low self-efficacy being what's beneath the surface. Learn more about designing mastery experiences to see if you can be the champion for that student who re-engages them.

Provide Clear Expectations to Avoid Common Causes of Challenging Behaviors

By Ben Springer

If ever you find yourself stuck in the ruts of classroom management, don't feel too bad. It happens. Despite excellent driving skills, many modern-day educators often find themselves off-road and stuck in the mud. Why? It's not the driver-it's the conditions. More and more educators are being asked to drive through tough conditions. There are two primary weather patterns that create the craziest conditions for teachers. As we become better prepared to drive under these conditions, we'll all avoid getting stuck)!

Condition # 1: Volatility

Emotional reactivity is a burden each of us carry. Why? Well, because we possess a nervous system. While this system helped keep us alive back in our cave-person days, it has become a bit of a hassle in modern times. For instance, whilst managing a class of twenty-five kids, one of those kids may say (or do) something offensive. Our silly nervous system tends to interpret the offense as a threat and we react-it's practically automatic. If we're not careful, our response can trigger an emotionally reactive ping-pong match with the child. (This type of ping-pong is exhausting and there is never a clear winner). In order to avoid the volatility condition, provide consequences at baseline. What does that mean? Inform your kids of consequences BEFORE the problem. Every day, remind the kids what happens when they follow your classroom rules and what happens when they don't.

Condition # 2: Uncertainty/Complexity

Human beings aren't very good at grey areas. In fact, very few of us excel in that regard. Why? Our cognitive skills (as impressive as they may be) are still hard wired with shortcuts (aka: biases). These biases can impair our ability to connect environmental (aka: conceptual) clues into a cohesive big picture. As we mature, we become better at connecting clues-but not experts. So, it should come as no surprise, school age kids are not very good at this either. Some of it is because they're not actively looking (see also: engaged/motivated), but a lot of it is due to their brain development and design. In order to avoid the uncertainty/complexity condition, we have to provide crystal clear expectations for all students across these four areas: 1) Movement during the activity 2) participation in the activity, 3) types of conversations, and 4) how to ask for help.

A Strategy to Increase Student Engagement, Decrease Behavior Disruptions, and Conserve Your Energy

By Serena Pariser

By this time in the school year, you've probably established solid relationships with students, and they are used to the routines and structures of your classroom. But, this is also the time of the school year you might be feeling a bit worn down at the end of every school day. Your students may be disengaged, asking "Why are we doing this?" about every lesson. This can potentially lead to frustration for both you and your students.

This is a great time to try project- and problem-based learning to increase student learning and engagement, decrease behavior disruptions, and give you back your energy.

You can be a guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage.

Simply put, problem-based learning is when students are creating something, and problem-based learning is when students are solving a deep and rich problem. Sometimes, a unit can combine both aspects of problem and project based. This approach takes a bit more planning and preparation in the beginning but once the students get going they will be on autopilot, keeping their own pacing and taking control of their learning. You can be a guide on the side rather than the sage on the stage. Project or problem-based learning can completely change the feel of a classroom, bring the fun back into teaching, and create a community of learners. You will also go home with more energy.

Project- and problem-based learning also fosters the skills-like agility and flexibility, a growth mindset and resilience, teamwork and collaboration, and resolving conflict-that students need to be successful in the future.

The table below highlights examples of project- or problem-based learning in comparison to traditional teaching.

Traditional Teaching

Project or Problem Based Learning

Teaching students about water contamination

Students analyze the water in their local community and develop elegant solutions for how to improve quality

Students write a research report on a topic of interest

Students choose a societal problem, such as teen obesity or social media addiction, and use their own curiosity to guide their research paper, then research what the world is currently doing to solve the issue, think critically about why it isn't working, and then create their own elegant solution to combat the problem

Students learn about The Great Depression

Students take time to create presentations in groups that explore the question, "What could have done to prevent "The Great Depression?"

So let's ignite that fire in our classrooms, increase student engagement, and give ourselves back some energy. Students need that right now and so do we.

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#CorwinTalks: Strategies to Engage Students and Manage Challenging Behaviors - Corwin Connect

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Strategies and tips from Corwin authors to engage students and manage challenging behaviors.

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Do you use student portfolios in your school? Portfolios give students a space to capture, share and celebrate their learning. As someone who often shares resources for assessment and creativity in the classroom, it should be no surprise that I love having a digital space to showcase student work.

Earlier this year on the blog, I featured a post on Why Students Need Portfolios in 2024. There are so many reasons why you might consider incorporating student portfolios into your year-long plan for assessment. With portfolios for students, you can personalize learning experiences, help them prepare for college and careers, and provide opportunities for both reflection and celebration.

Wakelet Portfolios are the perfect option for accomplishing these goals, and today, on the blog, we'll take a look at this popular tool!

Student Portfolios in Action

There are many reasons why introducing student portfolios might be high on your list of priorities this school year. Portfolios give students a chance to curate artifacts of learning they want to share and reflect on their accomplishments. A digital portfolio lets students share a wide variety of their creations, including digital products and offline creations.

As students create their own unique portfolios, they can link to work they've created with other digital tools - perhaps a podcast they recorded for a social studies project or a video from a science experiment. They can also add pictures from an event they participated in, such as a field trip or competition, or upload photographs of a physical project, like a display they created in a community space. With digital portfolios, there are so many ways for students to celebrate their learning.

Using Wakelet for Student Portfolios

If you joined my formative assessment session at FETC this year, you might remember how I mentioned Wakelet Portfolios. It's a fantastic tool for providing students with a space to showcase the process behind the product. Students can snap pictures or share screenshots of a project as it's developing. They can even talk about the impact of teacher and peer feedback and include reflections in their portfolios.

Wakelet provides a space for students to demonstrate growth and mastery of content, setting them up for both college and career readiness. The video below takes you through the stories of students who used Wakelet in high school. They found that the experiences of embracing and utilizing portfolios during the school year significantly impacted their success.

In the examples shared in the video, you can see just how many diverse use cases there are for portfolios. In addition to the different subject areas that they were able to showcase, all of the students shared how Wakelet Portfolios set them up for success when creating pages to showcase their accomplishments more broadly. This includes using Wakelet Portfolios to create a resume, a collection of artifacts, and even opportunities to share their musical creations.

How do Wakelet Portfolios work?

This page will give you details on how to set up a demo to see Wakelet Portfolios in action. With this tool, your students have a handful of options. For example, they can create collections to chronicle their learning journey for one class, such as AP Biology or Algebra. Or they can create a Wakelet Portfolio for one project to showcase the steps and final product. Alternatively, they can create a portfolio to use as a showcase of a culmination of their accomplishments from the school year.

Students can open up Wakelet and create a profile with different sections of their portfolio. As you can see in this example from Katrina, they have three core sections:

About Me: This includes a collection of pictures and a playlist of favorite songs, along with teacher recommendations. There is also a spotlight on achievements (like Katrina's successful charity bake sale).

Academic Highlights: This section is organized into subject area categories, including English Literature and Physics. The sections include links to Google Docs and videos from the school year.

Extra Curricular Highlights: In this section, you'll find digital resources related to Katrina's Volleyball and Drama experiences.

This example is a fantastic one, but what I love about Wakelet Portfolios is that you can truly make it your own! You and your students can decide what to share and how to organize a portfolio.

Getting Started with Wakelet Portfolios

Are you ready to get started with Wakelet Portfolios? The team at Wakelet has set up a special landing page where you can learn how to get started with student portfolios. This page is where you'll find information on how to request a free trial and explore pricing options for schools and districts.

I've been a super fan of Wakelet since it first came on the scene. I'm very excited about the ways students are using this platform to share and showcase their work. They have a new portfolio course and a student ambassador program, too. As you saw in the video above, students love using a digital tool that helps them showcase and celebrate their learning throughout the school year.

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Showcasing Student Success with Wakelet Portfolios - Class Tech Tips

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Discover how Wakelet Portfolios can transform student assessment and creativity. Celebrate and personalize learning with student portfolios.

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A short 3 minute clip

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People often ask me for good reads. This site has great recommendations based on themes.

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This blog is inspired by another by Ruth Walker - E-coli and quality first teaching. I'm basically trying to say the same thing. In her brilliantly punchy post she uses an excellent analogy: when food hygiene is poor, the more vulnerable sectors of a population are most likely to suffer - the elderly and babies are more likely to get sick. But the solution doesn't lie in addressing their needs as sub-groups; it lies in addressing the core issue: poor food hygiene.

I think this is a very important idea. We have spent so long chasing rainbows with sub-group analysis; diving down rabbit holes; grasping at straws; playing whack-a-mole. The recent series of paradigm-busting blogs by Becky Allen have highlighted the folly of this in relation to chasing after Pupil Premium achievement through narrow interventions - largely because the probability of hitting the right students in ways that they need is pretty low.

A major part of the data delusion that has built up over recent years has been that each sub-group in a cohort should, more or less, achieve similar outcomes and that if there are GAPS - the GAPS MUST BE CLOSED. Usually this involves identifying some plausible causal link and then trying to make the lower achieving group catch up to the higher achieving group by intervening around that link. However, this is fraught with difficulty and data-wrongheadedness, too often driven by folk without enough mathematical confidence to apply the notion of 'statistical confidence' to their data.

Boys are not all the same. If boys underperform compared to girls 'Boy-friendly' strategies might not work for them all and may benefit the girls even more. Ethnic groups rarely have neatly homogenous learning characteristics that fit with definable interventions and often the group size is so small as to render the data useless. Every SEND student is different. Higher Prior Attainment students are not a distinct group and can be half your school. Then there is Odd Door/Even Door syndrome - the legendary cautionary tale once shared on David Didau's blog suggesting that spurious door number 'gaps' might be greater than say gender or PP/non-PP gaps: you can find all kinds of patterns and differences between groups even if the cause is entirely random.

And this is the main point: At some point 'intervention' really has to be simply 'teaching'. Given all the variables, uncertainties and unknowns, rather than chasing interventions, it is a far far better bet to focus on teaching everyone better. To spell out Ruth Walker's blog message, the reason why some students underachieve is likely to be a product of some deficit with the core teaching and learning process, not some special feature of it that just applies to them. It's just that - like babies and the elderly with e-coli - they might be more vulnerable and the symptoms will be more evident.

This might be about the overall pitch of your lessons, how well you specify the knowledge requirements of your curriculum, a behaviour management issue, the extent of your probing questioning, the amount of practice students get, how responsive you are in acting on information from your formative assessments, the quality of feedback students receive, the clarity of your explanations, your expectations in relation to recall and your habits around checking for understanding. If you address these areas, everyone benefits and, given the time constraints, focusing on a couple of these things seems like a good bet.

The message is simple: Try to chase gaps directly and you have no real idea what will happen...it's a false prize. Try to teach everyone better and then your sub-groups will do better - because they are part of everyone!

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To address underachieving groups, teach everyone better.

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This blog is inspired by another by Ruth Walker - E-coli and quality first teaching. I'm basically trying to say the same thing. In her brilliantly punchy post she uses an excellent analogy: when food hygiene is poor, the more vulnerable sectors of a population are most likely to suffer - the elderly and babies...

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No matter the age -- kindergarten to high school senior -- students are pretty familiar with social media. In fact, many of them can think in terms of tweets, snaps, pins and videos. They know what they have to say, and they have an idea of how to say it with a certain kind of post.

If they can think in terms of social media posts, can we let them demonstrate their learning in that way, too?

In many cases, the answer is yes!

And, thankfully, they don't need the app to create the experience! In each of the examples below, students can do an activity that feels like posting on social media without actually signing up for or using the app.

This concept is a big part of the social media chapter in my book, Tech Like a PIRAT E, which is all about making learning memorable with technology. In this post, each of these social media experiences is recreated with a tool that so many students DO have access to -- Google Slides.

How to assign these templates to students

1. Click the "Get the template" button for the template you want. Here, you'll make a copy of the template into your own Google Drive.

2. Create an assignment for your students in Google Classroom or your learning management system (LMS) like Canvas or Schoology.

3. If Google Classroom: attach the copy you made of the social media template and choose "Make a copy for each student" in the three dots menu button for the attachment.
If you can't do this in your LMS: Click the "Share" button in the top right of Google Slides. Under "Get link", click "Change to anyone with the link". Make the link "Anyone with the link" is a viewer. Copy the link. Paste the link in your assignment instructions. In the link, delete the word "edit" and everything else after it at the end of the link. Type the word "copy" right at the end of the link.

4. Students get their own copies of the template and get to work!

14 FREE social media-inspired Google Slides templates

N E W T E M P L A T E !

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14 social media-inspired Google Slides templates

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Students use social media all the time. Let's put those skills to use! In these social media-inspired Google Slides templates, they can show what they

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As you kick off the new calendar year, it's a great time to take a step back and consider your goals for 2024. I started the first week of the new year working with a district in Missouri. We talked about lots of topics related to EdTech, including how to engage students in meaningful learning experiences. If you want to make sure everyone is engaged in their learning this year, your students need portfolios.

Today on the blog, we'll look at the benefits of giving students a flexible place to share and celebrate their learning. I'll also share Wakelet Portfolios, which lets you take your student portfolios to the next level.

Let's dive into the reasons why I think your students need portfolios this school year!

Student Portfolios in Action

What is a student portfolio? A student portfolio is a curated collection of a student's work that showcases their accomplishments over a period of time. If you're familiar with my book EdTech Essentials, I talk about the essentials of curate, create, and share.

Portfolios give students a chance to reflect on their work over the course of the school year. They can curate artifacts they want to share. A digital portfolio lets students share a wide variety of their creations . This could include a link to a Google Doc, a podcast episode they've recorded, and so much more. Portfolios are the perfect way for students to share their work with an audience, too.

In K-12 settings, portfolios allow educators and students to document learning experiences, assess growth, and celebrate accomplishments. There are lots of reasons why you might feel like your students need portfolios as you kick off 2024!

Why Students Need Portfolios in 2024

Portfolios are a dynamic way to capture and showcase student learning. Here are three benefits of portfolios to consider this year.

Personalize Learning Experiences

The flexibility of a student portfolio lets you personalize learning experiences. If you are working in an environment where students create different artifacts of learning from their peers, it gives everyone a common place to share their unique creations. For example, if a few of your students create a slide-based presentation, and a few students create a movie to capture their learning, everyone can share their work in their personal portfolio.

College and Career Readiness

As students prepare for college and careers, they will find there are many ways to demonstrate growth and mastery of content. A student portfolio can showcase a student's learning journey - not simply their final project. This emphasis on process is one of the benefits of introducing portfolios to students. It can mirror the experiences they will have in college and their careers.

Reflect and Celebrate

One reason you might agree that students need portfolios in 2024 is how they provide opportunities for both reflection and celebration. More than just an end-of-unit celebration to mark the completion of a project, a student portfolio can capture student learning throughout the school year. Students can reflect on their progress and celebrate at the same time. With digital portfolios, students can also share their work with a link - making it easy to extend the celebration to family and friends and even share with a global audience if that feels like the best fit for your group.

Wakelet Portfolios

In the video above, you can get a picture of what's possible with Wakelet Portfolios. If you've attended a workshop or webinar with me over the past few years, you've probably heard me talk about Wakelet. It's one of my favorite ways for educators to share resources with colleagues - and it's a powerful tool for students, too!

With Wakelet Portfolios, your students can organize their work and track their progress over the course of the school year. Students can create sections for different classes, interests, and projects within this super flexible platform. Wakelet is the perfect tool for students to showcase work from different parts of their day, too.

Students can add a video they created for a social studies project, a link to a collaborative document that shows their process for planning a science experiment, a podcast episode where they chat with a classmate about a problem-solving strategy from their math class - you name it, the possibilities are endless!

Do you think your students need portfolios this year? If you'd like to see the power of Wakelet Portfolios, head to this page and schedule a demo with the Wakelet Team. I think you'll be super impressed with what is possible!

Find more posts featuring Wakelet:

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Why Students Need Portfolios in 2024 - Class Tech Tips

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Explore why students need portfolios in 2024: Unlock ways for students to share their learning and growth over the course of the school year.

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Free download

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How Short ‘Bursts’ of Tutoring Can Boost Early Reading Skills

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How Short ‘Bursts’ of Tutoring Can Boost Early Reading Skills

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Bite-sized tutoring sessions-only 5 to 10 minutes daily-may help nip reading struggles in the bud in the earliest grades.

Students who participated in Chapter One-a nonprofit tutoring program that serves elementary children in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom-in their first two grades had higher oral reading fluency and better performance on district reading tests than untutored students, according to a study released Jan. 16 by the National Student Support Accelerator, which studies ways to scale up effective models for high-intensity tutoring.

High-intensity tutoring-with trained tutors meeting individually or in very small groups for at least 30 minutes, several times a week-is considered the most effective tutoring model, but often it's also the most expensive. This study suggests that districts may be able to get more bang for their buck by using short, tightly focused individual tutoring in the earliest grades.

Kindergartners and 1st graders in the Chapter One program have individual sessions with part-time tutors trained in highly scripted, 5- to 10-minute lessons on phonics, oral reading, and other early literacy topics. These "tutoring bursts" happen during regular class lessons three to five times a week, and students also complete tablet-based activities on their own to reinforce the lessons.

"If you're thinking about teaching phonics-like a new sound-you can actually complete that in five minutes," said Carly Robinson, a senior researcher at Stanford University and the Accelerator's research director. "Thinking about the attention span of a 5-year-old, it actually might be more effective to layer bite-sized chunks several times for a few minutes, as opposed to try to reiterate [a new concept] in a 30-minute session.

Accelerator researchers randomly assigned more than 800 kindergartners in Broward County, Fla., to receive the tutoring or attend class as usual in 2021-22. By the end of the school year, kindergartners who received the tutoring in addition to regular classroom instruction performed on average about 11 percentile points higher on the district reading test than students who only received regular class instruction.

The students who then went on to continue the tutoring program in 1st grade were 16 percent less likely to be identified as at-risk readers by the winter of that school year. While 76 percent of the untutored students in the study read at least on grade level (called stage four or above) by the end of 1st grade, 96 percent of tutored students read at that level by comparison. The benefits were the same for both English learners and native-English speakers.

Cost effectiveness

The tutors all have college degrees, and many have education experience, but they are paid part-time. The program costs $350 to $450 per student annually, Robinson said.

"That's on the much lower end of costs [for high-dosage tutoring] both because they have part-time tutors and through these short bursts of instruction, [tutors] actually can serve more students than they might be able to if it was, consistently, like 20-minute tutoring sessions scheduled every day or three times a week."

While the tutoring program and the current study stops after 1st grade, researchers plan to follow the students through 3rd grade to find out whether the tutoring benefits are sustained over time.

"I think that some tutoring that is proving to be effective for early learners is also relevant for older 2nd and 3rd graders since the pandemic," Robinson said. "We've been hearing [from educators] that in the past few years, interventions that they might normally direct at K-1 grades are needed at the 2nd and 3rd grade levels, too."

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How Short 'Bursts' of Tutoring Can Boost Early Reading Skills

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An ongoing study of early literacy tutors finds learning gains over two years.

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Most Anticipated Middle Grade Reads of 2024

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Most Anticipated Middle Grade Reads of 2024

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Woohoo! New year, new books to look forward to! Here are a bunch of middle grade books I can't wait to read! I'm sure I only missed about a billion more great ones! Thank goodness we at TLT are spending 2024 focusing on middle grade books!

All descriptions from the publishers.

The Misfits #1: A Royal Conundrum by Lisa Yee, Dan Santat (Illustrator) (ISBN-13: 9781984830296 Publisher: Random House Children's Books Publication date: 01/02/2024 Series: The Misfits #1, Ages 8-12)
When a notorious thief is out for priceless treasure (gems! cats! general decorum!)-who're you gonna call? An elite team of crime-fighting underdogs, that's who! The Misfits are on the case in this hilarious illustrated series from Newbery Honoree Lisa Yee and Caldecott Medalist Dan Santat! "For any kid who's felt like a misfit, this crackling adventure packs a wallop!" -Lincoln Peirce, creator of and Max & the Midknights
Olive Cobin Zang has . . . issues. And they mostly aren't her fault. (No, really!) Though she often slips under the radar, problems have a knack for finding her. So, imagine her doubts when she's suddenly dropped off at the strangest boarding school ever: a former castle turned prison that's now a "reforming arts school"!

But nothing could've prepared Olive for RASCH ( not "rash"). There, she's lumped with a team of other kids who never quite fit in, and discovers that the academy isn't what it seems-and neither is she. In fact, RASCH is a cover for an elite group of misfits who fight crime . . . and Olive has arrived just in time.

Turns out that RASCH is in danger of closing, unless Olive's class can stop the heist of the century. And as Olive falls in love with this wacky school, she realizes it's up to her new team to save the only home that's ever welcomed them.

Just Shy of Ordinary by A. J. Sass (ISBN-13: 9780316506175 Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers Publication date: 01/30/2024, Ages 8-12)

Thirteen-year-old Shai is an expert problem-solver. There's never been something they couldn't research and figure out on their own. But there's one thing Shai hasn't been able to logic their way through: picking at the hair on their arms.

Ever since their mom lost her job, the two had to move in with family friends, and the world went into pandemic lockdown, Shai's been unable to control their picking. Now, as the difficult times recede and everyone begins to discover their "new normal," Shai's hoping the stress that caused their picking will end, too.

After reading that a routine can reduce anxiety, Shai makes a plan to create a brand new normal for themself that includes going to public school. But when their academic evaluation places them into 9th grade instead of 8th, it sets off a chain of events that veer off the path Shai had prepared for, encouraging Shai to learn how to accept life's twists and turns, especially when you can't plan for them.
The New York Times bestselling SUNNY series continues as Sunny finds herself in the spotlight in a competition unlike any other...

Sunny Makes Her Case (Sunny #5) by Jennifer L. Holm, Matthew Holm (Illustrator) (ISBN-13: 9781338792447 Publisher: Scholastic, Inc. Publication date: 02/06/2024 Series: Sunny, Ages 8-12)

Sunny is starting to understand the ins and outs of middle school... but she still feels more out than in. It's about classes or homework, really. No, it's the fact that most kids have a thing they do outside of class. Like football or track or cheerleading. Sunny isn't quarterback material, and her cheer attempts are... not the best. So what can she do?

When Sunny's friend Arun says he wants to start a debate club, she's not really sure what he means. Isn't debate just... arguing? Sunny's never had a problem with arguing. Arun and the advisor show her there's more to it than that - there's also teamwork, and research, and being able to speak up in front of judges. Some of the debates are fun ones - which is the best candy? Is peanut butter a force for evil or a force for good? But when the debate club starts to be a success, Sunny realizes she won't just be able to talk her way into winning... she'll have to make her case!

Drawing Deena by Hena Khan (ISBN-13: 9781534459915 Publisher: Salaam Reads / Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers Publication date: 02/06/2024, Ages 8-12)

Deena's never given a name to the familiar knot in her stomach that appears when her parents argue about money, when it's time to go to school, or when she struggles to find the right words. She manages to make it through each day with the help of her friends and the art she loves to make.

While her parents' money troubles cause more and more stress, Deena wonders if she can use her artistic talents to ease their burden. She creates a logo and social media account to promote her mom's home-based business selling clothes from Pakistan to the local community. With her cousin and friends modeling the outfits and lending their social media know-how, business picks up.

But the success and attention make Deena's cousin and best friend, Parisa, start to act funny. Suddenly Deena's latest creative outlet becomes another thing that makes her feel nauseated and unsure of herself. After Deena reaches a breaking point, both she and her mother learn the importance of asking for help and that, with the right support, Deena can create something truly beautiful.
From critically acclaimed author Barbara Dee comes a middle grade novel about a girl whose struggles with anxiety and writer's block set off unexpected twists and turns, both on and off the page.

Unstuck by Barbara Dee (ISBN-13: 9781534489868 Publisher: Aladdin Publication date: 02/27/2024, Ages 9-13)

Lyla is thrilled when her seventh-grade English language arts class begins a daily creative writing project. For the past year, she's been writing a brilliant fantasy novel in her head, and here's her chance to get it on paper! The plot to Lyla's novel is super complicated, with battle scenes and witches and a mysterious one-toed-beast, but at its core, it's about an overlooked girl who has to rescue her beautiful, highly accomplished older sister.

But writing a fantasy novel turns out to be harder than simply imagining one, and pretty soon Lyla finds herself stuck, experiencing a panic she realizes is writer's block. Part of the problem is that she's trying to impress certain people-like Rania, her best friend who's pulling away, and Ms. Bowman, the coolest teacher at school. Plus, there's the pressure of meeting the deadline for the town writing contest. A few years ago, Lyla's superstar teen sister Dahlia came in second, and this time, Lyla is determined to win first prize.

Finally, Lyla confides about her writing problems to Dahlia, who is dealing with her own academic stress as she applies to college. That's when she learns Dahlia's secret, which is causing a very different type of writer's block. Can Lyla rescue a surprisingly vulnerable big sister, both on the page and in real life?

Just Keep Walking by Erin Soderberg Downing (ISBN-13: 9781338851304 Publisher: Scholastic, Inc. Publication date: 03/05/2024, Ages 8-12)

Wild meets Gilmore Girls on the Trail, Just Keep Walking is a story of resilience and the healing and restorative power of wilderness and nature from acclaimed middle-grade and chapter-book author Erin Soderberg Downing.

Two years after her parents' surprising and painful split, twelve-year-old Jo and her mom find themselves on the 100-mile hike on the Superior Hiking Trail along Lake Superior's north shore-a journey that Jo had always looked forward to hiking with her dad. It's not a situation that either of them ever predicted they'd find themselves in, yet here they are in the wilderness with their entire lives stuffed into a pair of thirty-pound packs.

Along the trail, they'll suffer through endless aches and pains, scorching heat, and crippling self-doubt. They'll encounter bears, moose, and other wildlife and meet and collect an assortment of unlikely friends. Day after day, Jo will battle the incessant thoughts that come in and out of her head. But as one obstacle after the next continue to test her strength and ultimate survival, Jo will have to confront her greatest fears head on and learn how to be alone.

What begins as a journey to prove to her father that she and her mom can make it on their own turns into a quest to rediscover their strength, build resilience, and prove that they can survive-both for themselves and for each other.
When twelve-year-old Michael Rosario meets a mysterious boy from the future, his life is changed forever. From bestselling author Erin Entrada Kelly, winner of the Newbery Medal for Hello, Universe and a Newbery Honor for We Dream of Space, this novel explores themes of family, friendship, trust, and forgiveness. The First State of Being From award-winning author Sara Zarr comes a gorgeously crafted and deeply personal story about a young girl, her alcoholic mother, and the hope that ties them together. is for fans of Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me.

The First State of Being by Erin Entrada Kelly (ISBN-13: 9780063337312 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Publication date: 03/05/2024, Ages 8-12)
"Every so often a book comes along that is so brave and necessary, it extends a lifeline when it's needed most. This is one of those books." -Katherine Applegate, author of the Newbery Medal-winning, Revered teacher, librarian, and story ambassador John Schu explores anorexia-and self-expression as an act of survival-in a wrenching and transformative novel-in-verse. But another voice inside me says, We need help. We're going to die. The One and Only Ivan
It's August 1999. For twelve-year-old Michael Rosario, life at Fox Run Apartments in Red Knot, Delaware, is as ordinary as ever-except for the looming Y2K crisis and his overwhelming crush on his fifteen-year-old babysitter, Gibby. But when a disoriented teenage boy named Ridge appears out of nowhere, Michael discovers there is more to life than stockpiling supplies and pining over Gibby.

It turns out that Ridge is carefree, confident, and bold, things Michael wishes he could be. Unlike Michael, however, Ridge isn't where he belongs. When Ridge reveals that he's the world's first time traveler, Michael and Gibby are stunned but curious. As Ridge immerses himself in 1999-fascinated by microwaves, basketballs, and malls-Michael discovers that his new friend has a book that outlines the events of the next twenty years, and his curiosity morphs into something else: focused determination. Michael wants-no, needs -to get his hands on that book. How else can he prepare for the future? But how far is he willing to go to get it?
Two everyday superheroes set out to save the world-starting with their school-in an exciting new middle-grade graphic series from two award-winning authors and a debut illustrator.
A story of time travel, friendship, found family, and first loves, this thematically rich novel is distinguished by its voice, character development, setting, and exploration of the issues that resonate with middle grade readers.

Kyra, Just for Today by Sara Zarr (ISBN-13: 9780063045132 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Publication date: 03/05/2024, Ages 8-12)
From Newbery Honor-winning author Andrea Wang, a new middle grade novel about a Chinese American tween who attends a Boston-based Chinese cultural overnight camp-and the many ways it transforms her.
Krya has always felt like she's a bit too much. Too tall. Too loud. Too earnest. But she's okay with that, because she's got her mom. Ever since Mom got sober about five years ago, she and Kyra have always been there for each other-something Kyra is thankful for every week when she attends her group meetings with other kids of alcoholics. When Mom is managing her cleaning business and Kyra is taking care of things at home, maybe, she thinks, she's not too much. Maybe, she's just enough.

Then seventh grade starts, and everything Kyra used to be able to count on feels unsure. Kyra's best friend, Lu, is hanging out with eighth graders, and Mom is unusually distant. When Mom starts missing work, sleeping in, and forgetting things, Kyra doesn't dare say "relapse." But soon not saying that word means not saying anything at all-to Lu or to her support group. And when Kyra suspects that her worst fears might be real, she starts to question whether being just enough is not enough at all.

With sensitivity and candor, acclaimed author Sara Zarr tells a heartfelt, personal story about finding hope in even the most difficult places, and love in even the most complicated relationships.

Louder Than Hunger by John Schu (ISBN-13: 9781536229097 Publisher: Candlewick Press Publication date: 03/05/2024, Ages 10-14)

Jake volunteers at a nursing home because he likes helping people. He likes skating and singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud to his teachers. He also likes avoiding people his own age . . . and the cruelty of mirrors . . . and food. Jake has read about kids like him in books-the weird one, the outsider-and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he eats, the bigger he feels. How long can Jake punish himself before he truly disappears? A fictionalized account of the author's experiences and emotions living in residential treatment facilities as a young teen with an eating disorder, Louder than Hunger is a triumph of raw honesty. With a deeply personal afterword for context, this much-anticipated verse novel is a powerful model for muffling the destructive voices inside, managing and articulating pain, and embracing self-acceptance, support, and love.

Blue Stars: Mission One: The Vice Principal Problem by Kekla Magoon, Cynthia Leitich Smith, Molly Murakami (Illustrator) (ISBN-13: 9781536228663 Publisher: Candlewick Press Publication date: 03/05/2024 Series: The Blue Stars, Ages 8-12)

When cousins Riley Halfmoon and Maya Dawn move to Urbanopolis to live with their activist grandma, they get off to a rocky start. Outgoing Riley misses her Muscogee cousins but is sure that she and Maya will be instant BFFs. Meanwhile, introvert Maya misses her parents, on active duty in Japan, and just wants some space to herself. At school, Maya joins Robotics Club and Riley bonds with fellow gymnasts. Just when they start to feel at home, their school culture is threatened by an influential foe in disguise. Joining student council feels like a way to help, so both cousins toss their hats in the ring for sixth-grade class president. But when they realize what they're up against-money, power, and lies-they quickly shift from competition to cooperation, joining forces as superheroes. Riley is savvy with people; Maya is a whiz with gadgets. In no time, this dazzling duo is off to save the day! Relatable and rich in themes of family, community, and compromise, the Blue Stars series will entertain and empower, inspiring readers to be the stars they are.

Summer at Squee by Andrea Wang (ISBN-13: 9780593111314 Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group Publication date: 03/05/2024, Ages 8-12)

Phoenny Fang plans to have the best summer ever. She's returning to Summertime Chinese Culture, Wellness, and Enrichment Experience (SCCWEE for short and "Squee" to campers in the know), and this year she's a senior camper. That means she; her best friend, Lyrica Chu; and her whole Squad will have the most influence. It almost doesn't matter that her brother is a CIT (counselor-in-training) and that her mom and auntie are the camp directors. Time spent at Squee is sacred, glorious, and free.

On the day Phoenny arrives, though, she learns that the Squad has been split up, and there's an influx of new campers this year. Phoenny is determined to be welcoming and to share all the things she loves about camp-who doesn't love spending hours talking about and engaging in cultural activities? But she quickly learns how out of touch she is with others' experiences, particularly of the campers who are adoptees. The same things that make her feel connected to her culture and community make some of the other campers feel excluded.

Summer at Squee turns out to be even more transformative than Phoenny could've imagined, with new friendships, her first crush, an epic show, and a bigger love for and understanding of her community.

Coyote Lost and Found by Dan Gemeinhart (ISBN-13: 9781250292773 Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) Publication date: 03/05/2024 Series: Coyote Sunrise, Ages 9-12)
In the spirit of Judy Blume, award-winning author Aida Salazar tells it like it is about puberty, hormones, and first love in this hilarious, heartwarming, and highly relatable coming-of-age story. Perfect for fans of Jason Reynolds, Kwame Alexander, and Adib Khorram. "This important and intensely relatable tale perfectly captures the angst of growing up. A true gift to maturing tweens everywhere." - Ernesto Cisneros, Pura Belpré award-winning author of Efrén Divided
It's been almost a year since Coyote and her dad left the road behind and settled down in a small Oregon town. . . time spent grieving the loss of her mom and sisters and trying to fit in at school. But just as life is becoming a new version of normal, Coyote discovers a box containing her mom's ashes. And she thinks she might finally be ready to say goodbye.

So Coyote and her dad gear up for an epic cross-country road trip to scatter the ashes at her mom's chosen resting place. The only problem? Coyote has no idea where that resting place is-and the secret's hidden in a book that Coyote mistakenly sold last year, somewhere in the country. Now, it's up to Coyote to track down the treasured book . . . without her dad ever finding out that it's lost.

It's time to fire up their trusty bus, Yager, pick up some old friends, discover some new ones, and hit the road on another unforgettable adventure.

"Your heart needs this joyful miracle of a book." -Katherine Applegate, acclaimed author of The One and Only Ivan and Wishtree, on The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise

Mani Semilla Finds Her Quetzal Voice by Anna Lapera (ISBN-13: 9781646143719 Publisher: Levine Querido Publication date: 03/05/2024, Ages 10-14)

"Anna Lapera expertly voices a young girl's middle school trials, but with a voice so unique and heartfelt you will be cringing one moment and cheering the next. She weaves a distinctive story filled with humor, family heartache, and secrets while a young girl releases the fear of her voice and grasps its power."

- Newbery Medalist Donna Barba Higuera
In this powerful new novel by award-winning author Nicole Melleby, 12-year-old Winnie Nash is forced to live with her grandma for the summer and finds herself torn between her family's secrets and the joy of celebrating Pride.
For fans of Donna Barba Higuera's Lupe Wong Won't Dance and Aida Salazar's The Moon Within, comes Mani Semilla Finds Her Quetzal Voice - a contemporary middle grade novel full of spunk and activist heart. Manuela "Mani" Semilla wants two things: To get her period, and to thwart her mom's plan of taking her to Guatemala, a place that has always been more of a mystery than an answer. Mani can't imagine leaving behind Las Nerdas, her band of misfit friends, for the summer. But after she finds letters written between her mother and her disappeared-journalist aunt, Mani's idea of what it means to be a woman takes flight. Reading the letters reveals both the beauty of Guatemala and its history of violence against women, and slowly transforms Mani from quiet bystander into budding activist.

Ultraviolet by Aida Salazar (ISBN-13: 9781338775655 Publisher: Scholastic, Inc. Publication date: 04/02/2024, Ages 10-14)

For Elio Solis, eighth grade fizzes with change-his body teeming with hormones. His feelings that flow like lava. His relationship with Pops, who's always telling him to man up, the Solis way. And especially Camelia, his first girlfriend.
A girl discovers a connection between her home in the Philippines and her new home in the U.S. through a special garden in this middle grade novel that celebrates nourishment and growth.
But when betrayal and heartbreak send Elio spiraling toward revenge, he doesn't anticipate that a fight to prove his manhood and defend Camelia's honor will lead to dire consequences-or that Camelia's not looking for a savior.

Crackling with comedy and unflinching candor, Ultraviolet digs deep into themes of consent, puberty, masculinity, and the emotional lives of boys, as it challenges stereotypes and offers another way to be in the world. It speaks directly to tweens' and young teens' lived experiences and will make them feel seen.

Continental Drifter by Kathy MacLeod (ISBN-13: 9781250813732 Publisher: First Second Publication date: 04/02/2024, Ages 8-12)

With a Thai mother and an American father, Kathy lives in two different worlds. She spends most of the year in Bangkok, where she's secretly counting the days till summer vacation. That's when her family travels for twenty-four hours straight to finally arrive in a tiny seaside town in Maine.
Growing up with undiagnosed OCD sure isn't easy, and here Pan Cooke shares his own experiences with that condition in a graphic-novel memoir that is as funny as it is powerfully candid and openhearted.
Kathy loves Maine's idyllic beauty and all the exotic delicacies she can't get back home, like clam chowder and blueberry pie. But no matter how hard she tries, she struggles to fit in. She doesn't look like the other kids in this rural New England town. Kathy just wants to find a place where she truly belongs, but she's not sure if it's in America, Thailand . . . or anywhere.

Winnie Nash Is Not Your Sunshine by Nicole Melleby (ISBN-13: 9781643753133 Publisher: Workman Publishing Company Publication date: 04/02/2024, Ages 9-12)

Winnifred "Winnie" Nash is not a senior citizen, despite what anyone thinks of her name. And she is definitely not excited to live with her grandma in New Jersey for the summer. Not only are they basically strangers, but Winnie-who's always known she's gay-has been pushed into the metaphorical closet by her parents, who worry what Grandma will think. So Winnie keeps quiet about the cute girls she befriends; plays card games with seniors, which she does not enjoy; and dreams of the day she can go to the Pride Parade in New York City-a day that can't happen when she's hiding the truth from Grandma.
A tender-souled boy reeling from the death of his best friend struggles to fit into a world that wants him to grow up tough and unfeeling in this stunning middle grade novel in verse from the Newbery Honor-winning author of Genesis Begins Again.
Meanwhile, her mom's latest pregnancy is approaching its due date, and Winnie is worried it might end like the ones before, with Winnie still an only child. As she tries so hard to be an agreeable, selfless daughter, getting to NYC for Pride is feeling more and more like her only escape from a family who needs her to always smile. Winnie Nash is not your sunshine-and maybe it's time to show the world who she really is.

Isabel in Bloom by Mae Respicio (ISBN-13: 9780593302712 Publisher: Random House Children's Books Publication date: 04/09/2024, Ages 8-12)
Perfect for fans of Rebecca Stead, Natalie Lloyd, and Jasmine Warga, this beautiful novel in verse explores one girl's struggle to regain her magic after a hurricane forces her to move away from her beloved ocean that, she believes, has given her special powers.
Twelve-year-old Isabel is the new kid in her San Francisco middle school. It's the first time in many years that she'll be living with her mother again. Mama's job in the US allowed Isabel and her grandparents to live more comfortably in the Philippines, but now Isabel doesn't really know her own mother anymore.

Making new friends in a new city, a new country, is hard, but joining the gardening and cooking club at school means Isabel will begin to find her way, and maybe she too, will begin to bloom.

In this beautifully rendered novel-in-verse, Mae Respicio explores how growth can take many forms, offering both the challenges and joy of new beginnings.

Puzzled: A Memoir of Growing Up with OCD by Pan Cooke, Pan Cooke (Illustrator) (ISBN-13: 9780593615614 Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group Publication date: 04/16/2024, Ages 10-14)
SWISH! Cheer courtside for a Muslim teen as she joins an all-girls, hijab-wearing basketball team and learns that she's much more than a score. This energetic graphic novel is inspired by a true story!
Pan Cooke is ten years old when anxious thoughts begin to take over his brain like pieces of an impossible puzzle. What if he blurts out a swear word while in church? What if he accidentally writes something mean in his classmate's get-well card? What if his friend's racy photo of a supermodel ends up in his own homework and is discovered by his teacher? More and more, he becomes hijacked by fears that can only be calmed through exhausting, time-consuming rituals.

Pan has no way of knowing that this anxiety puzzle and the stressful attempts to solve it are evidence of a condition called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This is his story of living with and eventually learning about OCD. Told with endearing honesty and humor, Puzzled shows the reader the importance of empathy for oneself and those going through something they don't yet understand.

Mid Air by Alicia D. Williams, Danica Novgorodoff (Illustrator) (ISBN-13: 9781481465830 Publisher: Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books Publication date: 04/23/2024, Ages 10-14)

It's the summer before high school and Isaiah feels lost. He thought this summer was going to be just him and his homies Drew and Darius, hangin' out, doing wheelies, and watching martial arts movies-a lot of chillin' before high school and the Future. But more and more, Drew will barely talk to him-barely even look at him-and though he won't admit it, Isaiah knows it's because of Darius, because Darius is...gone.

And Isaiah wasn't even there when it happened, with his best friend in his final moments. But he's going to be there now. Him and Drew both, they're gonna spend the summer breaking every single record they can think of, for Darius, for his dream of breaking world records. But Drew's not the same Drew, and Isaiah being Isaiah isn't enough for Drew anymore. Not his taste in music, his love for D&D, his interest in taking photos, or his aversion to jumping off rooftops. The real Isaiah is sensitive; he's uncool.

And one day something unspeakable happens to Isaiah that makes him think Drew's right. If only he could be less sensitive, more tough, less weird, more cool, more contained, less him, things would be easier. But how much can Isaiah keep inside until he shatters wide open?

Murray Out of Water by Taylor Tracy (ISBN-13: 9780063326811 Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Publication date: 05/21/2024, Ages 8-12)

Bighearted and observant twelve-year-old Murray O'Shea loves the ocean. Every chance she gets, she's in it. It could be because the ocean never makes her apologize for being exactly who she is-something her family refuses to do-but it could also be because of the secret magic that Murray shares with the ocean. Though she can't explain its presence, the electric buzz she feels from her fingertips down to her toes allows her to become one with the ocean and all its creatures, and it makes Murray feel seen in a way she never feels on land.

But then a hurricane hits Murray's Jersey Shore home, sending the O'Sheas far inland to live with relatives. Being this far from the ocean, Murray seems to lose her magic. And stuck in a house with her family, she can no longer avoid the truths she's discovering about herself-like how she feels in the clothes her mom makes her wear, or why she doesn't have boys on the brain like other girls her age.

But it's not all hurricanes and heartache. Thankfully, Murray befriends a boy named Dylan, who has a magic of his own. When Murray agrees to partner with him for a youth roller-rama competition in exchange for help getting her magic back, the two forge an unstoppable bond-one that shows Murray how it's not always the family you were given that makes you feel whole...sometimes it's the family you build along the way.

We Are Big Time by Hena Khan, Safiya Zerrougui (Illustrator) (ISBN-13: 9780593430484 Publisher: Random House Children's Books Publication date: 08/06/2024, Ages 8-12)

Aliya is new to Wisconsin, and everything feels different than Florida. The Islamic school is bigger, the city is colder, and her new basketball team is...well, they stink.

Aliya's still excited to have teammates (although the team's captain, Noura, isn't really Aliya's biggest fan), and their new coach really understands basketball (even if she doesn't know much about being Muslim). This season should be a blast... if they could just start to win. As they strengthen their skills on the court, Aliya and the Peace Academy team discover that it takes more than talent to be great-it's teamwork and self-confidence that defines true success.

For fans of The Crossover and Roller Girl, this graphic novel goes big with humor and heart as it explores culture and perceptions, fitting in and standing out, and finding yourself, both on and off the court.

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Most Anticipated Middle Grade Reads of 2024

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Woohoo! New year, new books to look forward to! Here are a bunch of middle grade books I can't wait to read! I'm sure I only missed about a billion more great ones!

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Students need to know the sounds and names of the alphabet before learning the phonic sound pack.

Do not try to learn all the cards at once. Suit the pace of learning to the ability of the student.

Learn the cards in this order for reading,and split them into these stages

Stage 1 sh | ch | tch | th | qu | wh | ph

Stage 2 ar | or | er | ir | ur

Stage 3 ee | ea | ay | ai | igh | ie | y

Stage 4 oa | oe | ow | oo | ui | ue | ew

Stage 5 oy | oi | ou | dge | ge | ce | ey | ei

Stage 6 ear | air | au | aw | wa | war | wor

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Did you know there are more than 40 different sounds (phonemes) in English? The Nessy Phonic Sound pack is a great way to learn them.

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A must go through for every teacher

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Each week I keep an eye out for the latest edtech resources through blogs, social media, podcasts, videos, user groups, and more. I then try…

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10 Classroom Jobs For Middle And High School

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10 Classroom Jobs For Middle And High School

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10 Classroom Jobs For Middle And High School

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10 Classroom Jobs For Middle And High School

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The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2023

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The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2023

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The research is in...

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For those of us hoping for a quiet, back-to-normal kind of year, the research coming out of 2023 might disappoint. A rising tide of teenage mental health issues sent researchers scurrying for answers, and the sudden ascendance of AI posed a new threat to codes of academic conduct and caused some educators to forecast the end of teaching as we know it (we're here to dispel that myth).

There was plenty of good news in the mix-and fascinating news, too. Neuroscientists continued to push the envelope on mapping the human brain, using cutting-edge technology to get a sneak peek at the "brain synchrony" between students and teachers as they learn about complex topics, and a comprehensive review of social and emotional learning confirmed, once again, that there's no substitute for caring, welcoming school environments.

Finally, we did our due diligence and unearthed classroom strategies that can make a big difference for students, from the use of math picture books to a better, more humane way to incorporate tests and games of knowledge into your classroom activities.

1. AI MAY CUT AN EDUCATOR'S PLANNING TIME DRAMATICALLY

In case anyone thought the jury was still out on the Turing test, which proposes a hypothetical threshold at which humans and machines respond indistinguishably to a prompt- more evidence recently came in, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to tell who's testing who.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina set a "deep neural" AI model to work on a college-level anatomy and physiology textbook, after first training the software to recognize important information. The AI took stock, pondered in its fashion, and then dutifully produced 2,191 test questions tied to learning standards, which a panel of teachers judged to be "on par with human-generated questions in terms of their relevance to the learning objectives." Remarkably, the instructors also said they'd consider adopting the machine-generated questions for their courses.

That's spooky, but not without its silver linings. Test creation is time-consuming for teachers, and one knowledgeable educator who took AI for a test drive says that it performs well on other tasks like planning lessons, writing instructions, and even composing emails to parents. New AI-powered tools like Diffit, Curipod, and MagicSchool.ai, meanwhile, are starting to sound like revolutionary teaching aids.

Concern that the end of human teaching is one software release away is premature: Studies we've reviewed suggest that AI still requires a lot of fine-tuning, and in July of 2023, researchers concluded that without human intervention, AI is atrocious at mathematics, performing poorly on open-ended problems and routinely flubbing even simple math calculations. To be useful, it turns out, AI may need us more than we need it.

2. A FASCINATING GUIDE TO BETTER QUIZZING

No one likes tests-except the three authors of a 2023 study, apparently. The trio, who have experience as teachers and researchers, sing the praises of virtually every kind of test, quiz, and knowledge game, asserting that such assessments should be frequent, low-stakes, highly engaging, and even communal. Their rationale: When properly designed and stripped of dread, tests and quizzes dramatically improve "long-term retention and the creation of more robust retrieval routes for future access," a well-established phenomenon known as the testing effect.

The study is a fascinating, granular look at the mechanics of testing and its impacts on learning. Here are some of the highlights:

Mix it up: To maximize student engagement, quiz students frequently-but don't let the format get stale. In their analysis, the authors endorse testing formats as varied as multiple choice, cued-recall tests, clickers, fill-in-the-blank, short answer, and contests of knowledge.

Be competitive: When designing multiple-choice or true-false tests, opt for "competitive alternatives" in your answers. For example, when asking "What is the hottest terrestrial planet?," proffer Venus, Mars, and Mercury instead of Venus, Uranus, and Saturn -because "Uranus and Saturn aren't terrestrial planets." Competitive alternatives require students to scrutinize all options, the authors hypothesize, leading them to retrieve and consider more learned material.

Pretest: Quizzing students on material they haven't yet learned improves long-term performance "even if [students] are not able to answer any of those questions correctly," according to the researchers. Notably, pretesting can also lead to "a reduction in mind wandering" during subsequent lessons.

Get communal: Asking students to take tests in groups can improve retention and motivation while reducing anxiety. Consider focusing on specific rather than open-ended questions, the authors caution, since students can sometimes "recall and remember information less accurately" when working together.

Pass it on: Teach students to self-test by "summarizing the main points from a lecture... without looking at any notes," or by meeting in "small study groups where the students practice testing one another-an activity that many students already report doing."

3. HOW TONE OF VOICE CHANGES CLASSROOM CULTURE

Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, subtle shifts in a teacher's tone of voice-a sharp rise in volume or a sudden barrage of repeated instructions born of frustration-can be the first sign that something's awry in the classroom, disturbing a fragile equilibrium and leading students to clam up or act out, a study published late in 2022 suggests.

Researchers observed as teens and preteens listened to instructions given by teachers-"I'm waiting for people to quiet down" or "It's time to tidy up all of your belongings," for example-delivered in warm, neutral, or controlling tones. While the effect was unintended, an authoritative tone often came off as confrontational, undermining students' sense of competence and discouraging them from confiding in teachers. Warm, supportive tones, on the other hand, contributed to a classroom environment that reinforced learning across multiple social and academic dimensions like sense of belonging, autonomy, and enjoyment of the class.

It takes years to find the right tonal balance, says experienced middle school teacher Kristine Napper. "Neither high expectations nor kind hearts can do the job alone," she coaches. Instead, teachers should strive for a warm, supportive tone and then draw on that "wellspring of trust to hold students to high standards of deep engagement with course content."

4. BRAINS THAT FIRE TOGETHER WIRE TOGETHER

In 2021, we reported that as students progressed through a computer science course, the learning material left neural fingerprints that mirrored brain activity in other students, the teacher, and experts in the field. "Students who failed to grasp the material," we wrote, "exhibited neural signatures that were outliers; they were drifting." But the brain patterns of students who performed well on a later test aligned strongly with other top performing students-and with the teacher and experts, too.

Intriguingly, even abstract concepts-those that lack any physical attributes-appeared to trigger similar mental representations in students' minds, attesting to the remarkable cognitive flexibility underlying human communication and knowledge sharing.

A 2023 study using electroencephalography (EEG) largely confirms those findings. High school science teachers taught groups of young adults fitted with electrodes about science topics such as bipedalism, habitats, and lipids. Researchers found that stronger "brain synchrony" between peers-and between students and teachers-predicted better academic performance on follow-up tests, both immediately and a full week later.

Together, these studies underscore the importance of scholarly expertise and direct instruction, but also hint at the downstream power of peer-to-peer and social learning. As knowledge passes from teachers to learners to greater and lesser degrees-some students grasp material quickly, others more slowly-an opportunity to distribute the work of learning emerges. When advanced students are paired with struggling peers, assisted by nudges from the teacher, groups of students might eventually converge around an accurate, common understanding of the material.

5. IN SUM, MATH PICTURE BOOKS WORK

The old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words-and two are worth two thousand-might be expressed, mathematically, as a simple multiplication formula. But can reading math picture books really multiply learning?

A 2023 review of 16 studies concluded that math books like Are We There Yet, Daddy? and Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi improved student engagement and attitudes toward math; strengthened kids' grasp of math representations like graphs or physical models; and boosted performance on tasks like counting to 20, understanding place value, and calculating diameters. In early childhood, in particular, math picture books worked wonders-one study found that young students "tend to anticipate and guess what will happen next, resulting in high engagement, aroused interest in understanding the problems, and curiosity in finding solutions"-but even middle school students seemed mesmerized by math read-alouds.

Importantly, math picture books weren't a substitute for procedural fluency or mathematical practice. Typically, the authors noted, teachers bracketed math units with picture books, introducing a mathematical concept "in order to prepare [students] for the upcoming practice and activities," or, alternatively, used them to review material at the end of the lesson.

6. TO IMPROVE STUDENT WRITING, REDUCE FEEDBACK (AND PUT THE ONUS ON KIDS)

It's hard to move the needle on student writing. Hours of close reading followed by the addition of dozens of edifying margin notes can swallow teacher weekends whole, but there's no guarantee students know how to use the feedback productively.

In fact, without guidance, revisions tend to be superficial, a new study suggests-students might correct typos and grammatical mistakes, for example, or make cursory adjustments to a few ideas, but leave it at that. A promising, time-saving alternative is to deploy rubrics, mentor texts, and other clarifying writing guidelines.

In the study, high school students were graded on the clarity, sophistication, and thoroughness of their essays before being split into groups to test the effectiveness of various revision strategies. Students who consulted rubrics that spelled out the elements of an excellent essay-a clear central thesis, support for the claim, and cohesive overall structure, for example-improved their performance by a half-letter grade while kids who read mentor texts boosted scores by a third of a letter grade.

Rubrics and mentor texts are reusable, "increase teachers' efficient use of time," and "enhance self-feedback" in a way that can lead to better, more confident writers down the line, the new research suggests.

7. A NEW THEORY ABOUT THE TEEN MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS

Parents, teachers, and medical professionals are wringing their hands over the alarming, decades-long rise in teenage mental health issues, including depression, feelings of " persistent hopelessness," and drug addiction.

The root causes remain elusive-cell phones and social media are prime suspects-but a sprawling 2023 study offers another explanation that's gaining traction: After scouring surveys, data sets, and cultural artifacts, researchers theorized that a primary cause is "a decline over decades in opportunities for children and teens to play, roam, and engage in other activities independent of direct oversight and control by adults."

Scholarly reviews of historical articles, books, and advice columns on child rearing depict an era when young children "walked or biked to school alone," and contributed to their "family's well being" and "community life" through meaningful chores and jobs. If that all feels vaguely mythical, data collected over the last 50 years reveals a correlation: frank admissions by parents that their children play outdoors independently less than they did, and significant drops in the number of kids who walk, bike, or bus to school alone or are allowed to cross busy roads by themselves. In the U.S., for example, a government survey showed that 48 percent of K-8 students walked to school in 1969, but by 2009 only 13 percent did.

Risky play and unsupervised outdoor activities, meanwhile, which might "protect against the development of phobias" and reduce "future anxiety by increasing the person's confidence that they can deal effectively with emergencies," are often frowned upon.That last point is crucial, because dozens of studies suggest that happiness in childhood, and then later in adolescence, is driven by internal feelings of "autonomy, competence, and relatedness"-and independent play, purposeful work, and important roles in classrooms and families are vital, early forms of practice.

Whatever the causes, young children seem to sense that something's off. In one 2017 study, kindergartners who viewed images of fun activities routinely struck pictures that included adults from the category of play, rejecting the role of grown-ups in a domain they clearly saw as their own.

8. DIRECT INSTRUCTION AND INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING ARE COMPLEMENTARY

It's an often-fiery but ultimately dubious debate: Should teachers employ direct instruction, or opt for inquiry-based learning?

At its core, direct instruction often conveys information "by lecturing and by giving a leading role to the teacher," researchers explain in a 2023 study examining the evidence supporting both approaches. Critics typically focus solely on its passive qualities, a straw-man argument that ignores activities such as note-taking, practice quizzes, and classroom discussions. Opponents of inquiry-based learning, meanwhile, characterize it as chaotic, akin to sending students on a wild goose chase and asking them to discover the laws of physics on their own-though it can actually unlock "deep learning processes such as elaboration, self-explanation, and metacognitive strategies," the researchers say.

Both sides misrepresent what teachers actually do in classrooms. Instructional models are "often combined in practice," the researchers note, and inquiry-based learning is usually supported with direct instruction. Teachers might begin a lesson by leading a review of key concepts, for example, and then ask students to apply what they're learning in unfamiliar contexts.

Let the debate rage on. Teachers already know that factual fluency and the need to struggle, flail, and even hit dead-ends are integral to learning. Teaching is fluid and complex and spools out in real time; it resists every effort to reduce it to a single strategy or program that works for all kids, in all contexts.

9. A TRULY MASSIVE REVIEW FINDS VALUE IN SEL-AGAIN

It's déjà vu all over again. The researcher Joseph Durlak, who put social and emotional learning on the map with his 2011 study that concluded that SEL programs boosted academic performance by an impressive 11 percentile points, was back at it in 2023-working with an ambitious new team, led by Yale professor Christina Cipriano, on a similar mission.

The group just published a comprehensive meta-analysis that surveyed a whopping 424 studies involving over half a million K-12 students, scrutinizing school-based SEL programs and strategies such as mindfulness, interpersonal skills, classroom management, and emotional intelligence. The findings: Students who participated in such programs experienced "improved academic achievement, school climate, school functioning, social emotional skills, attitudes, and prosocial and civic behaviors," the researchers concluded.

Intriguingly, SEL remained a powerful driver of better cultures and student outcomes into the middle and high school years, a reminder that there's no cutoff point for building relationships, teaching empathy, and making schools inclusive and welcoming.

While politicians continue to stoke controversy on the topic, there's actually widespread support for SEL, as long as it's connected to better academic outcomes. A 2021 Thomas B. Fordham Institute survey revealed that parents reacted negatively to classroom instruction labeled "social and emotional learning," but were favorably disposed when a single clause was added-calling it "social-emotional & academic learning" turned the tide and secured parental buy-in.

10. MORE EVIDENCE FOR MOVING PAST "FINDING THE MAIN IDEA"

In the United States, the teaching of reading comprehension has ping-ponged between skills-based and knowledge-based approaches. In 2019, things appeared to come to a head: While reading programs continued to emphasize transferable skills like "finding the main idea" or "making inferences," the author Natalie Wexler published The Knowledge Gap, an influential takedown of skills-based methods, and a large 2020 study from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute concurred, noting that "exposing kids to rich content in civics, history, and law" taught reading more effectively than skills-based approaches.

Now a pair of new, high-quality studies-featuring leading researchers and encompassing more than 5,000 students in 39 schools-appears to put the finishing touches on a decades-long effort to push background knowledge to the forefront of reading instruction.

In a Harvard study, 3,000 elementary students participated in a yearlong literacy program focused on the "knowledge rich" domains of social studies and science, exploring the methods used to study past events, for example, or investigating how animals evolve to survive in different habitats. Compared to their counterparts in business-as-usual classes, the "knowledge based" readers scored 18 percent higher on general reading comprehension. Background knowledge acts like a scaffold, the researchers explained, helping students "connect new learning to a general schema and transfer their knowledge to related topics."

In the other study, a team of researchers, including leading experts David Grissmer, Daniel Willingham, and Chris Hulleman, examined the impact of the "Core Knowledge" program on 2,310 students in nine lottery-based Colorado charter schools from kindergarten to sixth grade. The approach improved reading scores by 16 percentile points, and if implemented nationally, the researchers calculated, might catapult U.S. students from 15th to fifth place on international reading tests.

The pendulum is swinging, but the researchers caution against overreach: There appear to be "two separate but complementary cognitive processes involved in development and learning: 'skill building' and 'knowledge accumulation,'" they clarified. We may have the balance out of whack, but to develop proficient readers, you need both.

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The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2023

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Following our annual tussle with hundreds of studies of merit, we've pared them down to 10 you shouldn't miss-from what AI can (and can't) do to the neuroscience of brain synchrony.

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Published by on

Within many EdTech circles, the word gamification keeps rising to the surface. It seems like a concept that many of us understand, right? I mean... when thinking about it, off the top of my head I can take an educated guess that gamification means bringing games into my lesson delivery, because it will engage students and they will connect to the relevant delivery. Well... we were in for a treat this past week because we learned that there is SOOO much more behind gamification!!

Jenallee was recently honored to join our friends from Cy Fair ISD in Texas for their EdTech LIVE event. (If you haven't been to this event, you need to check it out! The tech team at Cy Fair did an AMAZING job preparing and offering participants a fun day of learning that was full of ingenious ways to use tech in the classroom! In preparing for this event, we researched the "why" behind gamification. Our minds were blown by the content we found about why gamification should be implemented in our lesson design.

In exploring the ISTE article "5 Ways to Gamify Your Classroom" by Michele Haiken, this statement succinctly sums up gamification 👉 " Gamification is about transforming the classroom environment and regular activities into a game. It requires creativity, collaboration, and play. There are numerous ways to bring games and game playing into the classroom to promote learning and deepen student understanding of subject matter. "

To incorporate gamification into your classroom, the lesson designer is required to creatively design content while connecting to relevant topics with meaningful demonstrations of learning. Though exploring gamification in education we ran across this ✨AMAZING✨ Ted Talk all about gamification! 👇👇👇

To summarize this amazing talk, we wanted to share some of the key thoughts we are holding onto and adding to our understanding of the learning process. When kids game today they are multitasking, communicating, collaborating, problem-solving, strategizing, and more. These skills are all used to build neuro plasty. This is the gray matter that appears in your brain from learning. When people learn new skills like juggling or another language, gray matter appears. This increases our fluid intelligence and helps us problem solve. Gabe says all this so much more eloquently and explains it all with research! (again, we encourage you to watch the video 😂) To oversimplify for our brains to process this knowledge, Gabe shares 5 things people can do to increase their fluid intelligence aka problem-solving skills.

1. Networking

2. Seeking Novelty

3. Challenging Yourself

4. Think Creatively

5. Do Things the Hard Way

Gabe explains that all 5 of these are represented in video games!

He goes on to explain that gaming produces dopamine. As you are challenged, you work hard to overcome it and you are successful, you produce dopamine. This produces a reincforcement that makes you want to keep going back for more of this type of experiance.

Gabe shares the story of Ananth Pai. Ananth equiped his classroom with video game systems and taught them math and reading. In 18 weeks, Mr. Pai's class went from below thrid grade level to mid 4th grade level!! 🤯🤯🤯

The kids from the class say 2 things: 1) Learning is fun and 2) Learning is multiplayer.

So now to address the question we all have... How do we bring gamification into our classrooms?

Here are our top 12 applications for creating games and finding games for your classroom!

1. Genially

2. Buncee

3. DeckToys

4. Fliphunt

5. Quizlet Live

6. Blooket

7. Quizizz

8. MinecraftEDU

9. Gimkit

10. Whiteboard.chat

11. Wordwall.net

12. Slidesmania

Genially

Buncee

Deck Toys

Learning paths

Games easily built within Deck Toys

Import Quizlets

Embed in OneNote 💜

Teams integration

FREE limited number of decks

FlipHunt

QuizletLive

Team game (grouped by the game)

Game play based off of time and accuracy

Different answer options on each players device, so everyone has to participate and communicate

Add to Teams top tab 💜

FREE

Join with link

Blooket

Create game set of questions and answers

Select game type from multiple different types of games with your set of questions

Students can have random names, no log in necessary but possible to create student accounts

Students can select their game avatar

Students answer the questions as many times as possible correctly within a certain set of time

Questions on student devices

FREE limited number of games

Join with link or code

Add link to Teams top tab 💜

Quizizz

Create a game set of questions and answers

FREE - super mode paid available for some features

Questions on student devices

Challenge on time and accuracy

Read aloud mode

NEW features: Team mode, test mode, teacher paced mode, adaptive question bank, Lesson creator

Add to Teams as an Assignment or top tab 💜

Minecraft EDU

TONS of pre-made worlds and lesson plans connect to TEKS

On both iPads and computers

Add to Teams as an Assignment or top tab 💜

Use Flipgrid to record screen to share creations and learning

Gimkit

Whiteboard.chat

FREE

Dice game creation

Bingo game creation

Spinner

Upload game boards

Group boards or individual boards

Wordwall.net

Slidesmania

It's your turn!

Now go and be a different kind of awesome! We can't wait to see all of the different ways you incorporate gaming into your classrooms! Share your ideas, experiences, and thoughts with us!

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Bringing Gamification into Your Classroom

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Within many EdTech circles, the word gamification keeps rising to the surface. It seems like a concept that many of us understand, right? I mean... when thinking about it, off the top of my head I can take an educated guess that gamification means bringing games into my lesson delivery, because it will engage students...

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QUIZIZZ Tech Coach EdCamp - One Best Thing! 

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When you've got a few minutes left before the period ends, it's only normal to wonder: Do my students really understand what we covered? Do they remember what we started with, as well as what we just discussed?

While cleaning up and going over homework assignments often take up those final moments of class time, effective closing activities allow you to make better use of them by checking for understanding, correcting misunderstandings, and putting a little fun into the process to motivate your students to make sense of what they've just learned.

Closing activities don't need to happen every day, and they don't always require lots of advanced planning. They can occur at the end of a chapter, or even at the end of a large learning unit, and can also take various forms-incorporating movement, technology, and even components of social and emotional learning to build a stronger classroom community.

Here are 10 creative and fun closing activities we sourced from experienced teachers that you can try in your classroom.

1. Two-Dollar Summary: Ask students to write a two-dollar (or more) summary of the lesson they've just learned. Each word they use is worth 10 cents. For extra scaffolding, ask students to include specific words in their statement. For a twist on this, ask students to explain something as if they were teaching it to a first grade student. This will also push them to simplify complex ideas for themselves and therefore understand them better.

For a different spin on this, try educator Sarah Frisby Cook's "six-word summary" of the most important idea or concept. On Facebook, Cook told Edutopia that because students are limited in word choice, "they really have to think about what is most crucial to say."

6. Video Journals: Educator John Thomas uses the free app ChatterPix to get students creating and sharing video journals describing what they've learned. Because this can take a little time to create, this strategy might be best suited as a wrap-up activity at the end of a unit. The videos are playful and fun, and can easily be posted to classroom platforms like Seesaw.

8. Quiz the Next Class: Nikki Cobb-Struzynski gets her students to use the free platform Kahoot! to come up with quiz questions and multiple choice answers to give to their peers studying the same material in other classes. Recent research suggests that generating good questions promotes deeper engagement with content and improves retention. When a person formulates a question, "One has to reflect what one has learned and how an appropriate knowledge question can be inferred from this knowledge," University of Kassel researcher Mirjam Ebersbach told Edutopia.

9. Make Your Classroom a Beach: This activity will get students out of their seats and sharing with the whole class. Educator Eman Bekheet told Edutopia that she writes reflective questions on a beach ball using dry erase markers. Questions might include things like: "What is one thing you learned during today's lesson?" or "What was challenging about today's lesson?"

As the ball bounces around the room, you can come up with a mechanism for deciding which question they have to answer out loud-such as the question their left thumb is touching, or the very first question they see. Use the responses to generate further discussion about the day's lesson.

The Human Bar Graph is another twist that gets students moving. Label points along a line drawn on the floor or across a wall that show different levels of mastery: I'm confused, I'm okay, I got this. Ask students to stand where they feel most comfortable. This exercise requires a certain level of vulnerability, so it's best to try it once you built some trust with students.

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Instead of cleaning up or going over homework assignments, try these creative activities that can help students make sense of new material-and have fun in the process.

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Effective feedback in a just under 2 minutes

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Effective feedback in a just under 2 minutes

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15 Google Forms templates you can use in class tomorrow

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15 Google Forms templates you can use in class tomorrow

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G Suite

If you have been reading the Ditch That Textbook blog for awhile now you know that we love to use familiar tools in new and exciting ways. Google Forms is no exception. Forms are used in the classroom as an effective way to gather information and assess student learning and they can be used for a variety of activities.

But what if we made sharing and creating activities tailored to your class just a little bit easier?

That's where Google Forms templates come in.

This post has 15 Google Forms templates that you can use in your class tomorrow. These templates are easy to use, customizable, and perfect for a variety of subjects and grade levels.

Surveys & Signups

Exit Tickets & Retrieval Practice

Interactive Activities

Lesson Planning

Explore-Explain-Apply HyperDoc Form

The framework for an Explore Explain Apply HyperDoc is simple, yet provides the teacher and the students with a concrete way to dive into a well thought out digitally designed lesson.

Explore: Students gather background knowledge on a topic on their own. This can be through articles, videos, images, and more.

Explain: The teacher fills in the holes with explanation. This can be whole-group instruction, or it can be teacher-provided videos, articles, images, and more.

Apply: Students take what they've learned and use it. They create something to show what they know instead of just answering questions.

FREE teaching ideas and templates in your inbox every week!

Subscribe to Ditch That Textbook

©2023 Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller.

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15 Google Forms templates you can use in class tomorrow

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If you have been reading the Ditch That Textbook blog for awhile now you know that we love to use familiar tools in new and exciting ways. Google Forms is

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Is every teacher a teacher of oracy? Find out why oracy is disciplinary and how every teacher can induct students into the talk practices that underpin the construction of knowledge in their subjects in this article.

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Abstract. In this article I argue that oracy is disciplinary: it has both generic and subject-specific dimensions that need to be taught explicitly. As such, ev

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Using a Gallery Walk for Formative Assessment in PBL

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Using a Gallery Walk for Formative Assessment in PBL

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The Gallery Walk protocol can be used as a formative assessment tool in a PBL unit. It promotes student agency and collaboration while nurturing a classroom culture that welcomes feedback & continuous improvement.

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Using a Gallery Walk for Formative Assessment in PBL

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An excerpt from the book Project Based Teaching, explaining the purpose and structure of a feedback protocol.

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A WHEEL OF CHOICES FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION

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A WHEEL OF CHOICES FOR CONFLICT RESOLUTION

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So important, especially today.

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One year, when I was working as a principal, a group of 5th graders seemed to have conflicts many times a day. So much so that it made instructional time difficult, and recess breaks were full of incidents, both verbal and physical. Conflict resolution and management were challenging processes that always required the teacher's attention. Of course, there are some student issues and conflicts that will always need to be handled, managed, and resolved by an adult. But how can we set students up to resolve conflicts on their own (when appropriate), and why is this important?

Students will eventually need to resolve disagreements and issues independently as they get older. However, some minor conflicts are appropriate for younger students to resolve on their own after receiving tools, guidance, and modeling. One way to help them succeed is by giving them choices for healthy responses to conflict. A visual tool, like a Wheel of Choices, can work wonders! Let's explore how to get started with this tool.

Why is conflict resolution important?

Conflict and disagreement are a normal part of being human. Unfortunately, we all know this doesn't go away or decrease with age. And (unpopular opinion alert), it's important for students to know that they don't have to like, play with, or be friends with everyone in their class. However, regardless of friendship status, we must treat people respectfully and work through conflicts and disagreements in healthy ways. So, let's teach conflict resolution skills early on! Learning to effectively navigate conflicts sets students up for more success in life. It helps them:

Deepen relationships

Build resilience

Identify their feelings

Acknowledge the feelings of others

Gain confidence

Build leadership skills

Grow in empathy

Broaden perspectives

Achieve goals

Build active listening skills

And more

What is a Wheel of Choices?

A Wheel of Choices is a visual chart that provides students with healthy ways in which they can respond to and work to resolve conflicts. When a dispute arises, students can reference the wheel and choose a response to try. The goal of the Wheel of Choices is for students to eventually be able to resolve minor conflicts independently, confidently, and successfully. Here are ideas for introducing the wheel to students:

1. First, talk with your students about conflict. What is conflict? What conflicts have they experienced (without naming names)? How did they work through them? You can also discuss healthy and unhealthy responses to conflict.

2. Then, reiterate that conflict and disagreement are normal, and they aren't necessarily "bad"! When issues arise, it's an opportunity for growth that can help us learn about each other and ourselves.

3. Next, introduce the Wheel of Choices as a reference tool for students. You can introduce the whole wheel or add one strategy at a time, explaining each strategy and modeling them in brief mini-lessons. You could also brainstorm your own strategies as a class to add to the wheel!

4. As conflicts arise, begin prompting students to use the wheel. Work with them on choosing strategies to support them in resolving issues together. It may take trying several choices from the wheel to solve a disagreement, and that's okay!

5. After some practice and time working under your guidance, the students might be ready to try using the wheel independently.

Tips for Using the Wheel of Choices

After using a Wheel of Choices with the 5th grade students I mentioned at the beginning of this article, here are some things I'd recommend:

Role-play the different strategies with students.

Remind students that respectful dialogue is imperative.

Place a wheel in areas where conflicts tend to happen (playground, cafeteria, etc.).

Give each student their own mini-wheel.

Talk to parents so they can encourage using these strategies at home, too.

Be there for students during conflicts to guide them.

When appropriate, encourage independence.

Celebrate successful resolutions!

Example Use of the Wheel: Jose and Cassandra are arguing over whose turn it is to kick during kickball. Things are getting heated and escalating. Cassandra suggests they look at the Wheel of Choices to help them reach a resolution. Cassandra chooses "Make a deal." Jose has an idea! Since the two have different opinions, they could play Rock, Paper, Scissors (best two out of three) to decide who kicks first. Cassandra agrees to the deal. Jose wins two out of three. He kicks first, and Cassandra will go next.

Strategies on the Wheel:

The strategies shown on my wheel are not at all set in stone. Feel free to access the editable template and add your own strategies or ones that you and your students think of together! Let's explore the choices I included on my wheel:

Share. Listen. Restate. Explain how you're feeling. Listen to how the other person is feeling. Restate what they explained about their perspective to make sure you understand how they feel.

Take responsibility. Apologize. Make a change. If you make a mistake, own it. Say that you're sorry, but sorry isn't enough! Explain how you'll make a change.

Ask, "How can I help?" If a student shares how they're feeling, ask how you can help. Then, listen to what they say.

Give a bug and a wish. Share what's bugging you and then what you wish the other student would do. "It bugs me when you won't let me have the ball. I wish we could take turns!"

Brainstorm a solution. Work together to problem solve! Brainstorm ideas and pick one to try.

Ask an adult for help. If you need help solving a problem or are hurt, uncomfortable, or unsafe, go to an adult you trust immediately. Tell them what happened.

Use an "I feel" statement. Tell the other student how you feel and what made you feel that way. "I feel angry when you won't let me have the ball."

Decide to let it go. Think about what happened. Sometimes, if it's a small thing or an accident, you can make a choice to let it go and move on.

Make a deal. Work together on a compromise! Find a win-win deal that will work well for everyone.

Cool off! Then, come back to the wheel. Sometimes, taking a break and some deep breaths is good before trying to resolve a conflict. If you need a minute to think and cool down before you can speak respectfully to a student, take the time you need!

End with a... Once a conflict is resolved, choose how you will show it! End with a high five, a hug, or a handshake to show it's over and you worked it out.

We saw a lot of success in resolving conflicts using the Wheel of Choices! Every resolution was celebrated, and students were proud to take ownership and become more independent problem solvers. It's very brave to be vulnerable and share feelings with another person, whether you're an adult or a child. However, learning to do so at a young age can build confidence and resilience when students recognize they can overcome difficult situations. What do you think? Is this something you might try with your students? Are there any strategies you would add to the wheel? Share them in the comments!

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A Wheel of Choices for Conflict Resolution

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Wanting to work with your students on conflict resolution? Try using a Wheel of Choices with healthy strategies for them to choose from!

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Free Courses for Early/ Primary Teachers

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Free Courses for Early/ Primary Teachers

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My CPD Group - Real Courses. Real Standards. Real Support. Real Experts. Real CPD

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Can GCSE and A level exam grades be trusted?

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Can GCSE and A level exam grades be trusted?

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Blogs

Roughly speaking, if there were 54,000 marking errors in the 300,000 GCSE and A level grades that were challenged last year, how many might there be in the 5,700,000 grades that were not challenged? Dennis Sherwood looks at the problems of exam grade reliability

"Grades can be relied on."

The delivery of reliable GCSE, AS and A level grades is indeed what we all want; what we all expect.

The words above are from Ofqual's chief regulator, Dr Jo Saxton, spoken on June 29, just after this year's exams had been completed, at a hearing of the House of Lords Education for 11-16 Year Olds Committee.

The full context can be seen, and heard, from 12:34:13 on the Parliament TV recording here; this, to me, is the key statement: "I can assure this committee and young people who will receive their grades this summer that they can be relied on, that they will be fair, and that the quality assurance around them is as good as it is possible to be."

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Can GCSE and A level exam grades be trusted examination appeals Pearson Edexcel AQA OCR WJEC Ofqual AS level school test teaching teachers education

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Roughly speaking, if there were 54,000 marking errors in the 300,000 GCSE and A level grades that were challenged last year, how many might there be in the 5,700,000 grades that were not challenged? Dennis Sherwood looks at the problems of exam grade reliability

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‘Disciplined Discussion’ – As Easy as ABC

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‘Disciplined Discussion’ – As Easy as ABC

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This practical post on a couple of teaching and learning strategies is wholly indebted to an excellent trio of posts from Doug Lemov, of ' Practice Perfect' and ' Teach Like A Champion' fame. His series is based on the concept of 'disciplined discussion'. I love this simple phrase as it neatly summarises an essential component of learning that we should think deeply about: carefully constructed and scaffolded student talk, with high quality feedback. There is a whole world of difference between students simply chatting away with the alleged intent of learning and the focused, disciplined discussion that Lemov advocates.

Lemov trio begins with . This post explores how in some lessons that Doug observes he notices a tangible difference in the quality of student talk. When he considers the difference he notes in the mathematics lesson that the teacher is highly specific in keeping student responses tied to the core message of the lesson on rates of change. Keeping the students ' inside the box ', without stifling creativity, or damaging their sense of curiosity. This teacher led control of discussion is disciplined and valuable in the context of the lesson.

In Lemov packs his post with practical ideas for discussion and quality feedback. There is useful guidance for quality feedback, habits of discussion and useful prompts to continue the discussion. My favourite part of the post is the explanation of ' Direct Intentional Feedback '. I will return to this in a moment.

includes a useful video example of Socratic discussion. I have always been a fan of Socratic questioning circles, including the strategy in my most popular post on questioning: Questioning - Top Ten Strategies . I think it is a highly skilled approach to debate that can only ever being used sparingly, but it is worth the time undertaken to structure the activity. It can help develop upon the ideas and viewpoints of students in a given debate, whilst training students to listen intently.
Response to Doug Lemov: High Impact Questioning and Feedback
Returning to Lemov's idea of ' disciplined discussion', I think there is a real skill in disciplined questioning. Doug would describe it as ' cold calling' - in England it is more commonly labelled the ' no hands up' approach, whereat the teacher directs questions tailored at individual students. Whilst ' no hands up ' needn't be used all the time, this mode of questioning is in my opinion the most effective. It can be precisely targeted and scaffolded to meet the needs of individual students.

'The Question ladder': One simple strategy I apply when planning a lesson is to devise a sequence of questions that form a ladder, most often with an escalating degree of challenge and complexity. By thoughtfully constructing such questions, beginning with more closed , recall style questions, before utilising more open, conceptually challenging questions, you can lead students through any given topic. The questions form a ladder as each question builds upon their specific knowledge of the text or topic at hand. One example would be this sequence of questions I used with my A level English Literature class based on ' Dr Faustus', focusing the question sequence on the concept of sinfulness and pride:
Q1. The classical Greek term for excessive pride is 'hubris' - who most famously devised this definition in his 'Poetics'? Q2. What other deadly sin is linked to pride in the play and why? Evidence? Q3. Why does Marlowe use myths like Icarus and contemporary characters like the Pope and the Emperor to represent pride? Q4. How does pride link Dr Faustus with Dr Frankenstein? Any other literary references? Q5. 'Pride comes before a fall' is a common aphorism. How far does this aphorism neatly sum up the moral message of Marlowe's play, 'Dr Faustus'?
Prior to the lesson I thought carefully about who I would address each question to and who I'd aim to elicit a follow up response. Questions can be tailored to students. Like the Goldilocks principle, a question can be just hard enough to challenge, without being beyond a student. Clearly, question 4 is best addressed to a student who is well read and unfortunately that does not describe all of the students in the class. By targeting crafted questions that are scaffolded for individual students you can create better quality ' disciplined discussion '.

The next step is to enhance the discipline of the secondary responses by other students in the group. There is where ' disciplined feedback' and ' ABC feedback ' comes into play.

' ABC Feedback ': This is one of my most effective teaching strategies. No handouts, cut ups or laminated cards. Simply clear, guided steps for quality feedback.

This simple strategy has probably had the biggest impact upon my practice, relative to the effort it takes to implement, over the last couple of years in the classroom. It is incredibly easy, but it adds a sophisticated degree of differentiation into the questioning process. By asking students to Agree with; Build upon; or Challenge the answers of other students it allows students to develop their ideas in a more disciplined fashion, whilst giving a helpful scaffold to their ideas. By selecting the right students based on an escalating degree of challenge, we can give them options - the Agree with often being the ' easiest' response, but not always; whereas some students can Build upon and Challenge previous responses. By bouncing these questions around the room you can exemplify differentiated progress of the highest order.

Here is an example:
Teacher question: Which character would you most like to sit next to? Student A answer: I would most like to sit next to Crooks. As he can read well, because he owns books, he could help me with answers and we could discuss our ideas. Teacher question: Student B, give some ABC feedback based on A's answer. Student B answer: I would build upon that idea: Crooks would be good to get answers from, but he might result in me being excluded from my friends, just because I was speaking to a black man in such a racist place. Therefore I would probably challenge A's answer, choosing Slim instead. Slim is also intelligent, but he is popular, and you have to think about having friends as well as giving good answers in class.
By bouncing the questions around the class, it increases the level of inclusivity, whilst also potentially increasing engagement and listening skills, as students know they may be asked to respond to the answers given by other students. I think this has an attendant benefit for student behaviour too as it ensures active listening and creates greater discipline to the classroom talk.

Once embedded, this simple code can become synonymous with disciplined peer discussion. You could create ' talking trios' (any group larger than three often encourages individuals to lag and leave the ' work' to others) that use ABC to structure their discussion.

What will stop them drifting off topics you may ask? One great strategy is to use ' spotlighting'. That is to say, circulate the room and listen in on debate, but intermittently stop near a group and raise your hand - a pre-arranged signal to the group to stop their debate and listen in to the group under the spotlight. The group that is ' spotlighted' simply carry on their talk for a minute or so - giving the whole class the change to consider another debate; whilst simultaneously shining a light on how well a group is debating and using the ABC model.

Put simply, Doug Lemov focuses upon the heart of good pedagogy - as old as education itself - high quality discussion and feedback. It is at once incredibly simple and maddeningly difficult to get it right. ' Disciplined discussion' and the discipline of ' ABC feedback ' just might be the answer.

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'Disciplined Discussion' - As Easy as ABC

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This practical post on a couple of teaching and learning strategies is wholly indebted to an excellent trio of posts from Doug Lemov, of ' Practice Perfect' and ' Teach Like A Champion' fame. His series is based on the concept of 'disciplined discussion '.

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January 5, 2024 • New edtech tools are making it easier for teachers to complete tasks like generating lessons and providing differentiated texts, freeing up time for them to work with students.

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Podcast: Improving Literacy in Geography (and other subjects)

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Podcast: Improving Literacy in Geography (and other subjects)

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What's New in Google for Education - October 2023

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What's New in Google for Education - October 2023

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Catch up on everything new in Google Workspace for Education from October 2023, and see great ideas and resources!

Below is the recorded video from our October 2023 Google User Meeting, along with the meeting agenda with all the awesome resources and Google updates from the last few months. This includes lots of new Google updates and Google resources for your class.

The monthly meetings are hosted by the Google Educator Group of Ohio, but are open to anyone from any location. The purpose of these meetings is to:

Connect Google-using educators

Share the latest Google Workspace news and features

Provide tutorials, demonstrations, and how-to's

Share best practices of how Google Workspace is being used within schools

Ask questions and get answers

The video from the meeting is recorded and available for later viewing for those who cannot attend or connect live. See below to view the recorded video, agenda, and all the resources from the October 2023 meeting:

Note: If you would like to see each of the agenda items with links directly to those spots in the video, open the video using the YouTube link below and then click " Show More" below the video.

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keopzCNSQGI

You can view the full Google Document agenda with links to all the Google Workspace updates from the last month, as well as all the resources covered in the meeting in the Google Doc linked below.

View the agenda - Google Document link

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Catch up on everything new in Google Workspace for Education from October 2023, and see great ideas and resources! Below is the recorded vi...

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Online: Parenting Translator Website, Instagram

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Research suggests that homework may be most beneficial when it is minimal.

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| | Filed Under: Digital Resources, Guided Reading, Reading, Reading Centers

Vocabulary is so important in instruction and the vocabulary of the skills and standards we teach is SO important. If the students can't tell you what the meaning of theme is, they definitely can't apply that to a story or passage. In this post, I will share free reading posters to help you teach the reading vocabulary of the standards and help your students master it.

About the Reading Posters

These free reading posters are a perfect way to introduce and review the key vocabulary of the reading standards. By using these posters, you will hopefully no longer hear students ask "What is theme?" while doing test prep (#truestory).

The reading vocabulary chosen for these posters is from the common core reading standards, however, you may easily pick and choose the ones that align with your standards.

Ways to Use the Reading Posters

1. Hang on the wall as a reference for students. I like to group mine by fiction standards and nonfiction. Hang up a new poster as you introduce the standard to the students.

2. Use on anchor charts. I will be the first to admit that I am terrible with making cute anchor charts. Using these reading posters (by taping them on the chart along with other notes) helps keep my anchor charts organized and useful.

3. Print/copy multiple posters to a page or print at 80% to fit in reading notebooks. My students have an entire section of our reading notebook devoted to mini-lessons. These reading posters would be perfect in that section or even in a specific section just for reading vocabulary.

4. Use in guided reading. Each week, I like to have a specific focus for my guided reading groups. These reading vocabulary posters are perfect to quickly review the reading term before applying it to our guided reading book.

5. Place in reading centers that focus on that skill as a student reference. Reading centers and stations are a great way to practice previously learned skills. But, sometimes students need a quick refresher of what the reading terms mean. Place these reading posters in a center as a quick review for the students.

6. "Play" review games with the vocabulary words on the reading posters. This is one of my favorite time-fillers and a simple way to review reading skills. Here are some quick and easy ways to review:

1. Tell the student you are thinking of a word and give the definition (I like to use a rephrased version of the definition). Have the students use the reading posters to help them give the word.

2. Use a beach ball and throw it to a student. When the student catches it, they must choose a word from the reading posters and give an example or explain it in their own words. Then, they throw it to another student and the "game" continues.

3. Play hangman with the words. However, when a student is ready to guess the word, they must also give a definition in their own words or read the definition from the poster and also give an example.

About the Digital Reading Posters

The reading vocabulary posters now include a digital version for use with Google Slides.

You can assign the posters through Google Classroom (as Material) and have the students use them to review key vocabulary skills. The vocabulary posters work best when viewed in PRESENT mode (versus Edit/Create Mode).

The digital version includes an interactive table of contents for the words included in that file. Fiction and nonfiction words have two separate menus.

Students will click on the vocabulary words on the Table of Contents slide to take them to the definition page of the word they want to review.

They click the menu icon to take them back to the contents page.

Get the FREE Reading Posters!

To get these free reading posters, simply put your email in the box below and they will be sent straight to your inbox. You will find each printable poster in the PDF. Digital access links can be found on page 3.
Free Guided Reading Binder Reading Centers in Upper Elementary Free Reading Games and Centers Free Reading Center Starter Pack for Launching Reading Centers Reading Centers Management Ways to Hold Students Accountable in Reading

Need Resources for Digital Reading Instruction?

If you need digital reading resources to help with online or digital reading instruction, I recommend this resource. Each skill includes (or will include by the end of 2020) BOTH printable and digital versions for digital reading instruction, face-to-face instruction, or hybrid reading instruction.

Each skill comes up with:

Digital Teaching Posters

Digital Graphic Organizers

Digital Passages

Digital Task Cards and Other Reading Activities

Shop This Post

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Free Reading Posters (4th-5th Grade) - Teaching with Jennifer Findley

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Free reading posters for 4th and 5th grade! Click through to get the posters and read how to use them to help your students master the reading standards.

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50 TIME-SAVING CHATGPT PROMPTS FOR TEACHERS

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50 TIME-SAVING CHATGPT PROMPTS FOR TEACHERS

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If you're looking for an innovative way to save time while planning and teaching, look no further than ChatGPT- the new AI language model developed by OpenAI that has taken the Internet by storm. This game-changing tool generates human-like text based on the prompts it receives, making it an invaluable resource for, well, pretty much anyone - but especially for teachers who want to streamline their workload and maximize their precious time.

In this post, you'll find a carefully-curated mega list of prompts designed to help you tap into the full potential of ChatGPT. Think of ChatGPT like that personal assistant you've always dreamed of. From creating content for students to analyze to sharing strategies for assessment and classroom collaboration, ChatGPT has the potential to save you hours of time and make your life infinitely easier.
Learn more about prompt generation and content analysis: If you're looking for a way to discuss AI-generated content & plagiarism in your classroom, I created some activities to help students understand responsible & ethical use of AI: Ethical Use of AI for Students A Teacher's Guide to Using ChatGPT: Essential Tips Every Teacher Should Know

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50 Time-Saving ChatGPT Prompts for Teachers - Hello, Teacher Lady

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From creating content for students to analyze to sharing strategies for assessment and classroom collaboration, ChatGPT has the potential to save you hours of time and make your life infinitely easier. Here are 50 prompts that will help with that.

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We asked teachers to share the hardest part of teaching good highlighting and annotation skills. They said:

"Teaching kids that highlighting is not painting the barn." -Patricia B.

"Getting students to understand the different aspects of text worthy of notation-main idea, significant detail, theme, etc." -Melissa W.

"Convincing them it's necessary." -Amy S.

With these comments in mind, we've created a brand-new classroom poster to help you teach kids smart highlighting skills. Plus, don't forget to save and pin the exclusive educator infographic, which has more ideas for teaching annotation in the classroom.

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Teaching Students to Be Better Annotators Poster and Infographic - We Are Teachers

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We've created a brand-new classroom poster to help you teach kids smart highlighting skills. Plus, don't forget to save and pin the exclusive educator infographic.

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Listen to the interview with Connie Hamilton:
Sponsored by EVERFI and Verizon Innovative Learning HQ

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It's pretty well known in educational circles that cooperative learning is supported by research, but so many teachers still struggle with it, so when things don't work well, they give it up. In my observations of thousands of teachers, I've noticed that sometimes the smallest tweak in instructional approaches reaps the biggest impact, and group work is no exception.

I've gathered some of the most common efforts among teachers everywhere that aren't met with the same amount of effort and success from their students, and for each one, I offer a small tweak that can make big improvements. Sometimes the tweak is a shift in semantics, other times it might be a slight change in how information is presented, and in some cases, it focuses on how teachers react when students lean on them to "help" instead of doing the heavy lifting themselves.

The instructional methods are sorted into six categories: grouping structures, giving directions, assigning roles, support during student collaboration, the teacher's primary role, and the learning tasks. In each of these six categories, look for examples that describe how you approach or respond to group work, then consider these suggestions for elevating the effectiveness of student collaboration while limiting or reducing the energy you contribute.

Grouping Structures

When determining how students will tackle a task, our options are to have students work independently, with a partner, or in a group. Be more intentional with how you make this key decision by considering some of the thoughtful decisions around structuring student work.

Common approach #1: Inviting students to work with a partner if or when they like
Tweak: Select when, how, and why tasks are individual vs. partner work.
While the goal for allowing students to work with a partner any time they choose is intended to send the message that we can always get help from peers, it doesn't leave room for purposefully designing a task with collaboration in mind. The interactions between students is often not much more than a quick check to see if they got the same answer, rather than communicating their thinking along the way. So when you assign partner work, do it with intention.

Common approach #2: Choosing partners or groups randomly
Tweak: Optimize interest, level, connection, skill, personality, etc. to determine groups.
It's OK to have random groupings once in a while, especially when a quick engagement strategy is needed. However, if groups are primarily student choice or random, we miss the opportunity to mindfully align students with others based on a variety of factors.

Try using Clock Partners to organize multiple pairings. Here's how it works: Students make "appointments" with different peers at specific times. Then, when the teacher announces they should join their 3:00 partner, the pairings are already predetermined. Only you know that the 12 o'clock partner is a reading buddy, while the 6 o'clock partner considers how introverted or extraverted students are.

Common Approach #3: Assigning the same group size to all students
Tweak: Design groups of different sizes if warranted.
When flexibility is warranted, allow for a blend of solo, partner, and group structures. It can be effective to have groups of 4 or 5, a couple of partners, and a few students working alone. Depending on the task, you can offer varying levels of challenge based on their group structure.

Giving Directions

How students engage in active learning usually has steps or at a minimum some guidance. Students come to expect teachers to be the beacon of information when it comes to describing exactly - and I mean every minute detail - of what they are supposed to do.

Common Approach #4: Reading directions to students
Tweak: Give them time to independently read and repeat to peers.
Instead of reading directions, or even having a single student read them to the entire class, give your learners time to read independently, then repeat or paraphrase them to a partner. If your students often disregard the directions, this small tweak will not only give them two exposures (once when they read and once when their partner repeats), but it also gives you a point of reference. You can easily refer them back to the directions if they are going rogue in a way that jeopardizes learning.

Common Approach #5: Giving multiple steps in a row
Tweak: Post steps for students to revisit as needed.
Working or short-term memory is taxed when multi-step directions are expected to be retained for future reference. Instead of requiring students to remember all the steps of a complex task, provide a visual with them clearly stated.

Common Approach #6: Answering questions about the task
Tweak: Refer them to the resources provided or prompt them to problem-solve.
When you have provided an opportunity for students to review the directions and have made them accessible for reference as needed, there's no need for you to answer questions that they can clarify without asking you. Try to build independence and responsibility by encouraging students to access other sources to get the information they seek.

One way to accomplish this is to respond to their question with a question that prompts reflection or metacognition (see examples above). Answering questions with a question bounces the responsibility off of you and back on to them.

Of course, what you say is as important as how you say it. Cynical or sarcastic tones, when posing questions, can break down your relationship with students. Be sure your questions are delivered in a positive and productive way that strives to encourage students to activate their empowerment.

Assigning Roles

As adults who have ample opportunities to practice effective communication skills, it can be easy to overlook the fact that students do not always know how to balance partner or group tasks or communicate with peers. These are critical soft skills that can be fostered when collaborative tasks have structure and students understand the various roles group members or partners play when working and learning together.

Common Approach #7: Not differentiating between partners or group members

Tweak: Start with A/B partners.

The easiest way to elevate your intentionality and make student collaboration more effective is to assign names for your partners. A/B, red/gold, peanut butter/jelly, it doesn't matter. This simple detail assigns a speaker and a listener and structures the conversation to ensure the speaker is heard and the listener understands. It's the basics of the communication cycle where the sender (speaker) sends a message and the receiver (listener) provides feedback about the message.

Common Approach #8: Assigning roles without practice or models

Tweak: Plan mini-lessons on how to fulfill roles.

Don't get overwhelmed by this tweak. Just start with one skill at a time. Offer a mini-lesson that clearly explains how a quality summarizer, questioner, or detective would perform their role. Include models that students can critique or reflect on their effectiveness. In a small group, assign one person to execute that role, then rotate it to another group member or partner for the second part of the task.

Eventually, you will have a list of roles like the ones above that students understand how to apply in their collaborative groups. The goal is for all students to have all the skills and be able to apply these soft skills fluidly without the need to be assigned a specific role.

Common Approach #9: Giving only "housekeeping" roles to some students

Tweak: Assign academic or cognitive roles to everyone.

Jobs like "materials manager" or "time keeper" might be necessary to support groups in their journey to successful learning, but students should not have the sole role of making sure everyone has a ruler and a pencil. Every learner should be assigned a cognitive role that contributes to the learning of the group and each individual in it. Then, if you want to assign housekeeping tasks, they are add-ons to the academic roles. So for example, your summarizer might also be responsible for returning supplies at the end of the lesson.

Supporting Learning

Facilitating effective group tasks is no easy feat. It requires careful thought and intentional planning. When you have gone through the time and effort to coordinate a quality collaborative learning task, resist the natural tendency to slip into a teacher-directed mode every time a student seeks your help.

Common Approach #10: Chasing hands
Tweak: Provide tools and resources in advance so your help isn't needed.
During collaborative learning, the goal is for students to learn from and with one another - not you. Students already know you're the safety net. Ideally, we provide other options - such as appropriate tools, access to a text, sufficient or additional time, and opportunity to collaborate - that help them persevere through productive struggle before asking you for help. So for goodness sake, don't front load an invitation to seek you out at the first sign of difficulty by announcing, "If you need help, just raise your hand and I'll come over." Just think for a moment what this communicates and encourages.

Common Approach #11: Allowing individuals to ask the teacher questions
Tweak: Require students to access all resources, including other group members, before asking you.
When groups are truly working together, they tap into each other's expertise, knowledge, and thoughts. If an individual partner or group member has a question, do some investigation to make sure the other group members have been included in problem-solving before you were sought out. A simple question such as, "What have you tried so far?" will initiate conversation about potential options and could lead to an "aha" moment without your help.

Common Approach #12: Reteaching rather than systematically scaffolding
Tweak: Use prompting strategies to help learners help themselves.
During lessons, teachers are constantly checking for understanding through structured or casual formative assessments. When a red flag comes up indicating that learners have misconceptions, are struggling, or simply haven't met the target, it's natural to have an urge to support them. Rather than revisit a lesson to reinforce a concept or skill, trigger problem-solving by giving metacognitive prompts. Before repeating the key points of a lesson, try asking questions like What strategy might work?, Where have you seen a similar problem?, or How are you going to tackle this? These types of questions trigger students to think about the knowledge they already have, then apply it. When you jump to reteaching, you skip the opportunity for students to lead their own success.

Teacher's Primary Role

A collaborative learning structure positions students in the center of their learning. By design, the intent is for the teacher to take a passive role, seemingly invisible. It's often our nature to uncloak too soon and flip the lesson to be more teacher-centered during small chunks of time without even realizing it.

Common Approach #13: Spending your time answering questions and helping during group work
Tweak: Observe and gather anecdotal data while students are working.
Your primary role is to listen and watch as students build their learning. This is sometimes a mindshift that is hard to make and even more challenging to maintain. Carry a clipboard or tablet to document what students are grasping, what is challenging, and who has provided evidence of learning. Not only will your noticings be valuable assessment data, but you will be more aware of when you are pulled away from your task to assist students in doing theirs.

Common Approach #14: "Checking" in with groups
Tweak: Do not interrupt.
The gradual release of responsibility (GRR) is often referred to by its "I do, We Do, You Do" parts. Every time you approach a group and ask them how it's going, you effectively jolt them from the "You Do" part into the "We Do" phase of GRR. Unless you have a need to abruptly stop their learning progress and have them repeat what they've already done or learned, don't. Stay invisible by listening from a short distance to hear and observe how students are doing rather than interrupting them.

Learning Tasks

Learning targets, learning intentions, lesson objectives, or whatever you label as the purpose for the lesson, are almost always linked to content expectations. They communicate what students should know and be able to do in math, music, writing, and so on. When students have clarity on the learning target, it is much easier for them to work toward that goal. When teachers hold that level of clarity, instructional decisions during the lesson are intentional and therefore, more successful.

Common Approach #15: Grading a single project or assignment for all group members
Tweak: Learn collaboratively and assess individually.
I have been involved in countless conversations about group grading practices during collaborative learning. The research that supports collaborative learning applies to individual learners, not the group as a whole. The act of engaging with other learners while you're learning not only deepens the learning, but makes it more likely for students to remember it. However, group grades do not reflect how each student stacks up against the target. Activities that involve groups working together should be followed by individual assessment to gather accurate data about what each student took away from their group learning task.

Common Approach #16: Grouping students for simple tasks
Tweak: Design group work for complex tasks that require multiple thinkers.
Just because there is evidence that group work and student collaboration supports learning, doesn't mean it's always the best fit for every lesson and learning task. When a planned activity is simple and students are capable of completing it independently, you run the risk they will devalue working with their peers, regardless of the task, because they believe they don't need their peers. Select a collaborative structure when a variety of thoughts and ideas will benefit each individual's learning. Remember, group or partner work is more than just sharing the load to complete a task. Collaboration should offer a perspective or experience that single students would not have without their classmates.

Common Approach #17: Basing feedback solely on content
Tweak: Notice and assess speaking and listening skills.
Soft skills like problem solving, respectful listening, patience, articulating thinking, and many more are qualities educators and families expect students to exhibit. But too often, we don't necessarily give these skills attention unless they're exceptional or lacking. Instead of isolating your feedback solely on what students learn within your content area, pick a speaking and listening skill and include comments about how it is helping or hindering their group's effectiveness.

If you recognize one of these common approaches to group work in your own teaching style, give it a tweak and pay attention to the impact your subtle change makes on the effectiveness of group work.

Hacking Group Work is available on Amazon and Bookshop.org.

Come back for more.
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17 Tweaks That Make a Big Difference in Group Work

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Cooperative learning can be a powerful learning strategy, but only if it works well. These small changes can make group work more effective in your classroom.

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Google has announced that Jamboard is turning down. That makes perfect sense because Jamboard has not received an update since it added the ability to add an image from a webcam in March 2021.

I was an early believer in Jamboard and the power of collaborative whiteboarding in classrooms. I recorded my first Jamboard video in June 2017 and first blogged about it in January 2018. So many more videos and posts followed.

As the pandemic started and the years went by, I wanted more from Jamboard. I could not add a hyperlink. Jamboard was for collaboration, but it had no comment feature. I could not play a YouTube video in it.

The good news is there is a whiteboard app that has these features and more. Jamboard using teachers, meet your new best friend - FigJam. FigJam is so powerful for collaboration - you are going to love it.

Working in FigJam after using Jamboard is like being Edward Cullen playing baseball with vampires after walking among the students at Forks High School.

Seriously, FigJam is that much better than Jamboard!

FigJam:

Is FREE for K-12

Is web-based

Has an iPad app

Works on all web-based devices, especially touchscreen Chromebooks

Is FERPA and COPPA compliant. Enjoy using FigJam with your elementary and middle school students. Scroll to the bottom of the K-12 education page for specific details.

If you are concerned about losing Jamboard, don't be. Instead, please accept my congratulations on your FigJam upgrade. You can always download Jamboard frames as images or whole Jams as PDFs and add them to FigJams. Here is what you need to know to transition from Jamboard to FigJam.

Create a FigJam

Go to Figma's website to get started.

From Frames to an Infinite Canvas

Instead of 20 frames, FigJam is an infinite canvas. The good news is the canvas is very easy to navigate.

If you want to add a second activity to a FigJam, similar to adding a second activity on a different Jamboard frame, copy and paste the sharing URL of another FigJam to the original FigJam. The second FigJam embeds in the original!

Sections are another feature for distinguishing activities.

More Powerful Sticky Notes

Sticky notes in FigJam are much better than Jamboard. There is no limit to text. There are nine colors instead of five. Sticky notes can be portrait or landscape-shaped. Hover the mouse on the side of a sticky note to add a subsequent sticky note.

Most powerfully, sticky notes display their author's name by default. That is useful for student voice and collaboration.

Record Student Reactions

Use the stamp button in the toolbar to have students register their reaction to something or cast a vote. Stamp options include:

Heart

+1

Thumb up

Thumb down

Profile picture

Star

Question mark

Hover over any stamp to see which contributor added it. This is perfect for accountability.

Ink is So Much Better

One frustrating aspect of Jamboard is the inability to manipulate or move ink on the canvas. In FigJam, ink can be any color instead of Jamboard's six options. You can resize, move, recolor ink, and make it thicker or thinner.

You Can Lock Items

A Jamboard feature teachers have long pined for is the ability to lock items. You can lock items so that students have to consciously decide to unlock them before editing them. No more accidental deletions! That makes collaborating with students so much easier. Select multiple items, such as written directions and images, to lock them all in place.

When a student clicks on a locked item, they see the locked icon. That means they have to decide to unlock it to edit it.

There is also a version history so teachers can revert to previous versions of the FigJam.

There Are So Many Useful Features

FigJam gives teachers improved versions of Jamboard tools, such as sticky notes, ink, and so much more. Impressive features of FigJams that teachers will love include:

Jamboard features that teachers love, including the Share button and the ability to take pictures with the webcam, are there as well. You can even add FigJam Smart Chips to Google Docs, something you could never do for Jamboard Jams.
Please visit my FigJam resources, watch my YouTube videos, or quick TikTok tutorials to learn more.

I hope you are excited to try FigJam. Does your school need professional development to help with the transition from Jamboard to FigJam? Connect with me on my consulting page or email me at mistermullaney@gmail.com.

AI Disclosure:

I wrote this blog post without the use of any generative AI. That means:

I developed the idea for the post without using generative AI.

I wrote an outline for this post without the assistance of generative AI.

I wrote the post from the outline without the use of generative AI.

I edited this post without the assistance of any generative outline. I used Grammarly to assist in editing the post. I have Grammarly GO turned off.

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The Teacher's Guide for Transitioning from Jamboard to FigJam

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Google has announced that Jamboard is turning down. That makes perfect sense because Jamboard has not received an update since it added the ability to add an image from a webcam in March 2021. I was an early believer in Jamboard and the power of collaborative whiteboarding in classrooms. I recorded my first Jamboard video...

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How much is too much when it comes to Class Decor?

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How much is too much when it comes to Class Decor?

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What you put on your classroom walls can affect your students’ ability to learn.

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Catch up on everything new in Google Workspace for Education from September 2023, and see great ideas and resources!

Below is the recorded video from our September 2023 Google User Meeting, along with the meeting agenda with all the awesome resources and Google updates from the last few months. This includes lots of new Google updates and Google resources for your class.

The monthly meetings are hosted by the Google Educator Group of Ohio, but are open to anyone from any location. The purpose of these meetings is to:

Connect Google-using educators

Share the latest Google Workspace news and features

Provide tutorials, demonstrations, and how-to's

Share best practices of how Google Workspace is being used within schools

Ask questions and get answers

The video from the meeting is recorded and available for later viewing for those who cannot attend or connect live. See below to view the recorded video, agenda, and all the resources from the September 2023 meeting:

Note: If you would like to see each of the agenda items with links directly to those spots in the video, open the video using the YouTube link below and then click " Show More" below the video.

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvvQUZAG98o

You can view the full Google Document agenda with links to all the Google Workspace updates from the last month, as well as all the resources covered in the meeting in the Google Doc linked below.

View the agenda - Google Document link

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Catch up on everything new in Google Workspace for Education from September 2023, and see great ideas and resources! Below is the recorded ...

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AI in The Classroom: 10 Essential Ideas Every Educator Needs to Understand

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AI in The Classroom: 10 Essential Ideas Every Educator Needs to Understand

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AI will have a huge impact on students with learning differences, espeically for Dyslexic students and struggling learners. You can expect that within the next few years, AI tools will be written into every Individualized Education Program (IEP).

AI is full of coded bias which is highly problematic. Recognizing and understanding this bias is important to understanding the responses it provides. Students need to understand the data AI is trained on and to critically evaluate the information they encounter while using any AI platform.

Educators should understand that within the next two years, the World Economic Forum predicts that 85 million jobs will be lost to AI, and in that same time period, 97 million new jobs will be created for those who know how to work with AI. Preparing students for this shift should be a priority for all educators.

#6 The Importance of Improving Prompting Skills

The prompting process involves not just knowing how to prompt, but also how to revise and refine those prompts to elicit the most accurate and helpful responses from AI systems like ChatGPT. Workshops for educators should prioritize teaching educators the techniques of effective prompting and prompt revision with ChatGPT to optimize the quality of the responses generated. This way educators will know how to get better lesson ideas and better resources from ChatGPT.

#7 How to Enhance Pedagogy with ChatGPT

Educators need to realize the numerous pedagogical strategies that can be significantly improved by initially utilizing ChatGPT themselves. For instance, it's well understood that students require some background information on a subject to fully engage with the material. Consider using ChatGPT to generate a list of the 10 most fascinating real-life applications of the quadratic equation. Doing this, before delving into the complexities of solving it - a concept often perceived as abstract by many students, can be incredibly beneficial for those questioning the relevance of their learning. This approach not only piques the students' interest but also provides a foundational understanding that can make the subsequent learning process more accessible and meaningful.

Realistically, could all of our teachers compile a list like this without the assistance of AI?

#8 AI is More Than a Worksheet or Presentation Generator

Educators should not view AI as just another tool for creating worksheets or generating more test questions - NO THIS IS NOT THE POWER OF THE TOOL. Instead, its true potential lies in its ability to enable students to ask better, more insightful questions, and to learn in ways that genuinely interest them. AI can be leveraged to create resources that empower teachers to shift the learning responsibility back to the students, fostering a more engaging and student-centered learning environment. This approach not only helps students take ownership of their learning journey but also encourages a deeper and more meaningful understanding of the subject matter.

#9 How to Use AI to Develop Critical Thinking in Students:

AI can help in developing critical thinking skills among students. Educators should use AI to create scenarios or problems that encourage students to think critically and solve problems creatively. This not only makes the learning process more engaging but also helps in developing skills that are essential for the 21st century.

#10 Soon, it will be a common assumption that all written pieces involved the use of AI

In the future, it will be a common assumption that all writing, from academic papers to creative pieces, has been created through a collaborative effort with AI. Educators must adapt to this new reality and teach students how to work effectively with AI writing tools to enhance their work rather than relying on them entirely. This includes understanding the capabilities and limitations of these tools, learning how to use them to improve one's writing, and developing the critical thinking skills necessary to evaluate and revise the content generated by AI. It is essential to instill in students the understanding that while AI can be a valuable tool, it is not a replacement for human thought and creativity.

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AI in The Classroom: 10 Essential Ideas Every Educator Needs to Understand - The Infused Classroom

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As artificial intelligence (AI) crashes into the education landscape, educators across the globe are looking up like deer in headlights. Here are 10 crucial aspects that educators must be aware of to infuse AI effectively and create compelling learning experiences. Because this new tool is so much more than a way for students to cheat.

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40 sites for students with free time on their hands

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When students are done with an assignment or project, how can they spend extra time wisely? These sites give them something academic to chew on. As a

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After some grim national writing results last year, and lots of conversations with school leaders about their post-Covid teaching and learning priorities, writing is high on many schools' priority list.

Common issues that have been raised to me by school colleagues are wide ranging, from issues with spelling, to extended writing, problematic writing assessments, and much more.

Perhaps the most common complaint and challenge I hear is the statement: 'my pupils lack writing stamina'.

The problem is that I am not sure many teachers agree on what they mean by ' writing stamina', never mind making teaching decisions to address the seeming struggle.

What do we mean by 'writing stamina' anyway?

For many teachers, a lack of writing stamina characterises an inability to write independently for a sustained period. And yet, it probably characterises a broader range of behaviours that attend writing (and learning). Just a sample of these could include:

Limited handwriting fluency. For younger pupils in particular the motor skills required of extended writing is hard work. As a result, their handwriting quality can quickly slip. For older pupils too, the effort and attention on handwriting can wane.

Running dry of ideas. For many pupils, with an urge to get going with a tricky writing task, they rush into the act. They plan sparingly. As a result, their initial enthusiasm is dimmed and they run out of creative ideas, or deep knowledge of the topic at hand.

Errors increase in pupils extended writing. Pupils embark on their writing, but they lack the ability and stamina to edit and revise what they have written. As a result, their writing is error strewn and apparently maxed out of all stamina.

Motivation is low to keep going with a writing task. Every teacher has battled with the reality of pupils claiming, 'I've finished!' in a matter of minutes, or gnashed their teeth as a pupil has plonked their head on the desk during the act of writing.

The notion that pupils are lacking in 'writing stamina' could account for an array of problematic causes. If we do not decipher the underlying causes, then we risk not finding solutions for pupils' struggles. For example, we need to better discriminate emotional factors, such as effort and motivation, from knowledge-related factors such as having too little background knowledge or being unclear how to plan effectively.

Diagnosing 'writing stamina' struggles with the 'Simple View of Writing'

A helpful model to frame the complex challenge of writing, and writing stamina, is the ' Simple View of Writing '. See this adapted graphic from the EEF guidance report:

Graphic taken from 'Improving literacy in Secondary Schools', by the Education Endowment Foundation
The 'Simple View' does what it says on the tin. It helps to simply and chunk down the complex act of writing. It can help better categorise the issue of writing stamina. For instance:

Transcription and writing stamina. Pupils lack fluency and automaticity in their handwriting. Additionally, gaps in their spelling knowledge are drawing on precious mental energy that pupils need to reserve for selecting words, composing sentences and more.

Composition and writing stamina. Pupils lack a breath and depth of vocabulary to draw upon to express their ideas. They struggle to deploy academic language or link their ideas with sentence signposts, such as because, however, and in contrast. Their sentences are either truncated and too simple, or they run on and on, with too little sense. Short of ideas, pupils struggle with most forms of extended writing.

Executive function and writing stamina. Pupils don't plan or monitor their writing to make quality improvements. Their sense of what a 'good effort' would compose of is lacking. They lack the habits of the writing process - such as carefully editing and making additional revisions to what they have written - and give up too easily. They don't enjoy writing, nor feel they are being successful, so they just give up.

Like any model that tries to make sense of complex learning, the 'Simple View' has its limits. Of course, these factors interact, the boundaries are blurred, and not every issue is adequately addressed. And yet, it helps us get one step closer to a shared understanding of the apparent struggle with 'writing stamina'. That shared understanding then brings us closer to addressing the issue.

For three different pupils, you might diagnose a different challenge:

Janet has issues weak spelling (transcription), a lack of knowledge of the task and the topic they need to write about (composition), and poor editing (exec function).

James exhibits low effort and motivation for most writing tasks (exec function).

Jamila tries hard, has some good ideas, but her hard to read run-on sentences (composition) and non-existent planning keeps tripping her up (exec function).

There are no quick fixes for these struggles, for pupils like Janet, James, and Jamila, but a better understanding of their writing stamina problems poses a useful starting point.

...

Related reading:

I have recently written a few blogs that relate to the issue, and solutions, for the struggle with writing stamina:

Write Less; Read More. Fundamentally, we may be undertaking too many extended writing tasks that don't hone pupils' skills nor build their motivation. READ MORE HERE.

The challenge of editing writing. Some pupils lack the 'stamina' to edit because they don't know how to do it, and the task is simple too big and complex. READ MORE HERE.

'The Not-So-Simple View of Writing in Struggling Writers/Readers'. This research study offered challenges and updates to Berninger's Simple View model, if you want to get into the weeds of the research evidence. READ MORE HERE.

All of these topics and more are addressed in my book, 'Closing the Writing Gap' - see and

[Image: 'A boy wearing long sleeve sweater resting head on a desk']

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After some grim national writing results last year, and lots of conversations with school leaders about their post-Covid teaching and learning priorities, writing is high on many schools' priority list. Common issues that have been raised to me by school colleagues are wide ranging, from issues with spelling, to extended writing, problematic writing assessments, and much more.

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Teachers and administrators from pre-K through 12th grade named these tools their top picks for this year and beyond.

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Teachers and administrators from pre-K through 12th grade named these tools their top picks for this year and beyond.

If there was ever a year for teachers to beg, borrow, and steal good ideas, this is it. All good teachers know this is how we get better, and this is a curated list of tech tools that I have begged and borrowed from others-and I didn't have to steal any of these as there has never been a year when teachers were more generous.

Based on my own teaching of college students as well as the responses of 1,461 virtual learning academy participants-pre-K to 12 teachers and administrators-to survey questions on impactful tools that I conducted from May to December 2020, and over 70 webinars and virtual learning sessions I've conducted in that time, these are the top teacher-tested tech tools I have identified. My learning has happened with my own students and through my own mistakes, and I received great ideas from educators across the U.S. and around the world.

I will continue to use these tools and recommend their use regardless of student level or how we deliver education moving forward.

Top Tech Tools for Educators

10. Parlay: For those of us who like to discuss rich texts with students, Parlay lets us connect with students remotely, facilitate discussion, and track how the dialogue builds. As students respond, Parlay shows who is contributing and where the conversation is moving as the software visually tracks student responses in a discussion web. Teachers can use built-in tools to assess the frequency of students' answers in real time even when students are not in the same room. Teachers can then spend their time on deeper level assessment of the depth of student responses, which can also be recorded.

9. Flip: One of the most popular tech tools in schools, Flip won praise from teachers across the country because of the flexibility it gives students to submit digital projects and how it effectively supports peer and teacher feedback.

8. Edpuzzle: I've used Edpuzzle for a while, but it became much more vital as more of my content shifted online. Teachers use Edpuzzle to make video clips interactive by requiring student responses, which are easy to collect and assess.

7. Pear Deck: Pear Deck does to Google Slides what Edpuzzle does to videos. Slides become interactive, and teachers are able to collect feedback immediately.

6. Prezi: I've used the virtual presentation software Prezi for years, and I appreciate a recent update that allows me to be on the same screen with the graphics, creating a more engaging presentation. Prezi offers teachers another tool to capture short lectures, explanations, or other content in a more visually appealing and personal way than as a disembodied voice or thumbnail in the bottom corner of a screen.

5. Screencastify: Every student can be Sal Khan working out problems with explanations. This tool was first recommended to me by a teacher in Kenya, who explained how Screencastify transformed her math assessments by allowing students to show what they're thinking from wherever they happen to be working. Screencastify is also valuable for reducing cheating as teachers can observe students working and explaining problems instead of just recording answers.

This has been a lifesaver for virtual collaboration. Mural allows teachers, students, and other contributors to write on virtual sticky notes and then organize and reorganize them in real time. The best in-person meetings are always the ones where the collective expertise of the room can be captured visually, and if we can't be in the same room with students-or colleagues-Mural is the next best thing. Even better, there's no need to go back and summarize or clean up evidence from the meeting. The Mural is the artifact. Many teachers are now using Jamboard in a similar way.

Created by a high school student who thought he could improve upon Kahoot!, Gimkit allows teachers to create question sets that students can answer over and over again while competing against each other, which is great for surface learning and review. Because Gimkit allows for repetition of answers and has a variety of ways for students to earn points, students remain engaged as they work at their own pace.

2. Mentimeter and Slido: These are both excellent for collecting feedback from groups, so I've ranked them together. I use these almost weekly for professional learning and in my classes. Slido allows participants to ask questions and then upvote others. There are many similar tools, but Slido is easy and free. Mentimeter allows students and teachers to collect real-time data on questions they have, in the form of word clouds, rankings, and various scales. These are great discussion starters that allow everyone to contribute to the collective wisdom of the group.

1. Learning management system: A good LMS is key to reducing stress for teachers, students, and parents. A list like this one would be counterproductive if it left your educational delivery fragmented among disparate tools, and a good LMS helps you organize everything into a one-stop shop.

I personally love Canvas and Schoology, but I know many teachers have worked miracles with Google Classroom, which is "free." I use those quotes for a reason: Google Classroom is only truly free if it is not requiring significantly more human capital in the form of time and energy than a fee-for-service platform like Canvas or Schoology. The most significant asset for managing learning in the chaos of this school year has been staying organized, and Canvas has been a lifesaver for me.

I have taught virtually, led professional learning across many time zones, delivered content asynchronously, and taught students in masks with others Zooming in due to quarantine, Covid, or personal preference. For me, nothing will ever replace in-person teaching and learning, but like many other teachers and administrators, I now know how to effectively facilitate learning in a previously unimaginable set of circumstances. This school year's desperation has driven us to explore a wide range of tools, and we can be better because of the firehose learning we have done this year. We just need a few tools to create some space for us to breathe.

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Teachers and administrators from pre-K through 12th grade named these tools their top picks for this year and beyond.

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Tips from your teaching experience

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A summary of good teaching practices.

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Rosenshine's principles of instruction summary

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First 20 Days Building a Psychological Safe Environment

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First 20 Days Building a Psychological Safe Environment

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First 20 Days Building a Psychological Safe Environment

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For Librarians: Children's and Young Adult Book Awards

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For Librarians: Children's and Young Adult Book Awards

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Children’s and Young Adults’ Book Awards | International Literacy Association

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The International Literacy Association celebrates new juvenile literature authors with the annual Children’s and Young Adults’ Book Awards.

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Time to go shopping for HyperDocs! Look closely at design elements, different packaging options, engagement strategies, and more. Imagine the potential and possibility of digital lesson design with HyperDocs!

Click on the image below to access HyperDocs in each content area.

Did we miss a subject area or topic that you want? Is there a problem with any of the HyperDocs linked here? Leave a comment here and let us know!

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Time to go shopping for HyperDocs! Look closely at design elements, different packaging options, engagement strategies, and more. Imagine the potential and possibility of digital lesson design with HyperDocs! Click on the image below to access HyperDocs in each content area. Did we miss a subject area or topic that you want?

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More resources on how to use AI in the classroom

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More resources on how to use AI in the classroom

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PD Agenda - Super Tutor_ AI to Support all Learners

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Encouraging students to think about their purpose - and the skills they will gain from your class to help them achieve it - can increase engagement and resilience.
" U.S. schools failing in fight against youth mental health crisis, new report card finds."

If you're even tangentially connected to an American junior high, high school, or college, then you'll know that this headline is far from exaggerated. The social-emotional turbulence wrought by the pandemic has left educators scrambling to support students facing mental health challenges - a systemic crisis with potentially fatal consequences. From 2019-2020, emergency department visits for mental health conditions spiked 31% among adolescents between 12-17, and in 2020, suicide was the third leading cause of death among adolescents between the ages of 15-19.

What's more, this crisis has been exacerbated by an appalling lack of trained mental health professionals in schools. According to the American School Counselor Association, the United States has a 415:1 student-counselor ratio. For the students in my state, this disparity is even more pronounced: Arizona has a 716:1 student-counselor ratio, the worst in the nation.

Although the pandemic fueled the mental health crisis fire, the flames have been rising for years. In The Power of Meaning: Finding Fulfillment in a World Obsessed with Happiness, Emily Esfahani Smith (2017) explores the potential causes behind the 60% increase in global suicide rates since World War Two (p. 22). She describes a 2014 study in which almost 140,000 participants across 132 countries answered the following questions: 1) Are you satisfied with your life? and 2) Do you feel your life has an important purpose or meaning?

When [the researchers] crunched the numbers, they discovered a striking trend: happiness and unhappiness did not predict suicide. The variable that did, they found, was meaning - or, more precisely, the lack of it (p. 23).

That's right: our students don't need us to throw pizza parties, add more spirit days to the school calendar, or make other desperate attempts to help them feel "happy." Our students need us to help them find a purpose so that they can lead more fulfilling lives - and they need that help now.

While I can't singlehandedly change our country's chronically underfunded educational infrastructure to provide students with more comprehensive and effective mental health assistance, I did implement one seemingly small strategy that helped my students to stay engaged and build resilience: the "Why Wall." This is how to make and use one in your own classroom.

1. Create your "why."

Four in ten Americans have not discovered a satisfying life purpose. And nearly a quarter of Americans - about one hundred million people - do not have a strong sense of what makes their lives meaningful (Esfahani Smith, 2017, p. 24).

The first step toward helping students to develop their "why" is to create your own. A "why" can be related to specific jobs or careers, but it can also encompass lifestyles or dispositions - what matters is that it's authentic to you. Maybe you can already rattle off your "why" - or, if you're like me and 100 million other Americans, you need time and space to articulate your purpose. It took me a few days and several rounds of feedback from family and friends, but I eventually landed on the following:

My "why" is to show students how to better love themselves, their peers, and their communities.

When we're focused on pursuing our purpose rather than chasing after happiness, we'll be more likely to persist through the inevitable challenges that arise when dealing with the complex - and sometimes chaotic - nature of our work.

2. Share your "why" with students.

Because our purpose is deeply personal, it can be terrifying to actually talk about it - especially with students. But if we expect our students to take a risk in creating their "why," we need to model that same level of vulnerability. After all, how can we develop an inclusive learning space if we exclude ourselves from it?

3. Ask students to develop their "why."

1. Think It. Students individually contemplate their "why" - in other words, their purpose in life. Some students might need 10 seconds; others might need 10 minutes. If you're not sure how much time is appropriate for your students, ask them (and then honor their recommendation!).

2. Pair It.Students choose a partner with whom to share their "why." The operative word here is "choose," as students will be more comfortable sharing their purpose with someone they trust.

3. Share It.Students share their "why" with their peers.

4. Within the same partnerships, students discuss the following questions: 1) What skills do you want to gain from this class to help you get closer to your "why"? 2) What types of texts, activities, and/or projects do you think might help you gain these skills?

5. Refine It. Based on their conversations, students refine their "why" to include the skills they'd like to gain and the ways in which they might be able to gain them through your class.

6. Post It. Students write down the refined version of their "why" on a Post-It note before sticking it to the "Why Wall" (which you'll learn more about in the next section).

After sharing your "why," ask students to develop their own. Because it's likely that many students have never been asked to identify (much less discuss) their purpose in a school setting, I recommend using the following strategy, a twist on the classic "think-pair-share," to help them to feel more comfortable engaging in this process - particularly with their peers.

4. Display your "whys" in a prominent place in the classroom.

My students and I have compiled our "whys" on what we call the "Why Wall," which is one of the first things we see when we walk through the door. The "Why Wall" not only serves as a daily reminder of our purpose, but invites visitors (whether students, teachers, administrators, or parents and community members) to think about their own roles in creating meaningful lives for themselves and empowering others in their communities to do the same.

5. Throughout the year, ask students to reflect on their "why."

How can/did this activity/project align to your "why"? Explain.

How can/did you use this experience to help you to reach your "why"? Explain.

What skills could/did you gain from this activity/project that moved/will move you closer to your "why"? Explain.

While the "Why Wall" could be a meaningful one-time activity, it would be even more meaningful - and effective - to ask students to reflect on it throughout the year. Here are some questions I've used to help students connect their experiences in our class to their purposes in life.

Just like their teachers, students are more likely to demonstrate resilience when they're reminded that "happiness" and "purpose" aren't always synonymous; in fact, they'll discover that it's normal to face setbacks and grapple with difficult emotions when working to achieve their goals. But the benefits of the reflection process aren't limited to students. If teachers listen to students about the skills they're gaining and the skills they still want to acquire, they can better tailor instruction to students' needs, interests, and goals, which in turn serves to increase engagement and strengthen student-teacher relationships.

By enabling students to identify, share, and continually reflect on their purpose, educators can help to create "positive cultures of meaning" in their classrooms (Esfahani Smith, 2017, p. 193). Developing these types of psychologically safe learning environments, which hold space for teachers and students alike to explore and make meaning, are especially important for adolescents navigating the emotional challenges of high school - not to mention the pandemic. Our students' lives may depend on it.

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Encouraging students to think about their purpose - and the skills they will gain from your class to help them achieve it - can increase engagement and resilience. If you're even tangentially...

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Revolutionising the Way We Teach and Learn with Eric Sheninger

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Revolutionising the Way We Teach and Learn with Eric Sheninger

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A podcast worth listening to...

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Revolutionising the Way We Teach and Learn with Eric Sheninger - Teach Middle East Magazine

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This episode is an invitation to educators to question the status quo and envision a schooling experience that embraces competency-based learning, dismisses outdated structures, and designs spaces that inspire creativity and cater to student preferences. Eric doesn’t shy away from the tough questions about the reality of our educational practices and the need for vulnerability and frankness in assessing and serving the needs of our students.