Articles

As educators, we all want to help our students develop valuable life-long skills, including the ability to think critically about their own work, truly know themselves and their learning styles, reflect on their individual strengths and challenges, and measure their progress toward goals. We want our students to become autonomous…

Having productive conversations requires students to listen deeply, reflect on what is said, express ideas clearly, sustain attention, ask insightful questions, debate respectfully, and develop comprehension of information taken in. These essential listening and speaking skills need to be taught and practiced and will help students have successful conversations both…

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” –Frederick Douglass This famous quote, printed on bright pink cardstock and posted above the whiteboard of a third grade classroom, stood out during a recent school observation.  I tend to see a lot of these on walls during observations—words of wisdom…

“As their teachers, we hold in our hearts our own hopes and dreams for [our students]. We want them to engage in academic rigor and to be ideamongers who contribute to classroom learning—and we also want them to become the very best people they can be; to live the very…

Are you looking for interactive learning structures that will help your students gain a deeper understanding of content while also developing and practicing higher level thinking skills? The Hot Seat is a strategy I've used successfully across disciplines with 3rd and 4th grade students. I borrowed it from Jeffrey Wilhelm,…

Students enter our school doors with a vision of themselves as learners, filled with hopes and dreams for learning. That's what I firmly believe. With them, they bring an innate curiosity and a thirst to discover words, numbers, music, and art; to hear, tell, and make meaning of stories from…

Adapted from the new book The Language of Learning: Teaching Students Core Thinking, Listening, & Speaking Skills  Curiosity is at the heart of learning—and a healthy curiosity depends on questioning. Learning to ask questions moves children beyond themselves; they become able not only to consider what they know or think…

While reading Mike Anderson's series of posts about strategies for keeping students active and engaged, I kept thinking about a second grade classroom I visited recently. I was lucky enough to watch the teacher use many of the strategies Mike suggests in a skillful, seamless way. The effect was almost…