Articles

Written by Kristen Vincent, Responsive Classroom Consulting Teacher Lesson design is about planning and structuring lessons in a way that engages students in learning, practicing, and applying academic content and skills. Well-designed, engaging lessons reduce misbehavior by keeping students focused on their learning. High-quality lessons communicate a purpose for learning,…

Written by Chris Carter, New York City Public Schools kindergarten teacher After multiple delays, New York City schools started this school year in late September with both hybrid and remote instruction. I began the school year with the same goal I have every year: to build relationships. My first opportunity…

Written by Margie Dorshorst As students continue to learn at home through various educational models, many parents have expressed concern about how to motivate their children to stay engaged and complete tasks both on-screen and off. Some parents have expressed the need to use threats or rewards to motivate their…

When we think of spring, we imagine birds chirping, leaves turning green, flowers blooming, and the sun shining its warmth over everything. If you are an educator, spring has a second meaning: it represents another testing season full of student worries about standardized assessments as well as teacher stress as…

According to Vocabulary.com, the word “intrinsic” is an adjective that means “belonging to a thing by its very nature.” Some synonyms for intrinsic are: essential, built-in, constitutional, inherent, integral, inner, internal. This naturally puts us at a disadvantage when trying to develop intrinsic motivation in our students, because we are…

It’s the perfect time of year to pause and reflect on your personal teaching and learning goals—the hopes and dreams you set when school began. First, let’s take a step back and look at that learning from a big-picture point of view. We know that the most meaningful learning happens…

It’s March, and in many parts of the country, teachers and students are facing the tail end of a long, gray winter, and cabin fever may be setting in. No matter what the weather is like where you are, it can be challenging for both students and teachers to maintain…

My second grade class sits cross-legged on the rug. It is the first day of school, and I'm introducing a classroom tool that the children will be using today and all year. "What is this?" I ask as I hold up the colorful box. Hands shoot up like popcorn with…

When I look around my classroom, I see students making choices. The first graders I teach make choices all through the day, from the time they arrive until Closing Circle. The choices are simple, but meaningful: they each decide the order in which they'll do their Morning Jobs, and in…

If your classroom life is like mine these days, it's gotten harder to make learning fun. This year in my district we have a new teacher evaluation system, new report cards, new online math resources, and new pacing guides for each curriculum. The administrative work involved in managing all this…

When they are working towards a common goal, engaged in a fascinating topic, or trying to figure out a solution for a meaningful problem, students feel more connected to school and each other. Engaged learners have lots to talk about, including discoveries and interesting facts, experiments, predictions, and what they…

Four classes of second graders have just begun a new science unit on insects at the University School of Nashville in Tennessee. I and the other three second-grade teachers have each invited our classes to share what they know about insects and what they would like to learn. To our…

It's social studies time in Karen Baum's fifth grade class and the room is humming with activity. The class is finishing a unit on women gaining the right to vote, and the teacher has given students choices of ways to show what they learned during the unit. Some children are…

When I was in elementary school more than fifty years ago, I struggled with geography. I found it very hard to keep all those place names and locations straight. The only thing I could do was start memorizing. I tried to picture the fifty states in relation to each other,…

Integrating academic choice into a prescribed curriculum Several years ago, the school at which I was teaching adopted a new series of teacher’s manuals for reading and spelling and asked that teachers use them to guide their instruction. The manuals included "red check" skills that students needed to learn each…