Engaging our students is one of the big topics around the teachers’ lounges right now, or at least the virtual teachers’ lounges. Sometimes it’s presented in terms of educational trends of the future: our students are plugged in multitaskers, and we can’t expect them to sit still and pay… Continue reading
You’ve got to get a feel for your students’ skills, they need to feel connected to one another enough to be able to work together effectively, and everyone has to learn each other’s names. Time for some community-building activities in the classroom! If you’re not in class yet… send… Continue reading
You need classroom helpers. Even more, your students need the opportunity to have jobs. It increases their sense of ownership, gives practice with responsibility, and can even reduce your workload. It can also smooth the running of the classroom. Harry Wong’s The First Days of School: How to Be an… Continue reading
When we study about communities, there are three things we can mean by the word “community.” Usually we study all of them. A community is a place. Learn to read the name of the town where you live, find it on the map, and identify your own neighborhoods, the location of… Continue reading
Wild animals, zoo animals, African animals, jungle animals — all popular classroom themes. One of the advantages to these themes is that there are plenty of ready-made decoratives. I say, if making bulletin boards is your art form and your creative outlet, then good for you — go ahead and… Continue reading
Let’s read Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The title links you to a simple, traditional telling of the story, with pictures. In the story, a little girl named Goldilocks goes into the house of a bear family and tastes their porridge (which they have left cooling while they went for… Continue reading
“Cinderella” is one of the best-known and best-loved of all fairy tales, and for good reason. The story tells of a virtuous, hard-working young girl who is mistreated by her cruel stepmother and stepsisters and forced to sit among the ashes and do all the housework. A great ball is… Continue reading
Josepha shows file folder centers for telling time, designed to go with your Cinderella unit. Continue reading
You can’t go wrong with the classics. If that’s not enough of a reason to consider apples for a classroom theme, here are a few more reasons: There is nothing so easy to find as apple decorations. Choose apples and you can get your room put together fast. There are… Continue reading
I find myself in a lot of conversations on 21st Century skills — the things our students will need to know to compete in the global marketplace in the 21st century. The thing that strikes me about these conversations is how few of the people in them actually compete in… Continue reading
